The phrase documentary photography was coined by one of its chief proponents: Walker Evans. “The term should be documentary style,” the master photographer reflected in 1971. “An example of a literal document would be a police photograph of a murder scene. You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, though it can certainly adopt that style.”

This interplay between documentary photography and art lies at the crux of PHotoEspaña 2022—as the photo festival celebrates its post-pandemic return and 25th anniversary, running through early September in more than 100 art venues throughout Madrid.

Whatever his rhetoric, Evans elevated the depiction of vernacular subjects to an aesthetic level that placed him in the photography pantheon among artful-minded peers like Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Weston. Evans inspired legions of documentary disciples—many of which appear in the PHE22 survey. While they reflect the unplanned, film vérité earmarks of documentary photography, these images now feature on museum and gallery walls.

The festival’s centerpiece is a vast survey, in two venues, called Sculpting Reality—a concept that sounds more manipulative than it is. “A photographer who adopts the documentary style aspires to reflect reality just as a sculptor does: by eliminating all superfluous pieces from the final work,” note guest curators Sandra Guimarães and Vicente Tolodi. “The show reviews the history of this genre through different times, circumstances, and geographic locations.”

The PHE22 offerings also cover lots of tangential ground—with a surprisingly strong tilt toward American photographers. Below are a few festival highlights.

Related: Photojournalist Susan Meiselas: How to be in the right place at the right time

Sculpting Reality

Circulo de Bellas Artes, Alcalá 42; Casa de America, Margués del Duero, 2; through September 3.

This exhibition has two parts: At Casa America is a historic survey of documentary pioneers—including Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Robert Frank—with subjects ranging from anonymous strangers to iconic celebrities (JFK, Marilyn Monroe) bound together by honest portrayal, free of artifice. 

Part two, at Circulo de Bellas Artes, surveys a wider range of contemporary projects expanding the genre, from Joel Meyerowitz’s early color work to Susan Meiselas’s forthright series on Carnival Strippers to the architectural studies of Bernd & Hilla Becher. Some of the lesser-known contemporary works, of prosaic scenes shot in a straight-on style, beg the question of whether they do belong on museum walls—but that’s all part of the debate. “Together they form a collection of images,” argue the curators, “that reflect on the narrative capacity of the documentary and its relationship with truth.”

The Sixties

CentroCentro, Plaza de Cibeles, 1; through October 2.

A massive show depicting a tumultuous and colorful decade, The Sixties is comprised of printed photography, scanned and reprinted on wallpaper-style sheets covering the walls of CentroCentro (which also hosts a grand tribute to pop art stars including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein on a separate floor). The photographs are drawn from the dominant media of the era—books, posters, album covers, and most notably print magazines—at a time when television was just creeping in. 

There’re plenty of period hallmarks: hippies, biker gangs, space travel, rock & roll iconography. The show’s sections reflect hot topics that still resonate today: Our Bodies, Ourselves (women’s self-determination); Black and White (civil rights struggles); Paris, Prague (student unrest and Russian aggression); and News from a Changing World (civil wars and superpower tensions).

A large segment depicts the era’s most divisive conflict: “Vietnam, where photos make the citizenry witness atrocities happening thousands of miles from their newsstands,” note the curators. “In a way, the United States lost that war in the illustrated pages of magazines.” As an ode to printed photography, the survey salutes a stunning era as well as a vanishing art form.

Sebastião Salgado and the Royal Collections

Palacio Real de Madrid, Calle Bailén, s/n; through September 4.

One contemporary photographer who continues to thrive in the realm of print journalism as well as the art world is Sebastião Salgado, whose large-scale naturescapes anchor this survey. In Sebastião Salgado and the Royal Collections, they’re woven into a “dialog” with the works of some 20 landscape photographers from the 19th century—commissioned to document the world’s beauty spots by Queen Isabella II of Spain—including Charles Clifford, William Atkinson, and Jean Laurent. Together the image makers depict scenes from a world still unspoiled by humankind, ancient yet vulnerable, living reminders of creations in the balance.

PHotoEspaña 2022 runs through September 4 in more than 100 venues throughout Madrid.

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In June, Susan Meiselas received the PHotoEspaña 2022 Award for her career as a documentary photographer covering cultural hotspots including Nicaragua and Kurdistan. As part of the Per Amor l’Art Collection, her series Carnival Strippers commands its own room at Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid within PHotoESPAÑA’s Sculpting Reality exhibition. Here we talk with Meiselas about documentary photography, art, and being in the right place at the right time.

PHotoEspaña 2022 explored the interplay between documentary photography and art. How have you dealt with that division in your work?

It’s interesting to look at the history. Carnival Strippers was first produced and first seen in a gallery in New York City—and then in an experimental cultural space called CEPA in Buffalo, New York—as a series of framed pictures on a wall. In Buffalo, I incorporated the original audio that I had captured during the time I made the photographs for those three summers. There was a melange of sound, from the voices of the women to the men in the audience to the balkers, that was heard in the gallery spaces. That was in 1975; the book came out in ’76. It was excerpted for a couple of European magazines. So it’s had a life—call it fine art or documentary—across that territory its entire time as a body of work.

Some of the distinctions get confusing. There’s no question that I was making the work in a documentary tradition, capturing what I saw. I shared the contact sheets with the participants, so they saw them over time. The work wasn’t made as art. It was made to document something that was quite prevalent at that time and is now no longer. Obviously, the sex industry has gone on in multiple other directions. But this was an early expression.

When you set out to do it, what interested you in this world and what were you trying to show?

I did not set out to do it. I was traveling with my partner looking at state fairs, mostly in the Midwest. And when I came back and crossed the path of what were known as “the girl shows,” I was mesmerized by them—I had no idea they existed. I spent the next three years trying to do the best I could to travel with them, to meet the women and the managers, and have access to their working lives. [I wanted to know] how they felt about it and how they felt about themselves and how others perceived them at the time.

It’s amazing to experience the photos juxtaposed with audio. At the time, did you go for that double effect: recordings and images together?

Well, why was I doing it? Your guess is as good as mine. It was my natural instinct that what they were saying was as important as what I was seeing. Right from the beginning, I collected probably 200 hours of tape. And then I hand-transcribed, because there was no technology, and excerpted the transcripts from the tapes into the text that’s part of the original book. So obviously, my intention was to contextualize the photographs from the beginning with their words.

How did you get into that world so intimately? Did you befriend people first?

You build these relationships over time. The first summer I saw the girls show like anyone else would, on the fairgrounds, and I began to photograph. And then I came back the second summer and introduced myself, showed them work, etc., progressively. The girls themselves were changing very frequently. With the managers, it was key that they understood and invited me in because the women wanted me in the dressing rooms. These things are processes. If you have full clarity about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, that’s what leads to good work.

When you photographed in Nicaragua [in 1978-79], during the rise of the Sandinista movement, did you also try to develop relationships over time?

In the case of Nicaragua, it’s an insurrectional environment. Nobody tells you where they’re going to be, or what’s going to happen. You follow events in a very different spirit. You don’t have the same kind of relationship by any means. It’s a totally different set of conditions. But I could see that history was unfolding, so every day or every week throughout that year I was just moving through the country trying to grasp what was developing.

This was at a time when we didn’t have the global news spreading around like now. How did you zone in on that story?

I saw an article on January 10th about the assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, who was head of the opposition newspaper [La Prensa]. It was assumed he was assassinated by President Somoza. That was a large piece in the New York Times—I was totally struck by it. But there were no images of what was happening that I could find at that time. Then I began to read about it. It took me five months to mobilize and go, but I was learning about it through the news. Not through the internet—where you see so much you’re probably not even compelled to go somewhere now. The fact that I didn’t see very many images is probably part of what motivated me to go. To find out about what was happening.

