Valérie Belins photographs avoid simple representation or description, even though she often chooses to photograph simple objects, such as glasses, silverware, Venetian mirrors, cars, or animal carcasses. Instead she is attempting to unveil the very essence of her subjects and to delve into the deepest secrets of things, of matter and of light, almost independent of the objects themselves. This comprehensive retrospective of Belins work also includes all her other suites her questioning of corporeality in her explicit studies of bodybuilders; the series of Moroccan brides which broach complex issues of identity and representation; and her investigations of hybrid entities, such as transsexuals, Michael Jackson look-alikes and the mannequins in shop windows.

Our fast-changing world seen through the lenses of 140 leading contemporary photographers around the globe. With close to 500 images, many previously unpublished, this landmark publication takes stock of the material and spiritual cultures that make up 'civilization'. Ranging from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from our great collective achievements to our ruinous collective failings, Civilization: The Way We Live Now explores the complexity of contemporary civilization through the rich, nuanced language of photography. Featuring images by some 140 photographers - from Reiner Riedler's families at leisure parks, Raimond Wouda's high schools, Wang Qingsong's Work, Work, Work and Cindy Sherman's Society Portraits, to Lauren Greenfield's displays of ostentatious wealth, Edward Burtynsky's oil fields, Pablo Lopez Luz's views on a sprawling contemporary megalopolis, Thomas Struth's images of high technology, Xing Danwen's electronic wastelands and Taryn Simon's Contraband, Civilization draws together the threads of humankind's ever-changing, frenetic, collective life across the globe. Visually epic, Civilization is presented through eight thematic chapters, each featuring powerful imagery and accompanied by provocative essays, quotes and concise statements by the artists themselves.

'I come from painting.' It is not surprising that Valerie Belin should describe her work as coming from painting, for it would be curious indeed to call her a photographer. Although she uses a photographer's equipment, her masterful control of the technique enables her to transcend the imprint of reality and preclude reference to the world. Belin tells us nothing about the circumstances out there; she offers no evidence; she advances no arguments and makes no comments. She takes the world and makes pictures out of it. Her latest moves – colour and montage – are therefore perfectly logical. Thanks to digital technology, she can now also impose her will on the pictures she creates in colour. Never has photography been so far removed from naive naturalism and normality. Published with Codax Publishers, Zurich.

From Sherman Alexie's films to the poetry and fiction of Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko to the paintings of Jaune Quick-To-See Smith and the sculpture of Edgar Heap of Birds, Native American movies, literature, and art have become increasingly influential, garnering critical praise and enjoying mainstream popularity. Recognizing that the time has come for a critical assessment of this exceptional artistic output and its significance to American Indian and American issues, Dean Rader offers the first interdisciplinary examination of how American Indian artists, filmmakers, and writers tell their own stories. Beginning with rarely seen photographs, documents, and paintings from the Alcatraz Occupation in 1969 and closing with an innovative reading of the National Museum of the American Indian, Rader initiates a conversation about how Native Americans have turned to artistic expression as a means of articulating cultural sovereignty, autonomy, and survival. Focusing on figures such as author/director Sherman Alexie (Flight, Face, and Smoke Signals), artist Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, director Chris Eyre (Skins), author Louise Erdrich (Jacklight, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse), sculptor Edgar Heap of Birds, novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, sculptor Allen Houser, filmmaker and actress Valerie Red Horse, and other writers including Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, and David Treuer, Rader shows how these artists use aesthetic expression as a means of both engagement with and resistance to the dominant U.S. culture. Raising a constellation of new questions about Native cultural production, Rader greatly increases our understanding of what aesthetic modes of resistance can accomplish that legal or political actions cannot, as well as why Native peoples are turning to creative forms of resistance to assert deeply held ethical values.

A l'invitation du musée d'Orsay, des artistes d'aujourd'hui dialoguent avec les collections en choisissant l'œuvre de laquelle ils se sentent proches. Naît ainsi la possibilité de voir les collections sous un nouveau jour. Valérie Belin, artiste française née en 1964, inlassablement et presque à contre-courant, a construit une œuvre radicale autour de ta photographie de personnages ou d'objets. L'entretien avec Quentin Bajac met au jour la singularité de son travail et ses rapports avec la peinture et notamment Manet, l'artiste choisi pour "Correspondances ".

