In 2018, the VII Foundation asked more than a dozen renowned reporters and photojournalists to revisit countries with which they had become achingly familiar during times of brutal conflict. The task was to see peace through the prism of their journalistic experience; to survey familiar towns and villages; to reconnect with women, men, soldiers, civilians, statesmen, and students who had survived the conflict or grown up in the postwar society; to discover what the lived experience of “peace” feels like. To augment this reportage, the VII Foundation sought input from academics and peacemakers. And they invited citizens of those countries to give their very personal narratives, in their own voices. Hard edges were not softened nor unpalatable impressions deleted. They wanted to show the truth as seen and experienced by those that lived and those that reported on seemingly intractable civil wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina Cambodia, Colombia, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda. The result is Imagine: Reflections on Peace - a curation of searing images and trenchant essays that show both micro and macro views of peace, with its uneven degrees of economic success, political stability, and social harmony. In this stunning collection, worldrenown journalists and authors take us into societies that have suffered searing conflict - and survived. Photographic essays make the stakes during war and peace grippingly palpable. Compelling backstories about negotiations, tales of survival, and accounts of the search for inner peace make the big picture personal. Imagine offers a rare glimpse into the unvarnished story of peace, a window into what it takes for societies and individuals to move forward after unspeakable brutality.

America’s most important and iconic river has many familiar names: The Mighty Mississippi, Old Blue, and Ole Man River. In Mississippi River: Headwaters and Heartland to Delta and Gulf, the third book of his trilogy on North American Waters, David Freese takes us on a captivating visual journey from its source at Lake Itasca in Minnesota 2,552 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico. Freese’s photographs open our eyes to encompass a wide diversity of industry and farmland, cities and towns, landscapes and wildlife, all the while revealing the constant flow of goods, grain, and fuel, up and down the country’s major shipping artery. The photographs illustrate the ongoing dangers posed by increased flooding and the protective measures taken by the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers to try and keep a restless river in check. There are environmental concerns, ranging from habitat loss to agricultural and pesticide runoff, and the legacy of slavery and the removal of native peoples persist. It’s a river that reveals a complicated past, present, and future as humankind attempts to control nature. American history bends and turns in its waters.The noted author Simon Winchester has written an arresting essay that provides one of the most compelling descriptions and histories yet written about a river that is so much more than a familiar name. The foreword by Sarah Kennel, Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, places Freese’s images into the canon of landscape photography as a magnificent body of work that documents, critiques, honors, and sanctifies America’s most treasured river.

The Northern Forest of North America—stretching from New England and eastern Canada into the Upper Midwest—is one of the world’s largest contiguous forests. Complex and beautiful, it supports a wide variety of life, and the woodlands offer an interconnected vastness that gives American and Canadian lives perspective and balance. This book is timely, for the Northern Forest is at the heart of important environmental and economic issues that have become critical, especially as big logging companies sell large portions of their land. The very existence of this forest is extraordinary. For instance, in 1870 the forest covered just thirty percent of Vermont, but today eighty percent is woodland. This remarkable turnaround has taken place on what is overwhelmingly private land. Environmentalist Bill McKibben, in his introduction, says, “This unintentional and mostly unnoticed renewal of the rural and mountainous east represents the great environmental story of the United States and, in some ways, the whole world.” But forest acreage has begun to decrease in every state in New England, as trees are removed for commercial development. Renowned photographer John Huddleston brings a contemporary vision to show the unique and transitory character of this amazing forest. His photographs were made with precise attention to ordinary beauty and circumstance as he sauntered in the woods with camera in hand. Through his photographs we gain a deep appreciation and understanding of the Northern Forest and see how proper forest management enhances both commercial and ecological interests. Under Huddleston’s care, natural change is embodied in a new type of photographic composite created from exposures made of similar scenes in different seasons. This difficult, labor-intensive process elicits direct comprehension of cyclic time. Coupled with his straight photographs, the book reveals the dynamic forms and processes of the Northern Forest. And an array of text references explore the biology, economics, history, philosophy, and vulnerability of this vast regional landscape.

