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Before there was Marilyn, there was Norma Jeane. The photos and secret memoirs of Marilyn Monroe's first photographer and lifelong friend

Fashion photographer Andre de Dienes’s life was changed forever one day in 1945 when he met a lovely young aspiring model named Norma Jeane Dougherty. He instantly fell in love with her innocence and charm and the two were briefly engaged. They took many adventurous road trips together in those early years, de Dienes shooting Norma Jeane in every possible natural setting in his original, inspired style. He soon built up a huge portfolio of stunning photographs of the smiling brunette which helped to launch her model career and, a few years later, a film career that was to make her a legend.

His entire relationship with the star, including many private moments, shared only between the two, is detailed in de Dienes’s secret memoirs, which were discovered when Monroe fans ravaged his home after his death in 1988.

The memoirs tell a beautiful story of love and friendship from the point of view of someone who knew Marilyn intimately; describing the transformation from Norma Jeane to Marilyn Monroe — the evolution of a sensitive, ambitious girl into a deeply troubled megastar — from an inside perspective, they shed light on a little-known side of Marilyn. From their trip to see Norma Jeane’s mother in a mental hospital to Marilyn’s visit to his home a few days before her death, de Dienes recounts all of the emotional moments they shared. The combination of de Dienes’s memoirs and an extensive selection of his Monroe photographs (which numbered in the thousands) makes for an unprecedented, personal exploration into the psychology, history, and iconography of the world’s favourite movie star.

With his very personal images, Hungarian photographer André Kertész (1894–1985) skillfully succeeded in capturing the fleeting, emotional moments in his environment. His works had a pronounced influence on artistic photography in the mid-twentieth century and on artists such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and Brassaï. Three important periods mark his oeuvre: Budapest, 1914-25; Paris, 1925-36; and New York, 1936-85. While this first retrospective deals with all phases of Kertész’s career, it sheds particular light on his work for magazines, his Distortions - photographs of nude models taken with mirrors from unusual perspectives - and the Polaroids, a series shot from the window of his home that features fascinating images of personal objects against the skyline of New York.

Now regarded as classics in their own right, the photographs of Andreas Feininger are treasured by aficionados of photography and laymen alike. This book presents a diverse selection of his most beautiful works.

The basic principles underlying the photographic art of Andreas Feininger, born in 1906 in Paris, the eldest son of painter Lyonel Feininger, are clarity, simplicity, and organization. Upon completion of training as a cabinet-maker at the Bauhaus in Weimar in the early twenties, he went on to study architecture at the Bauhaus in the state schools of architecture in Weimar and Zerbst. After working as an architectural photographer in Stockholm, he emigrated to New York following the outbreak of World War II. Feininger was hired as a photo-editor by Life magazine. In his own work, he captured images of urban canyons, skyscrapers, bridges, and elevated railways in concentrated, atmospheric photographs that are regarded as classical works today. He applied the same enthusiasm to nature studies. His detail images of insects, flowers, shells, wood, and stones imbue these forms with a sculptural character. The book presents the work of this prominent photographer, who died in 1999.

»Die Monographie gibt mit einer Vielzahl großformatiger Duplexbildern einen Überblick über das grandiose Werk des 1999 verstorbenen Photographen.« DGPh intern

»Eine gelungene Retrospektive auf Feiningers Lebenswerk.« PHOTOGRAPHIE

Die mittlerweile zu Klassikern gewordenen Aufnahmen von Andreas Feininger begeistern sowohl den Fotokenner als auch ein breites Publikum. Eine abwechslungsreiche Auswahl seiner schönsten Arbeiten präsentiert dieser Band.