You found yourself witnessing this huge revolution. And then the same thing happened again in Kurdistan.

Well, that’s a different story, because, in Kurdistan, I went there after this exodus of refugees leaving northern Iraq to both Turkey and Iran. I went through Iran into northern Iraq to see what had happened, and then it led me on a very different process, to dig out the visual history of the Kurds for over a century. So it’s not as obvious as following the news. But nonetheless, [I was] connecting different people, history, and places over time.

Many years ago, I exhibited at PHotoEspaña my Kurdistan pictures. I loved working with the festival, and I came back later to install Carnival Strippers with another series in the sex industry called Pandora’s Box, which was about an S&M club in New York. I wanted to juxtapose those two bodies of work. What I love about PHotoEspaña is that it incorporates such a wide range of work in very different kinds of settings. So of course I was honored to be honored by them.

You’ve been quoted: “The camera gives you an excuse to be somewhere you don’t belong.” In a scene that might be fraught with tension, does a camera give you more access? Does it scare people?

It could do both. Sometimes it gives you more access; sometimes you can’t photograph at all. You have to figure out how important it is to make those photographs and figure out a way to do so. But I don’t mean surreptitiously. For me, it’s important that people know that I’m making photographs, and understand the nature of the relationship that I try to build in that process.

PHotoESPAÑA’ 2022 runs through August 28 in Madrid, Spain.

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This post on better bird pictures has been updated. It was originally published on June 3, 2015.

At once challenging and wondrous subjects, birds are fast, elusive, biologically diverse, and can be stunningly beautiful. “There are about 10,000 species of birds in the world, and their range of behaviors is very wide,” says William Majoros, a North Carolina–based scientist and avid bird photographer. “Capturing images of them in the wild is difficult but rewarding.”

Majoros, who was a serious bird-watcher before he even thought about photographing the creatures, believes the reward is in the search itself. “I recommend to new bird photographers that they try to enjoy just being in the field with the birds and have fun—don’t get stressed out about missing a great shot,” he says. Of course, this is like telling a fisherman not to worry about catching anything. “If I get a few good photos,” Majoros maintains, “that’s icing on the cake.”

While their approaches vary, each of the three bird shooters we interviewed sees the process as a labor of love. Dutch photographer Roeselien Raimond relies on behavior-based field techniques to capture her subjects, while Finnish lensman Jari Peltomäki experiments with the aesthetics of birds in motion. And Majoros takes a scientific approach, using precise settings and powerful equipment. We asked all three to share their bird-shooting secrets.

Get close with basic gear

Roeselien Raimond based in Gouda, Holland, counts birds among the many types of wildlife subjects she shoots. “I’m interested in the secrets of animal life,” she says. “With birds, the hidden moments—when a bird feels comfortable and not spied on—are my favorites. This can be a photo of a sleeping duckling, or a kingfisher cleaning its plumage, or a bittern pretending to be a reed.”

Raimond prefers close-up shots of birds, in part because of the portable but relatively low-powered lenses she carries. “I use a 300mm f/4L IS Canon EF telephoto, but it is rather short for bird photography,” she says. “If you have the money, a 500mm lens will give you better shots with less effort.” She adds a similar disclaimer about her camera body: “My Canon EOS 5D Mark III is a great camera—but with bursts of 6 frames per second it’s not the fastest. For birds-in-flight photography, you want something with around 10 fps.”

Still, Raimond likes the challenge of getting as close as possible to birds without disturbing them. “Many birds are scared of humans,” she says. “It helps to use camouflage. Birds have their comfort zones, and as a photographer, it’s important to respect the borders. How closely you can approach a bird depends on the species and the individual. In some cases, you can gain the trust of the bird and it will grant you more privileges. Be calm, don’t act like a predator, and always be respectful.”

For finding the birds, typically in nature preserves and coastline settings, Raimond believes advance research is key. “I enhance my success ratio by collecting information about the subject of choice and I go there prepared,” she says. “Sometimes a friend tells me a location; sometimes I find information on the Internet—patterns, daily routines, specific behaviors of species—and that’s where the journey begins.”

Capture flight & motion

For wildlife photographer Jari Peltomäki, who lives in Liminka, Finland, birds are especially beautiful in action. “What I try to achieve most is the motion-blurred images of birds in flight,” he says. “I love it when you can see the movement in bird wings and also in the background, but the head of the bird is still sharp.”

With this in mind, Peltomäki typically applies manual settings to his full-frame camera and 600mm f/4 lens (he also shoots with a 200-400mm f/4 with a 1.4x teleconverter attached). “I set the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture beforehand so I have full control,” he says. “If I want to show the movement then my shutter speed might be between 1/15 and 1/125 sec. With larger birds, it is often 1/60 sec. With such slow shutter speeds, many of the frames will be rubbish—but occasionally you will get great shots with nice movement and a sharp head of the flying bird!”

Conversely, Peltomäki often freezes the action with faster exposures. “If I would like to get sharp flight shots of large birds like eagles, I set the speed to 1/1600 sec and aperture to f/6.3 (depending on the lens). My ISO depends on how much light there is—quite often it is between 800 and 1600. Smaller and fast-moving birds need faster shutter speeds: 1/3200 sec is enough to stop the movement for most birds, but this also depends on lens and shooting distance.”

Peltomäki advises shooting in horizontal light. “Bird photographers should take images early in the morning or in the late afternoon when the sun is lower in the sky,” he says. “In the middle of the day sun is often so high that you will not get the light in the bird’s eye or the full color of the feathers.”

He often uses hunting blinds as camouflage and tries to blend with the environment. “It is a great advantage to know the bird songs and calls that help to locate certain species; by listening to the calls you can also learn what the birds are doing,” he says. “I can be waiting in my eagle [blind] and without looking outside, I know by the raven calls which raptor will appear next to my feeding station. Ravens have different alarm calls for golden eagles, white-tailed eagles, goshawk, or gyrfalcon. It helps to study these things.”

Maximize detail & showcase your bird

As the author of bird-photography books including Secrets of Digital Bird Photography, William Majoros makes a distinction between aesthetic images and educational ones. “In artistic bird photography one generally tries to keep the background uncluttered—if the scene includes lots of distracting background elements such as leaves or branches, I won’t even take the shot, because I know it won’t satisfy my artistic standards,” he says. “For documentary work, however, I don’t always apply those standards—anything that captures interesting behavior is fair game.”

Majoros likewise varies his approach according to the species he’s shooting. “One of my specialties is warbler photography,” he says. “For these tiny, rapidly foraging birds, the best strategy is to use a shorter lens at close range—a 400mm f/5.6 lens lets you stay mobile so you can follow the birds and navigate the crowds at popular birding destinations, where a big lens might be an encumbrance. But for larger birds like herons, egrets, and raptors—which typically don’t let you get close—you’ll want to use a longer lens such as a 600mm or 800mm. This enables the types of shots I like—frame-filling photos of the birds with massive amounts of minute feather detail.”

For peripatetic subjects, Majoros relies on autofocus. “It’s best to get the bird’s eye in focus, and the beak if possible,” he says. 

However, Majoros sets his exposures manually. “The best way to choose camera settings in the field is to ignore the camera’s metering system and shoot as bright as possible without blowing highlights,” he says. “In the field, I take a number of test shots of the scene and check the preview of each shot on the camera’s LCD, with highlight alerts turned on. This maximizes the information content of the image and allows more flexibility later during editing on the computer.”

Majoros often finds his bird subjects in woods, wetlands, and nature preserves. “I’ve found that city parks, where there are people around, can be more productive than wilderness settings because in the city birds are used to seeing people and don’t spook as easily,” he says. But, he adds, many habitats can become overrun with other birders.