Viewing Mni Wiconi (Sacred Water of Life) and the No Dakota Access Movement as an isolated happening without acknowledging historical, cultural, and systematic circumstances leading up to it makes no sense. We cannot erase this past nor change it. In order to move forward in a better way, however, we must acknowledge the truthful foundation and recurring practices complicating what to some feel like isolated incidences. The pervasive and growing presence of extreme economic inequality in America is a worsening condition. Few situations reveal this inequality more than the conditions that Native Americans live under within their own homeland. This book raises awareness of Water Protectors for those who were not at Standing Rock and honoring those who were, through experiences at the Oceti Sakowin Camp, the indigenous-led resistance movement by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the Energy Transfer Partners project to build the Dakota Access Pipeline on sacred land. The goal is to acknowledge and better understand the dedication of the Water Protectors, as they chose to be called, standing up for the health of Mni Wiconi and so many other related causes for the seven generations representing the past, present, and future health of all. People throughout the world, including members from between 240–300 indigenous tribes, were attracted to the cause and came to Standing Rock in full support of the protests. Even American military veterans, distressed by what they saw, came by the thousands determined to stand between the Water Protectors and police in defense of the rights for non-violent expression of resistance.The book’s powerful photographs by John Willis are complimented by many Lakota voices and those of other allies through interviews, poetry, Lakota artwork, music through a downloadable CD, and historical ephemera. And essays by Terry Tempest Williams and Shaunna Oteka-McCovey provide new insights into age-old problems facing native people.

In the summer of 2011, in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, a falling power line sparked a wildfire that burned 158,753 acres of forest. From their home in Santa Fe, thirty air miles southeast, photographers Patricia Galagan and Philip Metcalf watched what came to be known as the Las Conchas fire burn day and night for more than a month.As soon as the roads reopened, they went to the mountains to see the damage this violent fire had wrought. Taking a trail to the rim of Cochiti Canyon, they passed through sections of forest that had burned so hot that nothing remained but blackened trunks and negative spaces where huge tree roots had been. The canyon and the waves of ridges beyond were black with standing dead trees.The visual chaos of the burned forest, at first daunting, pushed them to look harder, to see differently. As they did so, the forest began to look beautiful in its highly altered state. For more than seven years they were compelled to make photographs of the aftermath of the fire to draw people beyond the news-cycle images of smoke and flames into the reality of a forest after an extreme fire. Forest Ghosts is both their ode to the old forest and their gift to help us understand that, in this era of accelerating climate change and increasingly devastating wildfires all over the American West, the new forests will never be the same, but we can still find beauty and enlightenment in the aftermath.

Photographer John Willis has long been aware of the exploitation that can occur when photographers enter communities as outsiders. So, in 1992, when he first visited the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, he assured elders of the Oglala Lakota nation that he would not exhibit any of his images. Over time, however, Willis earned the respect and trust of the community, and the elders urged him to show his work and create this book so that others might better understand Lakota land and life. Willis has returned to the reservation every year since 1992, and he has come to grasp and interpret this place as few others have. Views from the Reservation, first published to widespread acclaim in 2010 and now presented in an updated and expanded edition, remains a gift—a wopila—that is meant to open the minds, eyes, and hearts of outsiders to the life, culture, and conditions of the Oglala Lakota people. Along with his insightful and accomplished images, Willis has enlisted other voices to offer a more complete story: Lakota elders and high school students from the Pine Ridge Reservation offer powerful poems; writer Kent Nerburn contributes an original essay; Emil Her Many Horses, a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian, tells his story of growing up on the rez; Kevin Gover, Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, apologizes for the government’s abuse of native people; Oglala Lakota artist Dwayne Wilcox shares his provocative ledger drawings; and members of the Reddest family present their amazing photo collection.Views from the Reservation is a masterful book that has been praised by the Lakota people for its honesty, spirit, and depth. It offers the chance for native peoples and outsiders alike to appreciate and respect the Pine Ridge Reservation from contemporary and historical points of view, with art and storytelling leading the way.