Die Grundprinzipien der fotografischen Arbeit von Andreas Feininger, 1906 als ältester Sohn des Malers Lyonel Feininger in Paris geboren, sind Klarheit, Einfachheit und Organisation. Am Bauhaus in Weimar zu Beginn der zwanziger Jahre zum Kunsttischler ausgebildet, studierte er anschließend an den staatlichen Bauschulen in Weimar und Zerbst Architektur. Zunächst Architekturfotograf in Stockholm, emigrierte er mit Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkrieges nach New York. Als Bildredakteur beim Life-Magazin angestellt, hielt er immer wieder Straßenschluchten, Wolkenkratzer, Brücken und Hochbahnen in atmosphärisch dichten, mittlerweile zu Klassikern gewordenen Aufnahmen fest. Mit derselben Begeisterung widmete er sich auch Naturstudien. Seine Detailaufnahmen von Insekten, Blumen, Muscheln, Holz und Steinen verleihen deren Formen einen skulpturalen Charakter.
Die Monografie gibt mit einer Vielzahl hervorragender Duplexbilder einen Überblick über das grandiose Werk des 1999 verstorbenen Fotografen.

Andreas Gursky (*1955 in Leipzig) is one of the most important artists in the world to use large-format photographs as a means of expression. The Düsseldorf-based photographer is especially interested in congregations of people and the sites of their gatherings, ranging from the Tokyo Stock Exchange to mass raves. The realistic appearance of Andreas Gursky’s final images - the elements of which are adeptly reduced and digitally restructured - also allow for conceptual interpretation; they are always based on the interplay between accurate reproduction and abstraction.

This opulent publication focuses on the artist’s most recent creations, which is on display at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Two new groups of works in particular, reflecting on Formula One races and the famous Arirang Festival, a meticulously choreographed mass spectacle in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, will be shown alongside the landscapes.

This volume concentrates on the classic compositions one associates with photographer Andreas Gursky: views captured at a great distance, from a slightly elevated perspective, the camera positioned as centrally as possible in front of the motif à la Bernd and Hilla Becher. It features all of the famous Gursky icons - such as the 99-cent store, the racetrack at Bahrain, the Tokyo and Chicago stock exchanges, the miners’ locker room, and the racetrack pit stops - as well as his most recent photos, for instance his Ocean series (2010) and pictures of the final parade of a show by fashion designers Viktor & Rolf (2011). These photographs ideally illustrate the artist’s frequently quoted remark that he wants to show us our world from the perspective of an extraterrestrial, an alien. And thus Andreas Gursky’s works reveal the outrageous and the exorbitant as well as the beautiful and sublime, always starting from the relationship between the human being and space.

Andreas Gursky (*1955 in Leipzig ) has ranked for many years among the world’s leading photographic artists. Now, for the first time ever, an attempt is being made to unfurl the artist’s oeuvre in all its encyclopedic glory. Gursky has selected over 150 images from his pool of photographs, reaching back in time to his student days at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen, followed by the period in which he was in the class taught by Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Beginning with the earliest exposures, such as the Desk Attendants and other unpublished photographs, the publication describes an enormous trajectory that takes us to his most recent works, which were conceived especially for this monograph. Every single exposure in Gursky’s encyclopedic morphology is a vital piece in the puzzle, which over some twenty-eight years has opened out into a sweeping view of the world.

Polaroids haben etwas ähnlich Magisches wie alte, verblichene Familienphotos oder Bilder, die nur vage in unserer Erinnerung existieren. Wie aus dem Nichts auftauchend, halten sie doch für den Bruchteil eines Blicks die Zeit an und trotzen einer Vergänglichkeit, der sie selbst früher oder später erliegen werden. Andrej Tarkovskij (1932-1986), einer der charismatischsten Filmemacher des ausgehenden 20. Jahrhunderts, liebte dieses magische Spielzeug, das er sich in den späten 70er Jahren zugelegt hatte, und nutzte es weniger zur Vorbereitung seiner Filme als privat, um seine häusliche Umgebung, Stimmungen, Situationen zu fixieren und dem eigenen Gedächtnis einzuspeichern. Nach Stalker, seinem verstörenden Hauptwerk, das 1979 unter enormen Schwierigkeiten fertig geworden war, beschloß er, die Sowjetunion zu verlassen und zunächst nach Italien ins Exil zu gehen. Mit der Polaroidkamera nahm er, so scheint es, Abschied von seiner vertrauten russischen Welt - und eignete sich, wieder in sehr persönlichen, poetisch-flüchtigen Bildern, die neue Umgebung an, Wohnorte und Landschaften vor allem in der Toskana, wo 1983 sein vorletzter Film entstehen sollte: Nostalghia. Wir freuen uns, dieses visuelle und literarische Kleinod jetzt wieder im Programm zu haben.

