Art & Photography

For more than 20 years, Kenn Duncan's photographs energized such seminal New York arts publications as After Dark, Dance Magazine, and Opera News. Renowned for his ability to capture the distinctive styles and personalities of his subjects, frequently dancers, he gained widespread acclaim for his gift of celebrating a specific type of performer: the woman whose phenomenal talent and charisma make her more than a star, more than an icon; she is a Diva. Duncan adored the glamorous, larger-than-life personalities that defined American popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s, and they, in turn, adored him. Until his untimely death in 1986, Duncan's camera was like a disco ball illuminating 

In Afghanistan, award-winning Australian photographer Stephen Dupont has covered everything from civil war and the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s to the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom and the ongoing war on terrorism. This book features selections from his portfolio Afghanistan, 1993-2008, as well as photographs from the series Axe Me Biggie, whose title is a phonetic rendering of the Dari for “Mister, take my picture!”  Dupont made these portraits during the course of one day (March 13, 2006) with a Polaroid camera in a makeshift studio in the streets of Kabul. Together, these photographs tell a story of poverty, warfare, and broken promises, 

While photographs are exhibited widely today, their acceptance into the mainstream art world has been a long process, periodically fraught with controversy and debate. One of the more recent manifestations of this debate occurred in the late 1970s, when the rise of postmodern theory led to a reevaluation of the medium and a critical scrutiny of the museum's role in the promotion of photography's status. Until recently, less attention has been paid to the role of alternative spaces, particularly those devoted to the exhibition of photography. The Midtown Y Photography Gallery was the first nonprofit organization in New York City with a mission to provide a public space for the display of 

Ehon--or "picture books"--are part of an incomparable 1,350-year-old Japanese tradition. Created by artists and craftsmen, most ehon also feature essays, poems, or other texts written in beautiful, distinctive calligraphy. They are by nature collaborations: visual artists, calligraphers, writers, and designers join forces with papermakers, binders, block cutters, and printers. The books they create are strikingly beautiful, highly charged microcosms of deep feeling, sharp intensity, and extraordinary intelligence. In this elegant, richly illustrated volume, renowned scholar Roger S. Keyes traces the history and evolution of these remarkable books through seventy key works,