Three centuries ago, the Los Angeles River meandered through marshes and forests of willow and sycamore. Trout spawned in its waters, and grizzly bears roamed its shores in search of food. The river and its adjacent woodlands helped support one of the largest concentrations of indigenous peoples in North America, and it also largely determined the location of the first Spanish Pueblo and ultimately the city of Los Angeles. The river was also the city’s sole source of water for more than a century before flood-control projects made the L.A. River what it is today. Michael Kolster, in L.A. River, relies on a nineteenth-century photographic technology to render the Los Angeles River today, from its headwaters in Canoga Park and the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach. Coincidentally, the founding of the city of Los Angeles and California’s achievement of statehood in 1850 coincide historically with the invention of the wet-plate photographic process, forever linking the city and state with the centrality of photography. The moving images that define L.A. River show a feature of the city’s landscape that initially attracted native peoples to its banks and gave rise to the formation of our nation’s second-largest city. Channeled in concrete during the last century to control flooding, the river was all but removed from the life of the city until the turn of the twenty-first century, when concerted efforts were made by some to peel back some of the concrete and to let nature live once again. In his photographic journey, Kolster considers both the past and present and how the accumulation of life along the river suggests a larger a role for the L.A. River in the lives of the city’s inhabitants.

Lynne Buchanan began photographing Florida’s inland waters to create artistic records of her connection with those waters and to learn lessons from being in the present moment and aligning with the flow of life. The more time she spent photographing waterways in her native Florida, the more she noticed what was being damaged and lost due to human impact. She resolved to draw attention to the situation through her photography and to work with water-quality and environmental advocates, from members of the Water-keeper Alliance to Native American citizens fighting to preserve the integrity of their ancestral lands and drinking water. The result is Changing Waters, which not only showcases the beauty, diversity, and complexity of Florida’s waters, but also documents the negative effects of agricultural and industrial pollution, a growing population with its urban growth and land development, and climate change on Florida’s inland and coastal waters and springs. Though her work is place specific, the book reveals the interconnected and global nature of environmental problems. Indeed, Florida’s fragile springs, wetlands, rivers, and coastal waters can be considered a tragic and powerful example of what is happening to aquatic systems else-where in the nation and world as a result of unchecked human action. Buchanan’s photographs invite viewers to consider their personal relationship to water and en-courage better stewardship of this vital––and finite––resource. They are also a call to action to find more effective ways to preserve these waterways for both their natural beauty and essential role in our survival.

Vietnam is an ancient and beautiful land, with a deep history of occupational conflict that remains an enigma in Americans’ collective memory. It is still easy to forget that Vietnam is a country and not a war, even as America’s role in Vietnam inflamed and divided the American citizenry in ways that are still evident today. It is as if Vietnam’s civil war resurrected our own. And if you are a Vietnam War veteran or a family member of a vet, it’s worse, because, even after a half-century, many of the wounds won’t heal. What do you do when you have given up on forgetting? Chuck Forsman is one of a sizable number of aging Vietnam vets who have found deep satisfaction in revisiting Vietnam, supporting charities, orphanages, and clinics, doing volunteer work and more—anything to redeem what the U.S. military did there. He is also a renowned painter and photographer who depicts places and environments in ways that become unforgettable visual experiences for the contemporary viewer. Lost in Vietnam chronicles a journey, not a country. They were taken on visits averaging two months each and two-year intervals over a decade. Forsman traveled largely by motorbike throughout the country—south, central, and north—sharing his experiences through amazing photographs of Vietnam’s lands and people. His visual journey of one such veteran’s twofold quest: the one for redemption and understanding, and the other to make art. The renowned Le Ly Hayslip introduces the book and sets the table for Forsman’s incredible sojourn.