Andrey Tarkovsky was the most important Russian filmmaker of the post-war era, and one of the world’s most renowned cinematic geniuses.

Tarkovsky’s films are characterized by metaphysical themes, extended takes, an absence of conventional dramatic structure and plot, and a dream-like, visionary style of cinematography. They achieve a spiritual intensity and transcendent beauty that many consider to be without parallel.

He directed the first five of his seven films – Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror and Stalker – in the Soviet Union, but in 1982 defected to Italy, where he made Nostalgia. His final film, The Sacrifice, was produced in Sweden in 1985.

This book presents extended sequences of stills from each of the films alongside synopses and cast and crew listings. It includes reflections on Tarkovsky’s work from fellow artists and writers including Jean-Paul Sartre and Ingmar Bergman, for whom Tarkovsky was ‘the greatest, the one who invented a new language.’

Extracts from Tarkovsky’s own writings and diaries offer a wealth of insights into his poetic and philosophical views on cinematography, which he described as ‘sculpting in time’. The book also reproduces many personal Polaroid photographs that confirm the extraordinary poetic vision of a great artist who died aged only 54, but who remains a potent influence on artists and filmmakers today.

Andres Serrano is one of America's most mythologized contemporary artists. To many, he's the man responsible for Piss Christ and a national scandal over government funding of controversial art. For those who look beyond the headlines, he's a highly accomplished and ever-evolving photographic artist showing us the ordinary in extraordinary ways. With his post-Piss Christ series, Nomads, he made studio portraits of New York's ethnic homeless and juxtaposed them with members of the Ku Klux Klan. In the Morgue series he dissected violent death and found the human thread on the coroner's slab, while A History of Sex explored the human mating urge in its infinite variety.

Andres Serrano considers America his greatest achievement. Three years of work produced over one hundred 50-by-60-inch photographic portraits representing the cultural diversity of this immigrant country, as filtered through the critical lens of Serrano. There are celebrities: Arthur Miller, Snoop Dogg, Anna Nicole Smith, B.B. King, Vanessa del Rio; and ordinary citizens: a pimp, a boy scout, a doctor, a Russian Orthodox Bishop. America is intimate, honest, and demanding of response, like all Serrano's work. The second half of this big volume, Other Work, is a retrospective of Serrano's previous photographic series. Together these two impressive halves create the whole of Andres Serrano's artistic oeuvre.

In 1989 US Senator Jesse Helms accused Andres Serrano of taunting the American people. America and Other Work is the perfect rebuttal.

Andy Goldsworthy is one of the most prominent artists in the world today. Although commissions take him all over the world, the landscape of Northern England and his native Scotland remains at the heart of his work. Goldsworthy’s best-selling books for Abrams include A Collaboration with Nature, Time, Stone, and Passage.

Since 1995, Andy Goldsworthy has created a series of artworks in Northwest England in sheepfolds: stone enclosures found across the countryside that have been used for assembling, sheltering, and washing sheep for hundreds of years. After working on and off for more than a decade, he completed thirty-five folds, often rebuilding them in the process; many of them can now once again serve their intended purpose. These form the core of Enclosure: they reflect Goldsworthy’s lifelong interest in the land, its history, and the people who work on it. They are accompanied by a rich collection of ephemeral work related in various ways to sheep, including a spectacular series of large sheep paintings—paintings made by the hoof-prints of sheep.

