In the Vale of Cashmeremarks the culmination of acclaimed photographer Thomas Roma'sfour-year odyssey into a densely wooded, secluded corner of Brooklyn's Prospect Park, where gay cruising dominates the footpaths and trails. The Vale ofCashmere, a name that dates back to the 1890s, has long been a meeting place for gay men. and currently, mostly Black men. However, encounters occur between men of all walks of life, as well as gender and sexual identities. With his large, tripod-mounted, hand-made camera, Roma stepped into the center of this community, an obvious but mostly ignored presence. Understandably, many of the menRoma approached to photograph in a formal portrait were not interested, butsurprisingly, many were. After they agreed to be photographed, Roma would offer themen time and the opportunity to show him something of themselves they might nothave the chance to otherwise. Although originally conceived solely as a portrait project, the more time Romaspent in the Vale of Cashmere, the more the physical beauty of the Vale becameinseparable from the portraits, and many landscape photographs were made to beincluded in the book. In addition to the landscapes, Roma utilized a custom modified miniaturecamera to provide sequential pictures depicting the steady march of themostly solitary men as they cruised the paths and roadways of the Vale. These candidphotographs, which run along the bottom of the pages of landscape photographs, arereproduced in small scale so as to make it impossible to identify any individual. Roma's motivation for doing the project camefrom his wish to honor the memory of a dear friend who died of AIDS in 1991, andwho introduced him to the Vale of Cashmere.

Dads is a journey into gay fatherhood in the United States. More than 40 families are portrayed by the Belgian photographer Bart Heynen. A very diverse group of dads who have one thing in common; they are gay and they have children. Ever since 2015, when same-sex marriage became legal in all states, we witness a baby boom in the gay community. From New York City to Utah all these fathers are at the very beginning of a new era for gay men. Dads sheds a light on the daily lives of these families.

Main description: For 1,400 years, two colossal figures of the Buddha overlooked the fertile Bamiyan Valley on the Silk Road in Afghanistan. Witness to a melting pot of passing monks, merchants, and armies, the Buddhas embodied the intersection of East and West, and their destruction by the Taliban in 2001 provoked international outrage. Llewelyn Morgan excavates the layers of meaning these vanished wonders hold for a fractured Afghanistan. Carved in the sixth and seventh centuries, the Buddhas represented a confluence of religious and artistic traditions from India, China, Central Asia, and Iran, and even an echo of Greek influence brought by Alexander the Great's armies. By the time Genghis Khan destroyed the town of Bamiyan six centuries later, Islam had replaced Buddhism as the local religion, and the Buddhas were celebrated as wonders of the Islamic world. Not until the nineteenth century did these figures come to the attention of Westerners. That is also the historical moment when the ground was laid for many of Afghanistan's current problems, including the rise of the Taliban and the oppression of the Hazara people of Bamiyan. In a strange twist, the Hazaras-descendants of the conquering Mongol hordes who stormed Bamiyan in the thirteenth century-had come to venerate the Buddhas that once dominated their valley as symbols of their very different religious identity. Incorporating the voices of the holy men, adventurers, and hostages throughout history who set eyes on the Bamiyan Buddhas, Morgan tells the history of this region of paradox and heartache.

In the basement of an apartment building in Manhattan,Scott Zieher discovered a pile of photographs among theeffects of a recently deceased tenant. These photographs,presented for the first time in Band of Bikers, offer anintimate portrait of a group of gay bikers in the city and thewoods, and a touching snapshot of an entire generation atits carefree zenith. Newly aware of muscle and biker magazines and their heavy-handederoticism, photographer and photographed brimwith a subtly vibrant, chromatic pride. The photographs asa whole bring into focus a brief, specific period of relativeinnocence, when middle-of-the-road Americans more oftenthan not failed to perceive the homoerotic undertones oftheir most heterosexual of institutions. With conceptual lightcast by issues ranging from anonymity in homosexuality andunderground motorcycle chic, to vernacular photography'spop-culture ramifications, a warm and generous spiritof camaraderie pervades this subterranean survey. Likea real-world set forScorpio Rising casually captured byan unpretentious extra, presented as Band of Bikers andaccompanied by an essay by Zieher, this found cache ofold-school, leather party snapshots attains archeologicalsignificance.