Sometimes beauty is in your own backyard. “I use my house as a bird blind. I set up bird feeders close to my window and sit there waiting for birds to perch,” Majoros says. “Obviously, shots of a bird on a feeder aren’t very aesthetic, but you can set up branches near your feeder and shoot the birds there to obtain a more natural-looking scene. And it’s a joy just to be in their company.”

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For more than three decades, California-based photojournalist David Butow has covered global conflict zones from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, from Burma to Iraq. In 2016, he sensed that the biggest hotspot in the world was in his own nation: He relocated to Washington, D.C. to get what he calls “a front-row seat” to chronicle the presidency of Donald Trump. 

“I thought that if there’s any time to work in Washington and see what that experience was like and cover politics, in my lifetime, this was certainly going to be one of the most interesting periods,” says Butow, a political-science graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. 

Having covered the race between Trump and Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, Butow joined the capital press corps to document the twists and turns of Trump’s tenure: the Mueller investigation, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the first Trump impeachment trial, the COVID-19 health crisis, the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd’s murder, and finally the January 6 pro-Trump riot at the nation’s Capitol.

With an empathetic yet unflinching eye, Butow has captured and collected vivid images of these times in a new photo book, BRINK (Punctum, $55), which accompanies exhibitions at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (through May 1) and RIT City Art Space in Rochester, NY (through February 20).

“There is simply no equivalent to the period 2015–2021 in American politics. If you had scripted it, Hollywood executives would have thrown you out on your ear for writing something so unbelievable,” writes Mark McKinnon, political consultant, and co-star of Showtime’s The Circus, in the book’s foreword. “For those who couldn’t experience or see it up close, thankfully we had photojournalists like David Butow to take you there.”

Here Butow discusses the book and his experience of creating this body of work.

Were you on assignment when you were shooting these images?

Some of the time I was. I’ve had assignments for TIME Magazine, CNN, Politico, and a few other organizations. But a lot of times I wasn’t on assignment—I was basically working as an agency photographer [for Redux]. So I was covering the events and then funneling pictures to my agency. In both of those circumstances, I sort of had a two-track goal. One of them was to make pictures that were going to be appropriate for the client or the weekly news cycle. But then I was always looking out for things that I thought were a bit tangential but may be interesting later. That would add some context to the atmosphere of this time in Washington, D.C.

The book’s Act I scenes are in Michigan on the campaign trail. Did you feel that was a pivotal region in U.S. politics?

Yes, I thought it was. You know, the progressive agenda happens in places like New York, San Francisco, and L.A. But the upper Midwest is an area that has not fared well in the country’s economic and cultural shift toward the coasts. I thought there was something interesting there that I didn’t understand. I was curious about the appeal of Donald Trump to people [living there]. So I went to the rallies to see it firsthand. And I also went to the [Hillary] Clinton rallies, to get a sense of what those were like. And as I write in the book, “Her rallies seemed forced and his were loud and energized.” But the thing is, I believe in data, like a scientist. There are things that you can kind of feel with your gut, but when there’s data involved, I tend to trust that. So I thought Hillary would win. The polling showed that she had a very strong lead in the Electoral College. It was only after Trump won that I decided to move to Washington to follow this story.

There is a sense that, covering these events, you were basically trying to see all sides of what’s going on.

I think that’s right. I have a pretty broad view of what’s happening, and when I’m shooting I try to catch some tangential glimpses. There’s one spread in the book where it’s just pictures of people’s legs, women’s on the left, and men on the right. That was during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, on the first day of his hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee—before any of the Christine Blasey Ford allegations came up. So it was just something that caught my eye; it amused me. The women on one side, with their legs crossed, and men on the other. Then later these allegations came up, and this whole thing turned into a discussion about gender and power, and those pictures became a little bit more relevant.

Your captions are spare—often just titles indicating locations.

I wanted to tell people basically what they’re looking at, when, and where, but I’ll leave the meaning a little bit open to interpretation. I’m not trying to tell somebody what to think. I’ve never been interested in that kind of photography, where there’s a strong dichotomy: This is good or this is bad. I do think that way sometimes, but as far as photography goes, I’m more interested in the nuance and the ambiguity of things. So that’s why I don’t overload people with details. It’s photography, and the pictures speak for themselves. I’m basically trying to tell the story as best as I can, what this period was like, and do it in a way that’s not Us versus Them. 

For context, we have the foreword by Mark McKinnon, who I had seen on the campaign trail. I like his centrist orientation—he takes a broad view, and he’s not as hyperbolic as some people in politics. And the epilogue is by Cecilia Emma Sottilotta, a political scientist at American University in Rome. I wanted the perspective of somebody outside of the United States. She’s not an activist; she’s a scientist. She’s able to take an analytical approach to these issues.

The book’s Act III focuses on the events of 2020.

Act III covers the trifecta of COVID-19, the George Floyd protests, and the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. We’ve got that whole continuum, and particularly 2020 was such a dramatic year. That’s when a lot of this political turmoil—which had been going on in the halls of power and Congress, in the White House, and through the media and social media—suddenly, it actually became physical and visceral and spilled onto the streets. You have thousands of people out and literally pressing up to the gates of the White House. That’s when things started to feel historical, and the riot of January 6 just sealed it. So I thought, I really need to try as hard as I can to do a book on this.

You shot a huge rally after Biden won. What about the MAGA crowd? What’s next for them?

I think one of the things that we’ve learned in the last few years is no matter how much of an expert somebody might be, at some point we’re all just guessing, because these dynamics are very hard to predict. Clearly, Trump still has very strong support from a segment of people in the United States. I think that there are elements to his support that are very much like a cult of personality—where it’s him that people are really interested in. And in some respects, I think it’s going to be hard for someone else to take that place. On the other hand, there are Republicans who are savvy enough to take the ideas that made him popular and to co-opt them. Basically, most of the leadership of the party is trying to do that.

You depict Trump rallies after the election and before January 6.

This included the Proud Boys. The first thing in my book is a quotation from a David Bowie song: “When the sun goes down and the die is cast / When the die is cast and you have no choice / We will run with the dirty boys.” I recently did a radio interview where I was asked, “Who are the dirty boys?” I see them as people on the Trump side, people who facilitated his own personal agenda, and I see that as a very anti-democratic agenda, and that bothers me. So to me, it’s not just a question of Democrats versus Republicans—it’s much bigger than that.

When you showed up on January 6, did you have any idea what would happen?

No, I didn’t. I went down to the Mall ahead of Trump’s speech in the morning, and I could tell that the crowd had an edgy energy that was disconcerting. And I knew they planned to march down to the Capitol. The thing is, during the BLM protests, these were all the people who said, essentially, “Back the Blue.” Respect the police. There had been large pro-Trump rallies in the weeks preceding January 6, where there were standoffs with people on the left, and the police were always in the middle, keeping the two sides apart. And the Trump people never went after the cops at all—there was never conflict with the police. So the way that played out was completely surprising to me. But here, the cops were keeping them from doing what they wanted to do: to storm the building. These were essentially foot soldiers in an attempted coup.

During the riot, did you fear for your life?

I had concerns about my safety covering that as I always do when I’m in a violent situation. That day, the level of violence was something that I was not expecting. You know, I never heard a live gunshot all day long. And I’ve worked in places where I heard a lot of gunfire, and that’s really scary, but that didn’t seem to be a concern that day. What did seem to be a concern was two things, primarily: one was the size of the mob, and they were pressing up the steps and I thought that at some point the cops would do something that would cause the mob to flee down and retreat, quickly, and everybody was so packed onto the stairs and the scaffolding that it could be a really bad stampede situation. So I found a place where I felt like I had a little bit of protection from the metal railing. And the second concern I had was the possibility of getting attacked by Trump supporters who were suspicious of me. But it never happened. 

What would you like this book to accomplish?

