Mapplethorpe. Flowers

Retro Cameras is a stylish, design-led guide to classic and retro cameras aimed at those who want to discover the world of analogue photography. It includes more than 100 camera models, from the easily affordable to the highly collectible, in 13 formats: 35 mm SLRs; 35 mm Rangefinders; 35 mm Viewfinder Cameras; Roll Film SLRs; Sheet and Roll Film Folding Cameras; Twin Lens Reflexes; Instamatics; Stereo Cameras; Panoramic and Wide-angle Cameras; Miniature Cameras and Instant Cameras. Supplementing an already comprehensive resource are quick reference shooting guides for each format, as well as a section on retro camera accessories. With over 400 specially commissioned photographs, practical advice on how to use and get the most out of each camera, buyers’ tips and a dedicated glossary, Retro Cameras is a perfect reference for young photographers who want to get creative with analogue photography, while also offering authoritative guidance for more experienced collectors and enthusiasts.

On 11 September 2001, the photographer Abbas watched the Twin Towers fall in New York – live on Siberian TV, thirteen time zones away. It spurred him to begin a journey through the Islamic world that would last seven years. The photographs published here are the final result of that project. Born in Iran, Abbas casts a sharp eye over a world seen by very few from the West until now. Seeking out people and places that have been overlooked by others, he reveals far more – and in greater depth – than photojournalists who focus on flashpoints or who race to break the latest news. Abbas is acclaimed for his special ability to freeze a moment in a particular social or political conflict, to frame actions or gestures that instantly become emblematic: what he calls ‘the suspended moment’. Accompanied by Abbas’s own candid personal travel diary, these photographs convey his robust enquiring spirit. ‘I wanted to see how the umma [world community of Muslims] reacted to the jihadists in their midst,’ Abbas says. ‘How does Islam, a religion, sustain a political ideology – Islamism?’ Recording a route through sixteen countries – including Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Palestine, Turkey, Indonesia, Thailand, Kenya and Zanzibar – Abbas’s pictures swell with the undercurrents of global disturbance, uncertainty and threat. Yet there are gleams of optimism, too – a wedding, an impromptu ball game, children playing – that remind us of Abbas’s gift as a humane interpreter of our existence. Abbas is widely recognized as one of the most exceptional photographers of our time. These images represent some of the most memorable and compelling work he has produced.

From a delivery boy to one of the most important industrialists in American history, George Eastman’s career developed in a particularly American way. The founder of Kodak died in 1932, and left his house to the University of Rochester. Since 1949 the site has operated as an international museum of photography and film, and today holds the largest collection of its kind in the world. The continually expanding photography collection contains over 400,000 images and negatives - among them the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams and others - as well as 23,000 cinema films, five million film stills, one of the most important silent film collections, technical equipment and a library with 40,000 books on photography and film. The George Eastman House is a pilgrimage site and a place of worship for researchers, photographers and collectors from all over the world. This volume shows in chronological order the most impressive images and the most important developments in the art of light that is photography. It provides in its huge collection and themes a unique survey of the medium from its origins until now.

Newly revised histories of photography as recorded via the photobook have added enormously to our understanding of the medium’s culture, particularly in places that are often marginalized, such as Latin America and Africa. However, until now, only a handful of Chinese books have made it onto historians’ short lists. Yet China has a fascinating history of photobook publishing, and The Chinese Photobook reveals for the first time the richness and diversity of this heritage. This now available in a smaller size, more accessibly priced hardcover edition, volume is based on a collection compiled by Martin Parr and Beijing- and London-based Dutch photographer team WassinkLundgren. And while the collection was inspired initially by Parr’s interest in propaganda books and in finding key works of socialist realist photography from the early days of the Communist Party and the Cultural Revolution era, the selection of books includes key volumes published as early as 1900, as well as contemporary volumes by emerging Chinese photographers.

In the history of photography, the lives of the major practitioners are as captivating and richly layered as the images they have left behind, many of which have become part of the cultural landscape. Yet the stories to be found behind the lens - of economic hardship, of personal tragedy, of fame won and lost - are all too often overlooked. In Lives of the Great Photographers, thirty-eight of the most important and influential figures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Ansel Adams to Madame Yevonde, are profiled in bold and compelling detail. By examining the lives and backgrounds of these often complex personalities, as well as the social and political crucibles in which their world views were forged, author Juliet Hacking also casts new light on their work. Illustrated with a portrait or self-portrait of each photographer and notable examples of their oeuvre, this lively and original publication not only provides a greater, more nuanced understanding of the featured image-makers, but also guides the reader through the key innovations, movements and developments in the story of photography itself.