“Break Boundary” refers to the transformative point at which any system suddenly and irrevocably changes from its original state into something new. Coined by Kenneth E. Boulding in 1963, the term serves as the underlying metaphor for the photographs of Jenee Mateer. In her original works of art, the horizon that divides land, water, and sky shifts and multiplies producing bands of varied colors and luminosity that transform the natural landscape into imaginative “waterscapes” and challenge our understanding of photography. Reminiscent of the abstract paintings of Mark Rothko and the photographic seascapes of Hiroshi Sugimoto and New Mexican landscapes of Edward Weston, Mateer’s images are layered photographs of the natural world assembled to suggest imaginary places where light, water, land and sky coalesce into rhythmic patterns of shimmering opalescence or luscious color. Break Boundary features 34 of Mateer’s waterscapes and also includes her opening essay about the work and two poems by the artist, "The World Is Water" and "The Sky Is Lemonlime," that separate the first series of images from the second series and offer a deeper look into the artist’s thoughts about the work. In the concluding essay by Francine Weiss, curator of the Newport Art Museum, Weiss writes: “From surface to self, Jenee Mateer takes the viewer on a journey from one psychological and spiritual state to another. In Mateer’s “waterscapes,” the conventional or anticipated boundaries between land, water, and sky begin to vanish; horizons multiply and join; and the break boundary emerges.

Watching and recording the gradual dismantling of life, beauty and diversity in our oceans is a tortuous experience for scientists. Our oceans function as earth’s organs and our survival depends on their health. Yet in the last fifty years half of coral reefs have disappeared, only 10% of large fish remain and many species are at the brink of collapse. Unsustainable fishing practices, pollution – including 20 million tonnes of plastic entering the oceans yearly – and rising temperatures are continued threats. Even as the sense of urgency to save our oceans continues to grow, at the time we publish this book, an estimate of only 2% of all global philanthropic and charitable donations go to protecting the environment. Of this, only a tiny fraction go toward supporting and safeguarding our oceans. Brimming with spectacular, full-page photography of underwater scenes from the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic oceans and many seas, Call of the Blue tells the stories of positive, focused people who are working to save our oceans. The first book of its kind, Call of the Blue unites more than 100 modern-day explorers, sailors, free divers, film-makers, lawmakers and conservationists who talk about their lives, passions and exploits on, in or under the water. Call of the Blue demonstrates how the efforts of individuals and communities can inspire and drive change. Notable contributors include United States Senator Sheldon Whitehouse; explorer and BBC presenter Paul Rose; Danish environmentalist and Director General of the IUCN Inger Andersen; French photojournalist and UNEP Goodwill Ambassador Yann Arthus-Bertrand; and American marine biologist Edith Widder (to name only a few). Contributors include hardworking men and women from around the world including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, France, India, Mozambique, Mauritius, Ecuador and more. Alongside these passionate and necessary voices, Philip Hamilton’s mesmerising images – of reefs, blue whales, salt water crocodiles, manatees, sea lions, sailfish, penguin, mantas, jellyfish, turtles, sharks, pygmy sea horses and more – provide readers a glimpse of some of the world’s most stunning underwater locations, bringing into sharp focus all we are at risk to lose.

Emily Andersen has been making photographic portraits of the international avant-garde since graduating from the Royal College of Art in the early 1980s. Having started out by finding her way into some pretty cool-sounding private parties in London and New York, she began convincing artists and musicians to pose for her – from Nan Goldin to Nico. Over the past thirty-five years, she has built up a remarkable and beautiful portfolio that includes many high-profile writers, poets, film directors, actors and architects, with Peter Blake, Michael Caine, Derek Jarman, Zaha Hadid, Arthur Miller, Helen Mirren, Michael Nyman and Eduardo Paolozzi among those featured in this new publication devoted to her black-and-white portraits. In addition to celebrities, Andersen has documented many interesting and inspiring figures who are celebrated and respected within their fields, offering an invaluable insight into the lives of people who have made significant contributions to the wider cultural and creative life of the USA, Britain and Europe over the current and recent generations. An illuminating essay by critic Jonathan P. Watts not only explores the lives of some of Andersen’s many sitters and the photographs she has taken of them, but also get to grips with ideas such as the nature of portraiture, photojournalism and the limitations of the documentary photograph, framing them within debates of the late 1980s onwards. ‘While all of these portraits may not be recognisably activist images’, asserts Watts, ‘they’re rooted in the belief of a micro-politics of everyday lives and relationships.’ Readers can discover more about the background, circumstances and dynamics of many of the shoots by means of notes prepared by Andersen herself to accompany each image, which are regularly entertaining and thought-provoking as well as informative. Beyond capturing the essence of these figures and of the times in which they are living, Andersen has a particular talent for entering into their private lives and private spaces, often being invited into her sitters’ own homes. By photographing family members and friends, she gets an angle on them that is often deeply personal, sensitive and honest. Creating works that are carefully composed and choreographed and yet regularly informal and relaxed, there is always, somehow, a sense that Andersen is more interested in encouraging her subjects to speak through her images than in imposing her own impressions upon them. It is also fascinating to note how Andersen is often keen to document the young children of celebrities, especially girls, and has made a substantial body of work of fathers and daughters. She is always interested to know what these young women grew up to be, and sometimes returns to photograph the same people years, if not decades, later. Andersen has been commissioned for innumerable magazines and newspapers including the New Musical Express (NME), The Face, Elle Deco, Domus, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph and The Economist, and has been commissioned by publishers such as Quadrille, Simon and Schuster, Oxford University Press, Hachette, Random House and Harper Collins. Her works have been exhibited internationally in venues including The Photographers’ Gallery, London; The Institute of Contemporary Art, London; The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; and China Arts Museum, Shanghai. A winner of the John Kobal prize for portraiture, she has a number of works in The National Portrait Gallery, London and in other public collections including The British Library, London, and The Contemporary Art Society, London. Andersen is a senior lecturer in photography at Nottingham Trent University.Designed by Melanie Mues of Mues Design, London, with reprography by DPM, London, and printed by EBS, Verona, this stunning hardback monograph has been released in both a trade edition published by Anomie and as an artist’s limited edition of fifty signed and numbered copies, accompanied by an original print.The cover image is of the Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and his son, Axel, in London in 1989.