I want to provide a visual record with a kind of a stylistic thread that will give people in the near and the far future a sense of what happened during this period in our history. I see the subject of the book as a combination of culture and politics—it’s the intersection of those two things. So I want somebody who’s looking at the book right now, in 2022, to remember this period—that they experienced bit-by-bit, through Twitter and stories on the web and on TV—to be able to step back and look at the whole arc of events. And to be reminded of the gravitas of what happened.

This is in a book form, which offers a different experience from seeing it on a screen. For people in the more distant future, I want to convey a sense of what America looked and felt like during this period, with a focus on the political events.

BRINK is available now, see more of David Butow’s work here.

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The last year has been an undeniably weird one, but it did produce a lot of excellent photography books. A good photography book never goes out of style and offers an incredibly rewarding way to enjoy pictures. Let’s face it, photographs just look better printed out on paper than on the glowing screen of your smartphone or laptop. 

A quality photo book can be a timeless gift for a photography-obsessed loved one or as an end-of-year pick-me-up for yourself. Unlike a piece of camera equipment, it gets better as it ages, provides inspiration for years to come, and might even collect some value too. These are some of our favorite titles from 2021.

Kristin Bedford, Cruise Night (Damiani)

A book nearly six years in the making, Kristin Bedford’s Cruise Night offers an in-depth look at lowrider car culture in East Los Angeles. The book not only captures intimate, unstaged photos of these customized cars and the people who pour love, time and energy into maintaining them but also doubles as an oral history of the community. 

Car culture has traditionally been documented from a male perspective and is often aligned with masculinity, but in Cruise Night Bedford pays close attention to the women that are part of this community—and not just the models who are posing alongside the cars. Ultimately, Cruise Night offers a nuanced look at the Mexican American lowriding culture in East Los Angeles.

Jimmy Chin, There and Back: Photographs from the Edge (Ten Speed Press)

Don’t give this book to anyone with acrophobia. During a career shooting stills and films for National Geographic and others, Jimmy Chin has reached dizzying heights and angles while chronicling outdoor exploits: mountaineering, free-solo climbing, BASE jumping, extreme skiing and other global adventures, from the granite domes of Yosemite to the peaks of the Himalayas.

As an image-maker Chin has worked with such renowned mountaineers as David Brashears, Conrad Anker, and Steph Davis—he shares anecdotes in his text—and he sadly bids farewell to adventurers like Dean Potter who pushed to the edge … and past it. Along with amazing imagery, Chin reveals the spirit behind such derring-do: “Few understand elective suffering. Fewer enjoy it.” He conveys the comfort of common sense, as when he and his party had to leave Everest right before summiting (due to avalanches): “If you turn around and come home alive, you made the right decision,” Chin writes. “The goal is to make it there and back.”

Donna Ferrato, Holy (powerHouse Books)

Donna Ferrato has spent her entire life photographing women, and Holy is a career-encompassing look at that work. The images within Holy can often be difficult to process. Ferrato is well-known for her photographs of survivors of domestic abuse, but those frames are intertwined with moments of extreme joy, strength and love.

The entire book was a labor of love for Ferrato—she handled the design, sequenced the images and included hand-written captions for every picture—most of which was done during New York City’s early COVID-19 lockdown. Ferrato’s love can be felt through every page of the book, and ultimately Holy is a testament to the extraordinary and complicated nature of what it means to be a woman in the world.

Craig Foster & Ross Frylinck, Underwater Wild (Mariner Books)

If you’d like to be under the sea, in an octopus’s garden, check this out. The creators of the Oscar-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher take a deeper underwater dive in this lavish tome. The star of the film, Craig Foster, and his diving partner, Ross Frylinck, each contribute vivid imagery of the underwater ecosystem. Both men write text passages, interweaving scientific details of the sea with their own personal tales of struggle and rediscovery. Foster is the game scientific inquisitor, Frylinck the pensive spiritual seeker… until they switch roles. 

What emerges is a tale of deep friendship, kinship with nature, and emotional rebirth. “Our story [is] essentially about loss and healing,” they write in the afterword. “We are all dealing with loss, as wilderness vanishes before our eyes, and our continued existence on this earth is challenged.” Yet the healing brings hope. As Jane Goodall writes in her introduction: “Give nature a chance and even places we have utterly destroyed can be restored, and animal species on the brink of extinction can be given another chance.”

Godlis, Godlis Miami (Reel Art Press)

Godlis is best known for his gritty black-and-white frames from CBGB’s in the late ‘70s, but even rock ‘n’ roll shooters enjoy a beach vacation. The images in Godlis Miami were captured in 1974 when the prolific shooter took a ten-day trip to Miami Beach, Florida, a place that he’d frequented as a kid. This all happened two years before he started shooting at CBGBs, and he credits the 10 days as the place where he really learned to shoot like himself.

Godlis Miami pulls images from the 60 rolls of film that were shot on the trip—highlighting a community of Jewish retirees and art-deco hotels that were beginning to look a bit shabby and outdated for the era. As with the images found in his book Godlis Streets, he ends up capturing a scene that no longer exists. The neighborhood he captured during that trip is now South Beach—so the quaint storefronts, quirky hotels and Jewish retirees in their best beach looks are long gone. The influence of Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand are all over this book—and Godlis admits it. If you love a good street photography book, Godlis Miami belongs on your bookshelf.

Ted Lau, Between Doors: In the DPRK (Daylight Books)

Hong Kong-based photographer Ted Lau says he became fascinated by North Korea after seeing Andreas Gursky’s large-format images of the country in the early aughts. In 2019 Lau made his own sojourn behind this iron curtain, “without any prejudices except a mild uneasiness for my personal safety,” he notes. “Don’t pass judgment until you have seen and heard with your own eyes and ears.”

Lau’s monograph reveals a land of vivid contradictions: desolate cityscapes backdropped by vibrant colors, simple domestic scenes amid militaristic controls, impassive citizens circulating under murals of the supreme-ruler Kims. Most striking is the orderliness—in everything from classroom scenes to staged pageantry—and the ordinariness of the people. “My wish is for you to see what the lives of the North Korean people are like,” Lau says. “We all have the same basic needs. We all have the same want for happiness and comfort.” He adds: “It is an immensely interesting place, and how it develops from here is anyone’s guess.”

Magnum 2020 (Magnum Photos)

Arriving just as 2020 was in the rear-view mirror, this compendium features more than 60 photographers from the famed Magnum Agency documenting a year of lockdown and social upheaval. Arranged alphabetically, the photographers’ sections reflect convulsing global changes: Peter van Agtmael’s chaotic scenes of Covid wards and MAGA rallies; Ian Berry’s documentation of water shortages; Cristina Garcia Rodero’s portraits of a young girl masking her doll and older patients hugging through plastic tarps; Bruce Gilden’s shots of MAGA crowds and BLM protestors; Emin Özmen’s searing views of the Syrian Refugee Crisis; Alex Webb’s isolated seaside meditations at Cape Cod.

Steve McCurry, Stories and Dreams (Laurence King Publishing)

As the overstuffed pages of his passport can attest, Steve McCurry has logged many years and miles documenting far-flung corners of the globe. In this compendium, he finds a common denominator: children. By showing inquisitive faces, parenting practices, and playtime rituals everywhere from Cambodia to Myanmar to Madagascar, McCurry traces universal rites of humanity.

Some photos here depict new angles on familiar scenes—such as young Sharbat Gula at a refugee camp in Pakistan, her face shrouded, moments before she dropped the veil and flashed her eyes in McCurry’s most famous image. Others are retrieved from McCurry’s vaults. “In many places he has traveled, children are often born into difficult, even catastrophic circumstances, places and situations where optimism may be very hard to come by,” writes Owen Edwards in the afterword. “But the through-line, no matter where he turns his lens, is that as long as there is childhood, there is hope.”