Presents a look at photography in the twenty-first century, dividing the topic into such categories as documentary, landscapes, history, the body, color, and constructions and presenting leading photographers and examples of their work.

An authoritative account of the history of fashion from 1900 to today, fully illustrated in color. From the turn-of-the-century S-bend silhouette to celebrity couture of the new millennium and the evolution of streetwear, this comprehensive survey explores the significant developments in fashion since 1900. Authors Amy de la Haye and Valerie Mendes focus on key movements and innovations in style for both men and women, and explore trends through the work of the most original and influential designers. Chapters are organized around crucial shifts in style and major world events, and exciting advances in fashion are placed within their socioeconomic, political, and cultural contexts. International in scope, this new edition includes updates to the text, including chapters on the most important new designers and the impact of online shopping. Fully illustrated in vibrant color throughout,Fashion Since 1900 includes a helpful reference section with an extensive bibliography.

"Van Cleef & Arpels and Gallimard present "An exercise in style"; a literary and poetic promenade through the Maison's vocabulary. Twenty five words defining the identity of Van Cleef & Arpels have thus been gathered and illustrated by friends of the Maison, leading figures of the world of culture and the arts, such as Alber Elbaz, Valérie Belin, Camille Laurens, Alain Passard and others. Each word is an experience, sparking surprise, wonder or contemplation. We invite you to discover, for example, the expression of luck by Laurent Derobert, danse by Benjamin Millepied, transmission by David Caméo, high jewelry according to Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku or creation as defined by Jean de Loisy. Each chapter (savoir faire, feminity, Place Vendôme, enchantment, style) is opened by a poetic "theater" in laser cut paper. The book captures a poetic and literary happenstance, tell a story about beauty, about poetry, unleashing creation and unbridling the imaginary realm's might"--Publisher's description.

Sleeping Beauty is award-winning artist Lydia Panas' much-praised series of mesmerizing color portraits of reclining women and girls. Sleeping Beauty embodies Panas' complex relationship with portraiture. In an interesting reversal of roles, the artist's gaze and the models' 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' work is rooted in experience, what she sees, and how she understands people, relationships and power dynamics. In Sleeping Beauty, her subjects lie down, a metaphor for the position girls and women have been placed in historically. Yet, her subjects look out with self-awareness. Through Panas' lens, their inescapable gaze signals a knowledge that they have been to some extent duped, one might say-and a sense that they are working it out. The girls and women look in a way that implies a lack of complicity. The serial depictions and variations explore how difficult it feels to be a girl and a woman, subject to another's dominance. Viewers of the "Sleeping Beauty" portraits have aptly commented on the deeply compelling nature of the series-one viewer noting that it is "both difficult to approach and difficult to walk away from" and another describing the work as "unlike anything else I have seen before" and "causing me to wish to avert my eyes and yet I cannot do so. It is astonishingly memorable." Sleeping Beauty is a photography monograph for collectors of beautiful art and illustrated books; for anyone interested in portraiture and in representations of women and girls in visual culture; and for admirers of books and work by Panas. Her first monograph, The Mark of Abel (Kehrer, 2012), was hailed as one of the best books of the year. Lydia Panas' work is held in prestigious public collections and has been frequently exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.

Body Rock Sand is the culmination of an idea generated in Ian Jacob's mind over fifty years ago by the gift of a book of photographs by French master Lucien Clergue, Née de la Vague (Born of the Waves). In its pages, Ian discovered a lasting inspiration - the interplay of skin, sea and sand in its evocative black and white images captured his imagination and never truly faded. Returning to his native Pembrokeshire in 2010 provided Ian with an ideal canvas with which to develop a new multimedia portfolio of work over the course of six years and achieve his own creative vision. The final photographs are moments in time which capture the ever-shifting nature of the shore, its fleeting patterns and textures, exploring contrasts between the solidity of rock and the suppleness of the female form, the sensuous relationship between it and the sea, and, at their most experimental, creating new forms through the synthesis of a model with the surrounding landscape and natural features. They are the results of a process of care and craft, patience and perseverance, of battling tide, time and conditions to achieve the extraordinary.