Critically praised for his finely modeled and classically composed photographs, Robert Mapplethorpe remains intensely controversial and enormously popular. This book brings together almost three hundred images from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation's archive and private collections, to provide a critical view of Mapplethorpe's formative years as an artist. These works reveal the themes that would inspire Mapplethorpe throughout his career. Included is a selection of his color Polaroids and objects incorporating his early instant photography. Some images convey a disarming tenderness and vulnerability, others a toughness and immediacy that would give way in later years to more classical form. The author traces the development of Mapplethorpe's use of instant photography during a period of five years, from 1970 to 1975, when the artist worked mainly in this medium. The images include self-portraits, figure studies, still lifes, portraits of lovers and friends such as Patti Smith, Sam Wagstaff and Marianne Faithful and observations of everyday objects. Marked by a spontaneity and creative curiosity, these fragile images offer an illuminating contrast to the glossy perfection of the work for which Mapplethorpe is best known, allowing us a more personal glimpse of his artistry.

The rise of digital photography is perhaps the most manifest legacy of the digital revolution in art. Through the use of sophisticated software and scanners, artists are able to enhance photographs, saturate them with colour, and create mesmerizing effects. Focusing exclusively on digital photography and its enormous varieties of technique and style being practiced today, Sylvia Wolf explores a genre that challenges our notions of the art and the role of the artist. This lavishly illustrated book takes readers from the earliest experiments in digital photography to the latest innovations. Wolf candidly discusses issues of authenticity and narrative and points to technological trends of the future. A global panoply of artists, including Andreas Gursky, Chris Jordan, Loretta Lux, and Lucas Samaras, demonstrates just how diverse and complex the field has become. Today as digital photography is being used by artists to portray unbridled consumption and warn of ecological disaster; as artists employ Photoshop, Google and their own programming skills to create software-cum-art objects; and as seasoned photographers turn from film to their laptops, this volume offers a riveting snapshot of a medium that is changing the way we look at pictures.

«Carnival Strippers» is a photographic documentary of the carnival strip shows that flourished in county fairs in small-town New England through the late 1970s. The book consists of photographs of the strippers, the managers, callers, and barkers who run the shows, and their customers, or «marks».»