Beth Moon, Baobab (Abbeville Press)

Visual artist Beth Moon reveals how Africa’s most majestic trees face an unprecedented ecological threat. In the island nation of Madagascar, among the endemic species are Baobab trees, which can live more than 2,500 years and serve as renewable sources of food, fiber, fuel, and shelter. They’re revered as beautiful giants and spiritual exemplars. But many of the oldest Baobabs are suddenly dying off, collapsing under their own weight, which many scientists attribute to climate change and encroaching agriculture.

Among the subjects Moon often portrays in her duotone platinum prints are remote and endangered species; here she artfully photographs the Baobabs that still remain, as well as the native sights and artifacts found on her pilgrimage. ​​“These trees seemed so strong and invincible,” Moon writes. “Never did I realize I would be documenting the deaths of many of them within my lifetime.”

Lydia Panas, Sleeping Beauty (MW Editions)

For decades, Lydia Panas has pursued photo projects combining portraiture with psychological inquiry. This newest series is a complex exploration of femininity. Panos’s subjects recline in natural settings, with frank and unsmiling gazes, as if unhindered by artifice, fear or even gravity.

Yet there’s an underlying tension. “The positions of the subjects’ bodies, prone in the grass, is vulnerable, one that unnervingly both evokes tranquility and calls to mind violent crimes against women,” Marina Chao writes in the foreword. “But in this space and in this moment, they are in no danger. The women appear stolid, unbothered, apprehensive, indignant, assured, exhausted, defiant, resolved, whole.”

Marie Tomanova, New York New York (Hatje Cantz)

Marie Tomanova’s second book is a beautiful reminder of what it’s like to be a 20-something finding your way in New York City. New York New York is filled with stunning color portraits, all shot on film with a point-and-shoot camera. They capture a raw energy that’s reminiscent of photographers like Nan Goldin or early Ryan McGinley.

Her diaristic approach to photography leads to incredibly intimate portraits, often shot inside her subject’s homes, but also on rooftops, art parties, and New York City’s outdoor spaces. The Czech-born photographer says that making pictures was a way to find herself and carve out space in the City’s dense urban metropolis. You sense that her subjects are searching for that too. New York New York oozes hopeful energy, documents the diversity of New York City, while still touching on issues of isolation and self-identity.

Art Wolfe, Night on Earth (Earth Aware Editions)

Throughout most of this wide-ranging survey, Art Wolfe captures luminous night scenes by twilight, starlight, moonlight—everything except man-made light. While there are flashes of civilization—fishermen on stilts at sunrise, nomadic tribes around campfires, candlelight ceremonies in India—the bulk of the images show no signs of Edison’s incandescent invention. They do reflect Wolfe’s artistry and mastery of naturalistic scenes.

As humans and urban architecture gradually enter the mix, the emphasis remains on skylight: iridescent clouds, sunrises and sunsets, explosive star shows. Wolfe uses beauty to convey an environmental message about an endangered world. “For most of human history, night was a palpable, inescapable presence,” writes David Owen in his intro. “The nighttime sky was mankind’s first window on the infinite.” Here that window is reopened.

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In the 84 years PopPhoto has been chronicling the evolution of photography, the ways we’ve tested new gear, tutored our readers and documented the culture of taking pictures have shifted in lockstep with the state of the industry. What’s remained consistent: Our drive to inspire photographers and enthusiasts to experiment, explore, and enjoy the act of squeezing the shutter. 

As we spin this historic brand back up after a nearly five-year hiatus, we asked photographers, educators, and fans about the role PopPhoto played in their image-making journeys.

Art Wolfe – photographer

“When I was coming up through the ranks of photography in the 1970s and ’80s, Popular Photography was ubiquitous. It was a great resource for photographic technique and gear, in particular. Through the 1990s and 2000s, I worked with knowledgeable and energetic editors, writers, and photographers at PopPhoto on various projects big and small. They afforded a very important platform for pros like me to inspire other photographers as well as publicize our work. 

The last two decades have been such a time of vast changes in the industry, and even venerable institutions have fallen by the wayside. Some of us have managed to hang on, and I am so pleased to hear that PopPhoto.com is being refreshed and revitalized.”

Tim Fitzharris – photographer

“I grew up on Popular Photography. I learned the craft, reading everything from the articles to the advertising, word by word. I scoured the pages and pages of listings from B&H and Adorama every month. It was an integral part of my creative life and, it seemed, that of America, too. 

I felt crushed when I learned PopPhoto had folded and resolved to keep it going—in spirit at least, to keep the faith so to speak, in my own way, in respect for a tradition of journalism folksy and personal. So I keep shooting and pursuing the art of seeing and communicating—tomorrow I am off for the Organ Mountains fall color show in southern New Mexico, my 51st season of photographing nature. And it all started when I picked up my first copy of PopPhoto at a newsstand at my university bookstore.”

Henry Horenstein – photographer & educator

“In the pre-Internet days, Popular Photography provided an invaluable connection for photo nerds and techies and just plain fans with feature stories, equipment reviews, and ads from retailers all over. Everyone skimmed it. Some of us even read it cover to cover!”

Jeff Dunas – photographer & director of Palm Springs Photo Festival

“When I was a kid, we learned about photography the hard way—mistakes and reading whatever we could find on the subject. We went to the library and checked out all the books. We hung around camera stores or later, photo labs. But there was always Popular Photography and Modern Photography. PopPhoto was the leader, the big one, but both were similar in ways—and every month I read them both cover to cover. And again.

Down the street from where I lived a kid’s father had piles of Popular Photography, Modern Photography and US Camera in his garage. He saw me eyeing them one day and offered the whole shebang to me. You can’t imagine how that felt—it was like a gold rush. It took me about 20 trips carrying them in the basket of my sister’s bike. Over the next few months, I read every one of them. For a kid with a thirst for anything photo, this was the ticket.

The stories about the photographers were what I found most interesting: Jay Maisel, Pete Turner, Douglas Kirkland, Paul Fusco, Andreas Feininger, Ernst Haas, Art Kane and others became heroes. Later I published two photography magazines myself—Collectors Photography and Darkroom Photography (later Camera & Darkroom)—and I insisted on great portfolios of the heroes of the day as well as earlier times. Later I had the honor to know many early heroes. 

We were all better for the magazine. Internet versions of great magazines don’t have the same meaning in my estimation. I love the printed page. I love having a pile of back issues in a closet.”

Harry Martin – PopPhoto cotributor & longtime reader

“When I was about 12 years old, I had a quarter and I went down to the newsstand and Popular Photography was the largest photo magazine, and that was how I happened to buy it. 

PopPhoto was for students of photography and sophisticated amateurs. There were a couple of magazines directed primarily at professionals; the thing is that professionals didn’t have to figure out how to take pictures, because they knew. So the pros didn’t necessarily read Pop for tech tips. They read it for an update on current affairs, things like exhibitions or new products. But for the serious amateur down to the beginner, Pop was a learning tool. There were a lot of tips about how to take pictures. 

When I wrote for Pop, I was not a particularly good photographer, but I knew a lot about photography. To be a good photographer, you had to have a certain eye and certain experience. And most of the people who wrote for PopPhoto were better at writing about photography than they were doing it. For them, it was like working in a toy store. Testing the latest equipment and trying out new products and generally enjoying yourself—it was a great way of making a living.

Most of us were gear nuts. We were into cameras, lenses, developers, papers, film … and the companies would loan it to us: Here, try out this stuff. In later years I was the one who wrote about classic cameras, the icons of their time: the Rolleiflex, the Contax … the collectible jewels. Now, most of the imaging is electronic and that’s not an area that I’m familiar with. I don’t know how to use [electronic cameras] and I don’t have any desire to use them—for me the fun of photography is using conventional cameras. I was a big Rolleiflex user, and the Rolleiflex is now obsolete, as I am. Call me obsolete, but I’m still here.”