Enclosure, which joins the sublime tradition of the art and literature of the landscape of the British Isles, is an exciting addition to the series of eight bestselling books that Goldsworthy has already produced for Abrams.

This unique collection of more than 160 photos contains special images of an erotic, magical world, a world of imagination, probably already familiar to us from our secret fantasies. Allow this inspiring and masterful collection of photographs to take you on a journey to the heart of eroticism, where the only limits are your imagination. Let yourself be seduced by this masterful collection of images, which every aficionado of fantasy, fetish and erotic photography will find much to please.

Cecil Beaton called him the best photographer in Britain; Lord Snowdon declared him a genius. It is no exaggeration to say that Angus McBean revolutionized portraiture in the 1930s, or that he immortalized the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, and Elizabeth Taylor. Blending wit, drama, and fantasy with the consummate skill of a master photographer, McBean was the most prominent theater photographer of his generation and, along with Beaton, the last of the British avant-garde studio photographers.

For the first time since his death in 1990, McBean's photographs of stars such as Vivien Leigh, Peggy Ashcroft, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Audrey Hepburn and his rarely seen color prints from the 1960s of the Beatles, Maria Callas, and Shirley Bassey are brought together in this fascinating book. Terence Pepper's intriguing account of McBean's life and work includes extracts from the photographer's unpublished autobiography.

From African wild dogs and Alaskan brown bears to Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs - they all congregate in ten chapters with titles including "It's me", "On the move" or "Get lost!". With the wonderful photos by Heidi and Hans-Jurgen Koch we immerse ourselves in the rhythm and lives of animals, in which the exotic sometimes seems closer than the familiar. Accompanied by lively text, this book is not only entertaining, but educational for readers of all ages.

Annie’s Big Book. 40 years of era-defining photography, now in an accessible edition

When Benedikt Taschen asked the most important portrait photographer working today, Annie Leibovitz, to collect her pictures in a SUMO-sized book, she was intrigued by the challenge. The project took several years to develop and when it was finally published in 2014, it weighed in at 26 kg (57 pounds).

This incredible collection is now available in an accessible, XXL book format.

Leibovitz drew on more than 40 years of work, starting with the photojournalism she did for Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s through the conceptual portraits she made for Vanity Fair and Vogue. She selected iconic images—such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono entwined in a last embrace — as well as portraits that had rarely, if ever, been seen before.

The Annie Leibovitz SUMO covered political and cultural history, from Queen Elizabeth II and Richard Nixon to Laurie Anderson and Lady Gaga.

“What I had thought of initially as a simple process of imagining what looked good big, what photographs would work in a large format, became something else,” Leibovitz says. “The book is very personal, but the narrative is told through popular culture. It’s not arranged chronologically and it’s not a retrospective. It’s more like a roller coaster.”

Fans of Leibovitz and her many celebrated subjects can now enjoy that same roller coaster ride for themselves with this unlimited edition.

The photographer and author:

Annie Leibovitz is one of the most influential photographers of our time. She began working as a photojournalist for Rolling Stone in 1970 while she was still a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. By 1983, when she left Rolling Stone for the revived Vanity Fair, she was already closely identified with the conceptual, theatrical style that is her hallmark. In subsequent decades, at Vanity Fair and Vogue and in independent projects, she has worked across many photographic genres and developed a large body of work — portraits of actors, directors, writers, musicians, athletes, and political and business figures, as well as fashion photographs — that expanded her collective portrait of contemporary life. She has published several books and has exhibited widely. She is a Commandeur in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and has been designated a Living Legend by the U.S. Library of Congress.

The authors:

Steve Martin is an award-winning comedian, actor, writer, producer, and musician.

Graydon Carter was the editor of Vanity Fair from 1992 to 2017.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. Prior to this, he was the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show “World Soup” (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 300 shows.

Paul Roth is the director of the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto.