This volume presents award-winning Pennsylvania-based photographer Lydia Panas’ (born 1958) much-praised series of mesmerizing color portraits of reclining women and girls. In an interesting reversal of roles, the artist's and models' gazes are intertwined, incorporating the viewer as participant in an often uncomfortable connection. Critics and curators have praised the work for Panas’ artistic and technical mastery, and all have noted and examined the powerfully affecting gaze of her subjects. Panas notes: While my subjects do in actuality turn their gaze towards me, it’s as if at times I turn the camera onto myself, both in the present and back . . . .go to book page >>

A new book by award-winning Minneapolis-based photographer R.J. Kern (born 1978), The Unchosen Ones features portraits of future farmers in America’s heartland. Kern’s subjects are Minnesota 4-H members posing with their farm animals. Each one spent a year raising an animal, which they then entered into a 4-H competition. Kern first photographed them in 2016, and none of the children who sat for him succeeded in winning an award, despite the obvious care they had given to their animals. The formal qualities of Kern’s lighting and setting endow these young people with a gravitas beyond their years, revealing self-directed dedication . . . .go to book page >>

In 2017, award-winning Boston- and San Francisco–based photographer Nancy Farese visited Bangladesh to photograph the Rohingya refugee crisis. While she saw firsthand the most violent tendencies of humankind, she also bore witness to endless displays of perseverance from the youngest members of these communities. On the edge of every frame she saw children at play, adapting to their circumstances to socialize and heal with one another.
This photobook documents children’s play across 14 countries, including Haiti, Cuba, Burkina Faso, Jordan and the US, in full-color photographs. Farese invites us to consider how this universal activity is threatened by the unrelenting forces . . . .go to book page >>

In 1916, Inez Milholland Boissevain (1886–1916) embarked on a grueling campaign across the Western US on behalf of the National Women’s Party appealing for women’s suffrage ahead of the 1916 presidential election. Standing Together, by artist Jeanine Michna-Bales (born 1971), retraces Milholland’s journey. The 30-year-old suffragist delivered some 50 speeches to standing-room-only crowds in eight states in 21 days: Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada and California. She battled chronic illness and lack of sleep during her travels and died a month after her last speech in Los Angeles, where her final public words were, Mr. President, how long . . . .go to book page >>

American photographer Karen Halverson (born 1949) first fell in love with Mulholland Drive while on the very opposite coast from the iconic California roadway—during a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There, Halverson encountered David Hockney’s 20-foot painting Mullholland Drive: The Road to the Studio. A few years later, she moved to Los Angeles and found herself frequently driving along the 52-mile street that Hockney depicted as a colorful path to a fantastical world. Soon Halverson developed her own dynamic relationship with Mulholland Drive, likening the route along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains to watching a movie . . . .go to book page >>

Trauma in all its forms—internal and external, individual and collective—has been an enduring theme in 20th- and 21st-century art. The proliferation of violent imagery, particularly since the expansion of mass media during and after World War II, has led to artworks that marshal consciousness of traumatic events and their cultural processing. These developments in art run parallel with the emergence of trauma studies, which confront the repercussions of traumatic events: the Holocaust, global conflict, sexual violence, systemic racism and gender discrimination. Psychic Wounds brings together artists from the mid-20th century to the present who have addressed trauma in their work. . . . .go to book page >>