Julia Scully – former editor of Modern Photography, author, & photo historian

“The photo magazine publishing field was a small one, and competitors or not, we all knew each other and felt a sense of community. Some of us had worked together at one or other of the magazines at one time. We saw each other at press conferences, art openings, and professional events.

Pop was a well-edited publication, but I felt that Modern had a more contemporary look. During my 20-year tenure as editor of Modern Photography, it seemed to me that Pop was staffed, by and large, by interesting, sophisticated people. 

Occasionally, I would get a call from a member of Pop’s staff to congratulate me on some achievement. For example, when Modern began publishing a section in each issue printed in the beautiful, expensive gravure process, one Pop editor called me to thank me for the move, as that gave him an argument for doing the same at Pop. Another editor called to tell me how much he admired my book on Mike Disfarmer—among the very best photo books he had ever seen, he said. I was touched by his call; it was typical of the collegial feeling among us.

I recall being impressed when Pop supported W. Eugene Smith in his major essay on Pittsburgh. Smith had been working on it for Life magazine but he ran way over budget and time. Smith was notoriously difficult to work with. In advance of its publication, there was a lot of brouhaha in the field about the in-the-works essay, the word being this was going to be one of Smith’s major achievements. When Life gave up on Smith and the piece, Pop agreed to take it on and underwrite Smith’s continued work on the project. It was finally published with many pages devoted to it—I believe in the PopPhoto Annual. I always admired their decision to support this important photographer and his work.”

Greg Ceo – photographer

“As a young teenage photographer, I read Popular Photography for copious amounts of info on the photography world that I could not otherwise get, growing up in West Virginia. Then later, as a pro, I added other information sources once I entered the industry—including American Photographer, the International Center of Photography, galleries and museums, and the work of well-known critics such as A.D. Coleman, Shelly Rice, etc. But in the beginning, there was PopPhoto. I’m glad it’s still around (in a new form) and evolving.”

Ian Plant – photographer, educator, & workshop director

“I’m a photo educator as well as a photographer, and Popular Photography enjoyed a huge readership all around the globe. As I was a frequent contributor to the magazine, it changed the trajectory of my career. I was able to reach this vast audience of photography enthusiasts, and to this day I still receive feedback from readers.

Pop always had a lot of gear information, and there’s lots of demand for that. People are thirsty for education, learning how to do photography. But I’ve always felt that any photo publication, whether print or online, needs to have a healthy dose of inspiration as well. Pop provided both.

In workshops, I’m focused on the artistic side of photography: I talk a lot about visual design and composition and the creative use of light. That could apply when using any kind of equipment. Students always have questions about gear and about how to technically shoot things, and I answer those questions as best I can, but I’m most interested in the artistic side. 

As for the new trends of shooting with your phone—the Instagram era—I guess I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m a bit old-fashioned. I’m a photo traditionalist, and what I see in the industry now is this move towards a more casual, experimental style. One that’s also dominated by computer manipulation of the photos that are created—you can run it through all sorts of filters and dramatically change what the image looks like.
I think these are all tools of artistic expression. I don’t have any problem with that, but at the same time, I think of traditional photography as a distinct art form, one that’s getting a little bit left behind in this modern expressive age. And PopPhoto exemplified that art form.”

Philip Ryan – former Technology Editor of PopPhoto

“Popular Photography has been on hand to inform photographers of all levels for longer than any other publication in America. From the time that ISO (aka ASA) 200 celluloid would’ve been considered fast film all the way through to now, when people typically use their phones to shoot photos more often than they use them to make voice calls. When I got my first job at PopPhoto I felt like I was walking into an institution of epic historical weight, because I was. I learned so much along the way, had the pleasure of being the first official editor of the website, and eventually became the last technical editor of the print publication. For that, I will be forever grateful. It warms my heart to know that Popular Photography will continue to help photographers enjoy what is one of the world’s most important forms of communication and self-expression.”

Julia Silber – former Technology Manager of PopPhoto

“I am excited to see PopPhoto return because I love to hear the enthusiasm they have in their articles about new products. A new camera or lens is looked at carefully but also with excitement about any new or updated functions.

As the former Technology Manager, I had the great pleasure of not only testing the gear but also of opening the boxes (and logging in) when new products would come in. It was always fun to share with the staff a particularly interesting new feature on a camera or lens. I particularly loved it when a lens would come in with a velvet-lined lens cap. In the future, I would like to see PopPhoto continue to do some sort of testing for new cameras and lenses. Lab tests, as we had done in the past, may now not be necessary as these products have evolved so much, they have surpassed our old test standards. But field testing would be beneficial. How does the camera balance in your hands? How quick is the lens to autofocus? Things like that. Good to see you back PopPhoto.”

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In the late aughts, like many photographers, Phillip Buehler was working on a promising book and searching for a publisher. Since 2001, he’d tenaciously pursued a photo-driven project about Woody Guthrie’s sunset years with help from the folk singer’s daughter Nora and the Woody Guthrie Archives. “We approached a lot of the big art publishers, and we had two very interested,” Buehler recalls. “And then the market tanked.”

Buehler’s proposal was in limbo. “Once we were at a meeting where a publisher sort of let on, ‘This is a do-good book,’” he recalls. “Which immediately puts it in the category of, ‘There’s not money to be made in it.’ And it almost dooms it.”

Yet Buehler knew he had a special project in the works—a view of a period of Guthrie’s life that has long been shrouded in mystery. It began as a photo shoot at New Jersey’s Greystone Park State Hospital, where Buehler was working on his ongoing series on modern ruins. He discovered that Guthrie had spent five years at Greystone in the 1950s and ’60s, when the singer was incapacitated by Huntington’s Disease. He learned that a young Bob Dylan visited Greystone to meet his idol. Further probing led to letters that Guthrie wrote from the hospital and recollections of his time there from kin including Nora, Guthrie’s son Arlo, his second wife, Marjorie, and friends such as singer Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and photographer John Cohen.

“It took a long time to follow all these trails,” Buehler says. “I’d been working on the book for a decade. And then it’s like, how do we birth this baby? How do we bring it out to the world?”

Buehler and the Guthrie Archives turned to an increasingly popular solution: self-publishing. The result is a poignant, handsome, 160-page volume, Woody Guthrie’s Wardy Forty: Greystone Park State Hospital Revisited (Woody Guthrie Publications, $75). The initial press run of 2,500 copies was robust for a monograph, independently published or not. At Nora Guthrie’s suggestion, designer and editor Stephen Brower collaborated on the book’s layouts. “With Adobe InDesign, we were able to design the book and send PDFs and work together without having to rely on a publisher’s designer,” Buehler says.

The printing was done by Meridian Publications in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. “More and more artists are bypassing the traditional way of publishing and distribution so they can control the production process,” says Daniel Frank, project director at Meridian. “The internet has enabled people to market their own books and sell them directly to the buyer. They can put more emphasis on production values.”

Buehler agrees. “Along came Kickstarter, which we used to raise money,” he says. “And we could promote the book on Facebook—we also put it on the Woody Guthrie page, Arlo’s page—so now you have, as an individual, a much larger audience than ever before.”

Buehler and the Guthrie Archives surpassed their fundraising goal of $42,000. “That helped with overhead,” Buehler says. “Setting up the press and the management of it cost around $30,000. And then every book after that is on a sliding scale, a calculation of time and paper and ink. We wanted to get the per-book rate down to a reasonable price.”

Buehler calls the self-pub trend “a transformation of an industry. These new things that came along made this possible, whereas ten years earlier when we started the book, they weren’t.”

Greater Recognition


Once the odd step-children of the publishing industry, independently produced books are getting new respect. Of hundreds of entries to the 2013 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards, 30 titles were selected for the contest’s shortlist—and nearly half of those were self-published. One of the honorees was Beautiful Pig (benschonberger.com, $70), by photographer Ben Schonberger of Alexandria, Virginia. “It’s been a huge boost—sort of like being shot out of a cannon,” he says of receiving the honor.