"Why has the valley of Kashmir, famed for its beauty and tranquillity, become a major flashpoint, threatening the stability of a region of great strategic importance and challenging the integrity of the Indian state? This book examines the Kashmir conflict in its historical context, from the period when the valley was an independent kingdom right up to the struggles of the present day. Located on the borders of China, Central Asia and the Sub-Continent, the insurgency in the valley has also created serious tensions between India and Pakistan. Drawing upon research in India and Pakistan, as well as historical sources, this book traces the origins of the state in the 19th century and the controversial "sale" by the British of the predominantly Muslim valley to a Hindu Maharaja in 1846. Through an exploration of the implications for Kashmir of independence in 1947, it gives a critical account of why, for Kashmir, self-determination may seem a more attractive option than affiliation to a larger multi-racial whole."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

“A serious chronicle of war and a sympathetic—even moving—portrayal of the soldier’s hopeless stoicism. " — New York Times First published to little notice in 1977, Hitler Moves East is now widely regarded as a groundbreaking classic of modern photography. In this elegant, large-format limited edition, David Levinthal and Garry Trudeau’s seminal book is finally being presented at a scale that does full justice to their haunting vision of war. As the New York Times pointed out ten years after publication, “Levinthal’s war pictures are radically new," and indeed they were. Using cheap, molded plastic toy soldiers and tanks, art school classmates Trudeau and Levinthal conceived a fascinating new narrative form, a “paper movie,” at once deeply evocative and unabashedly fake. Combining selected archival materials with photographs of 1/35-scale toys placed in meticulously constructed miniature settings, the two artists conjured up an astonishing reimagining of World War II’s most epic campaign—the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Traveling precariously between fantasy and reality, Levinthal and Trudeau produced a work now recognized as both a sublime graphic manifesto and a powerful documentary of men at war. David Levinthal and Garry Trudeau began their collaboration on Hitler Moves East shortly after both had graduated from the Yale School of Art and Architecture in 1973. Levinthal has since published numerous book of photographs, including Modern Romance, The Wild West, and Mein Kampf. Trudeau is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the long-running comic strip Doonesbury.

Ormond Gigli had an illustrious career as a photojournalist over the course of some 40 years and took many magnificent photographs-but one photograph has eclipsed all the others. It was a photograph he conceived for himself, without an editorial assignment. It is the incomparable "Girls in the Windows" of 1960. Girls in the Windows: And Other Stories is the first book to survey the work of Ormond Gigli and escorts the viewer behind the façade of that incredible photograph-to understand its genesis and to celebrate its remarkable achievement-in addition to creating a portal into the rest of Gigli's brilliant career. This beautifully illustrated volume showcases Gigli's celebrity and fashion photographs, and includes his innovative work in the worlds of theater, film, and dance, as well as his little-known travel photography and photojournalism. Gigli, a master of photo art direction, orchestrated his photo shoots like an accomplished film director, and his portraits are intimate and revealing as a result, his set work inventive and at times even playful. His engagement with his subjects was unparalleled, among whom are included Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Anna Moffo, Anita Ekberg, Marcel Duchamp, Willem de Kooning, John F. Kennedy, Halston, Marlene Dietrich, Leslie Caron, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand, Laurence Olivier, Alan Bates, Richard Burton, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and many more. Many of these images have not been widely seen since they were first published decades ago. In addition to the photographs, Gigli contributes his personal account of the making of many of the pictures, evoking long-ago encounters that resulted in such timeless images. This handsome volume highlights a significant body of work, captures a vital aspect of the great age of photojournalism, and places in context an iconic image of the postwar era at the height of its prosperity and on the verge of transformation.