Julia Dolan

Photographer and curator Terry Toedtemeier (1947–2008) began his career in the 1970s with extensive photographic experiments to capture his close circle of friends and colleagues. Largely self-taught, he began to attract wider critical attention with his landscape images, initially snapshots from his moving car and later exquisite compositions influenced by his deep understanding of both historical and contemporary photography traditions of the American West. His haunting photographs often focused on the Oregon desert and coastline, and magnificent basalt formations of the Pacific Northwest.Sun, Shadows, Stone is the first scholarly monograph of the photography of Terry Toedtemeier. His photographs were featured in the nationally traveling exhibition Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan and are in the collections of many museums including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Jason Langer's Twenty Years pursues a solitary journey through the nocturnal streets and dimly lit rooms of a dream like world. Spanning 20 years of his career, this aptly titled book is the first survey of Langer's work. Included are many previously unpublished images, surrealist experimentation and figure studies, as well as his singular investigation of the city of Berlin. Langer's photographic language has been variously described as cinematic and poetic, haunting and romantic. Best known for his noir visions of contemporary urban life, Langer has photographed not only some of the world's great cities, but intimate scenes as well, ranging from male and female nudes to inanimate objects captured in moments of lifelike feeling. Whatever their subject, his carefully crafted images, rich with lush, black tones, exude an air of vintage, timeless mystery --"as much Hopper and Raymond Chandler as Steichen" (Bomb magazine).

Blue Sky: The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts at 40 is the first comprehensive publication to document and situate Portland's nonprofit Blue Sky Gallery within the national photography scene, charting its four-decade history from upstart artists' collective to mature nonprofit photographic space. Founded in 1975, before photography was embraced widely as a meaningful fine art form, Blue Sky's founders endeavored to bring the most dynamic contemporary photographers working in the United States, and eventually throughout the world, to the Northwest. The Center's early support of now-renowned photographers, including Nan Goldin, John Divola, Mark Klett, Robert Frank, and Larry Sultan, established Blue Sky as a preeminent West-Coast venue. The gallery remains a vital location where emerging photographers engaging with twenty-first century technologies continue to find their voices and eager audiences.