Schonberger’s project focused on Detroit police officer Marty Gaynor and his snapshot collection. “Among his thousands of photographs were images he had taken of criminals just moments before their arrest,” Schonberger says. “I’m interested in typologies of people, and this work allowed me to look at two very different ones—cops and criminals—at the same time.”With informal lessons from a friend, Schonberger learned how to use InDesign and laid out the book. While working in Detroit, he chose a nearby printer, Heath Press of Royal Oak, Michigan, and published a modest press run of 100 copies. “I signed and numbered all of them—100 felt like a good number for the first edition,” he says. “But now that the book has been well received, I’d like to make a second edition.”


Artistic Freedom

A small batch like Schonberger’s can be easier for a photographer to finance, but as Buehler discovered, producing a bigger edition often requires a substantial investment. Photojournalist Carolyn Drake, who has worked for clients including The_ New Yorker, Time_, and National Geographic, took the middle route. She says that for her most ambitious photo project—a five-year exploration of the vast Amu Darya and Syr Darya River regions in Central Asia that blends documentary and fine art—self-publishing a monograph turned out to be both the most practical and the most creative option.

“By the time I got around to contacting publishers, the book was already designed,” Drake says of her striking 2013 book, Two Rivers. Working with Dutch designer Sybren Kuiper of SYB in The Hague and funded by a Kickstarter campaign that surpassed its $15,000 goal by more than $9,000, Drake’s book was printed in an edition of 700 by Mart.Spruijt, an offset printing house in Amsterdam. The first edition sold out.

The physical design sets Drake’s book apart: On Japanese-bound pages, beautiful images spill from one spread to the next, emphasizing the interplay between elements over intact photographs. The volume’s unorthodox structure fit with Drake’s DIY model. “We didn’t have a lot of restrictions,” she says of self-publishing. “Pros: You make all the decisions, you have direct contact with readers and booksellers, and you know where your money goes. Cons: You make all the decisions, and you have to find ways to sell and promote it yourself.”

Creative Collaborations While a photo book’s success depends in part on the size of its audience, statistics aren’t everything. “It’s not just about the number of eyeballs anymore—we’re achieving more of that online than a print book is reaching,” says Michelle Dunn Marsh, cofounder of Minor Matters (minormattersbooks.com/), a publishing venture that combines an indie approach with a curatorial model for selecting artists. “The printed book allows something to have a life when you and I are gone. It’s an opportunity for a body of work to live on,” says Marsh, who’s worked as a publisher and design director for companies including Aperture and Chronicle Books. “If we’re going to kill a tree to make a book, what are the benchmarks for doing that?”

Minor Matters operates on a pre-sale principle: If a project achieves a 500-book quota of advance orders, it will hit the presses. “For each of the books on our website, we have worked with the artist to determine the size of the book, the cover, the design, and the conceptual details. When these are in place, we stop,” Marsh says. “And then we have a six-month period to obtain a minimum of 500 pre-sales. If and when that happens, we continue the production cycle of the book and it goes to print.” She adds that published books will be available from independent book outlets such as photo-eye.com.

“It’s probably a good idea for me to look for 500 friends right now,” jokes Anna Mia Davidson, a 
Seattle-based photographer who is working with 
Minor Matters on a book called Human Nature, stemming from her own experience in sustainable farming. “The images are taken on many different farms in the Pacific Northwest,” she says. “I’ve 
spent the past 16 years loving an organic farmer 
and embracing the life we share as a farm family, raising our children, and living off the grid in a yurt for several months each year. It was only human nature to turn the camera on my own world.”

Yet Davidson had kept this body of work mostly under wraps until Marsh encouraged her to publish it. “The part I love,” Marsh says, “is to work with the artist and say, ‘How do we share this work with a wider audience? How do we preserve it in book form?’ It all goes back to believing in what we’re putting on paper.”

As a veteran of the traditional book-publishing industry, Marsh has seen many a project flounder. “The publisher takes on the financial burden, and it goes out into the world, and if it sells 250 copies or it sells 2,000 copies, the photographer has got their 50 copies and they see the book in print,” she says. “In our model, there’s a possibility that the book is not even going to happen. That’s scary for all of us. But the truth is, we have more books today than we have audiences to buy them—and so that’s pushing people to try things in new and different ways.”

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Zack Seckler started his photography career in a tried-and-true way: shooting assignments for newspapers and wire services in Boston and later in New York City. But he soon decided to break out from straight documentary work. “One thing that frustrated me with photojournalism was having to follow the ethical guidelines of not interfering with a scene or asking someone to do something,” explains Seckler, 33. “There would be times when I was just waiting for a person to repeat something—you’d see them do it once and hope they’d do it again. Just waiting. It can be very frustrating.”

This eventually led Seckler to shift to what he calls “produced work” in the realms of fine art, editorial, and advertising. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I can tell people to do what I want!’” he says with a laugh. “I can hire a model and create a set. Whatever it is, you have much more control. Once I opened that door, I never really went back.”

The result is Seckler’s growing portfolio of personal work (often in a humorous vein), geometrically strong landscapes, and clever commercial shots. “That’s kind of the holy grail,” he says, “to do great creative work and get paid for it, right?” His client list ranges from electronic giants Samsung and LG to retail mainstays Gap and Starbucks to publications including Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, and New York.

While Seckler says there’s often a “hard line” between art and commercial photography, he likes to cross freely into both camps. “I like the colla­borative aspect of advertising, whereas the fine- art work I’ve been doing is landscape oriented, working by myself,” he says, “As long as I’m able to express myself visually, that’s what it’s all about.”

Self-expression first drew Seckler to the camera at age 21, redirecting his career arc while he was attending Syracuse University. “I studied psychology and economics, but I got interested in photography during the summer between my sophomore and junior years,” he recalls. “It went very quickly, from the time I first started taking pictures with a purpose to when I changed my career course. I took an introductory black-and-white darkroom class and I said, ‘That’s it! I love this. I’m going to be a photographer.’”

Neophytism doesn’t seem to daunt him. “I didn’t have much formal education in photography,” he notes, though he took a couple of photojournalism courses at Syracuse’s Newhouse School. He moved to New York “on a whim” in 2003. “But I had wanted to live there since I was a kid,” he adds.

“I grew up in a rural suburb [Lincoln, Massachusetts, near Boston], an insulated town, the opposite of the big city. I was always keen to get in that urban environment.”

Yet most of his landscapes depict pristine scenes far from city lights. “I kind of become visually numb to my surroundings [in New York],” he says. “When I’m in a new place, everything I see is registering, lights are going off—even if I’m just looking at a parking lot. Seeing something for the first time is stimulating. And in New York, everything is kind of cluttered—there’s not a lot of open space and clean lines. That’s something I’m drawn to visually: sharp lines, space, a kind of simple, minimalist approach.”

For a story he posted on his own webzine project, F-Stop, Seckler had the good fortune to interview one of his heroes, photographer Albert Watson. Reminded that Watson is a fellow art-and-commerce genre-bender—not unlike such forebears as Irving Penn and Richard Avedon—Seckler laughs. “If my name is ever put in the same sentence as one of those folks,” he says, “I would die a very happy man.”

Close Up: Zack Seckler

Lives In: New York, NY
Studied At: Syracuse University (Psychology and Economics)
Clients Include: BBDO New York, Chronicle Books, Fallon, Gap, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, New York, Publicis Kaplan Thaler, Samsung, Starbucks, Vicks
In the Bag: For studio work: Canon EOS 5D Mark III and “a range of L quality zoom lenses,” Seckler says. “The new Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM is my workhorse. I use Profoto lighting: different packs and modifiers, depending on the shoot.” In the field: “I’m a fan of the Profoto Acute B2 600Ws packs for their portability. I carry Photoflex aluminum Litepanels to either bounce, diffuse, or block light.”

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In and around the U.S. city that perhaps best symbolizes the burst of the housing bubble in the aughts—Nevada was the fastest-growing state in the nation prior to the 2008 crash—we now see half-finished neighborhoods, empty cul-de-sacs, oversize castle homes and lush golf courses surrounded by barren desert, all evidence of real estate speculation run amuck. Yet as with his other aerial surveys in the West, Light makes it look weirdly beautiful.

While her imagery concentrates on young female subjects on the cusp of maturity, dogs and ponies also play prominent roles and lend a bit of levity to the intense mood. With a mix of honest, straightforward portraiture and otherworldly scenes, van Meene imbues real life with a haunting yet alluring strangeness.

This retrospective spotlights his gift for quiet candid moments in housing projects and playgrounds, ghettos and boardwalks, as well as more strident photojournalism depicting civil-rights demonstrations and uprisings in Haiti and Central America. It’s a long-overdue salute to a social and visual trailblazer.

Shot in large format from the vantage-point of the stage, each peopleless image conveys the architectural majesty of its hall as the performers see it — a fitting tribute from a photographer who’s the grandson of an opera singer and the son of two architects. Ranging from the 18th-century ornateness of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium, to the sleek modernity of Den Norske Opera og Ballett in Oslo, Norway, these opulent creations reflect the universal splendor of high society.

Using traditional black-and-white, medium-format darkroom techniques, she’s turned day-to-day scenery and found artifacts into a compelling dream world with disconcerting undertones, not unlike the ethereal work of the late Francesca Woodman. But Vrba is still with us, emerging in the art-book world with this debut monograph.

Nor with captions or descriptions. The dramatic pictures are left to speak for themselves — though the book comes with a booklet of text by Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou, whose poetic passages allude to the images in order (tricky to match up with no page numbers). But never mind. Just take in the powerful photos: Grand landscapes, gritty industrial sites, wild creatures, impoverished villagers and elaborate tribal rituals all co-mingle to reflect the complexity of the Republic of Congo (not the neighboring DRC). Mainly black-and-white with a smattering of color, this imagery conveys the stunning beauty and harsh reality of its geographic backdrop.

Part one presents the imagery of Brazilian native Ferrez, who documented Rio in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the vibrant city emerged within its naturally splendid environs. Part two gathers recent Polidori photographs showing the continuing majesty as well as the congestion and poverty of modern Rio, from its grand vistas to its dense favelas. What’s most striking are the similarities: Both bodies of work feature large-format panoramas (with zig-zag image combos; no photo-stitching here) and breathtaking views of burgeoning urbanity in a glorious landscape.

Wang combines his own black-and-white portraits with interviews of photographic peers, including Sally Mann, Jeff Jacobson, Susan Meiseles, and Elliott Erwitt—as well as technical pioneers such as Thomas Knoll, co-inventor of Photoshop—about the pros and cons of each side in the darkroom-vs.-digital divide. While most concur that the digital side has an insurmountable advantage, this is a poignant reminder that the debate lives on.

But here he’s put together a remarkably original set of impressions of the coffee-farming trails in far-flung lands—Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Ethiopia, Peru—depicting the families, craftsmen, and side characters in the bean culture behind the brew. All are illuminated by McCurry’s trademark brand of portraiture: warm, enigmatic, well composed, and almost ready-made for a yellow-bordered cover.

With bound book in hand, I stand by the blurb:

Cynthia Carris Alonso depicts Cuba with an insider’s access and a visitor’s sense of wonder. In an era when the island was cut off from the West, she captured rare views of authentic Cuban culture: innovative artisans and vibrant musicians, vintage cars and buildings in faded glory, colorful characters whose relative isolation hasn’t dampened their spirits. It’s an insightful survey of a land with a rich but enigmatic past and a promising future.

Photobooks on young womanhood, the chaotic landscape of Las Vegas, coffee-farming in South America, and more in American Photo’s roundup of the season’s best. Revisit our picks for last season’s standouts here.

[See also: The 10 Best New Photography Exhibits of Summer 2015]

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With some 100 exhibitions in venues throughout Madrid, this year’s PHotoEspaña festival is once again an eclectic but unified collection of visual fare. While the overall scope is defined by geography—most shows feature photographers from Latin America—the prominent theme is femininity: both as a mode of view and as an object of desire. Several exhibitions feature the work of assertive female artists; one key show focuses on beautiful women through the lens of an admiring male. As one of the journalists jokingly commented during press week: “We have the strong women and the womanizer.”

The latter jab ugly refers to Alberto Korda—better known just as Korda—one of the most renowned photographers ever to come out of Cuba. Korda’s portrait of Che Guevara, which became a revolutionary icon, is one of the most widely known photographs in history. But in pre-revolutionary Cuba, Korda was a highly successful fashion photographer and something of a playboy: He confessed that he took up the genre so he could meet beautiful women. The show at Madrid’s Museo Cerralbo through Sept. 6, 2015—”Korda: Feminine Portraiture“—shows Korda’s progression from intimate studies of his first wife to semi-erotic outdoor imagery to darker portraits blending themes of beauty and death.

As an artist Korda aspired to be the “Avedon of Cuba,” and in 1959, during a trip to New York City, he was introduced to Richard Avedon by none other than Fidel Castro. But soon after, Castro enlisted Korda to shoot revolutionary propaganda imagery almost exclusively. Still, even amidst rebellious crowds at populist demonstrations, Korda spotted and snapped beautiful women, as evidenced by several arresting images in the exhibition.

In contrast to Korda’s work are shows featuring women artists in which the term “sex” more accurately connotes “gender.” Most striking among these is a set of large-scale self-portraits and family studies by Mexican artist Ana Casas Broda at Circulo Bellas Artes through Aug. 30, 2015. Broda (who also co-curated an ambitious group show at PHE) calls her series Kinderwunsch, a German word translating to a desire to have children. The imagery bravely delineates the joys and woes of motherhood, from sonograms and childbirth to playful adventures with two sons, while the accompanying text reveals a tale of pain and separation stemming from the broken marriage of the artist’s parents; in her new family, she seeks to heal the old wounds. With an intro by British curator Susan Bright—who included Broda in her recent group show Home Truths—this is a remarkably touching and honest exhibition.

In the same hall (on a different floor) is the most comprehensive show to date on Mexican photographer Lola Álvarez Bravo, who forged her own career after separating from her famed husband Manuel Álvarez Bravo in 1934. Lola went on to become one of the key artistic figures in post-revolutionary Mexico, forming a mutual-admiration club with artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; the show traces her pioneering work in portraiture, photomontage, and humanistic reportage of, as she put it, “a Mexico that once existed.”

One of Bravo’s photographic peers, Tina Modotti, gets the star treatment at a Madrid exhibition in the basement of the luxury store Loewe’s through Aug. 30, 2015. Though born in Italy, Modotti created her most enduring work in Mexico after learning the photographic craft from her mentor and lover, Edward Weston. Modotti’s empathetic portraits of common people presage her own revolutionary political passions—which led to legal complications that ended her photo career. But what a brief, shining career it was! Evidenced in this stunning collection of 50 vintage prints.

One of the photographic giants most widely associated with Latin America is Paul Strand, whose work in Mexico is a slim but vital part of his oeuvre. A vast retrospective of Strand’s work is showing in Madrid through Aug. 23, 2015, at Fundación Mapfre. For sponsorship reasons, this show is not associated with PHotoEspaña, but it’s well worth checking out—a fabulous overview of Strand’s career in both photography and filmmaking, and a fascinating counterpoint to all the Latin American work on view in Madrid this summer.

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