Steve Fitch is among America’s most well-known chroniclers of the American West since the days of Easy Rider. He has been photographing examples of the West’s changing vernacular landscape and vanishing roadside landmarks for more than 40 years. In his new book, he presents both the ancient and the modern by way of petroglyphs, neon motel signs and hand-painted business signs, drive-in movie theater screens, and radio and cell towers. All of them are now endangered because of the advent of the Interstate Highway System and corporate franchises.In this fascinating and comprehensive account, we are able to join in Fitch’s expansive journey, truly an odyssey, as represented in the book’s 120 unforgettable photographs, all sequenced to mimic the open road—both during day and night. Fitch explains the project in his informative introduction, in which, interestingly, he suggests that the petroglyphs of the ancient Pueblo people have endured far better and longer than anything made during the last sixty years. Curator Toby Jurovics, in his insightful concluding essay, positions Fitch’s work in relation to that of the practitioners of the photographic style known as the “New Topographics” and Fitch’s own view of photography as a visual form of cultural anthropology. Vanishing Vernacular: Western Landmarks is sure to become a modern-day classic, a book that will be all the more revered as America and Americans move farther away from the highways of the past. That economy and roadside culture are vanishing like endangered species, but Fitch was along for the ride. In sharing that past, he has been witness to his own form of historic preservation.

Ever wish you could push the "reset" button on the world in which you live as well as the one you carry inside your head? Are you tired of a culture that seems infatuated with wealth and the superfluous, where people can become famous simply by being outrageous or otherwise well known?If that world is not working for you, perhaps you should consider a trip to the desert, just as holy men, mystics, prophets, and eccentrics have done for thousands of years, seeking solitude and inspiration, wisdom and direction in a land of extremes. This is what author Jim Barbee did, seeking Inner Space in the expansive California Desert that lies just 100 miles east of Los Angeles and the other coastal cities of Southern California.Sin Sombras is Barbee's attempt, in photographs and stories, to relive the California Desert: a landscape where there are no shadows (sin sombras), no shade, no place to hide or find relief. It is a wild, arid, and sparsely populated region, "flyover" country for most travelers, a place to pass through or endure, but also home to hardy individuals who live in one of the harshest climates on Earth.The photographs were taken largely between El Centro and Barstow, California, including the famous Salton Sea. They depict the land, towns, people, and human artifacts that tell a visual story of pilgrimage, survival, and adaptation. The accompanying stories walk the boundary between fact and fiction and are offered as reflections on themes inspired by the pictures: awe, mystery, longing, death, mistakes, and the power of chance in our lives.Sin Sombras is a unique work of artistic and spiritual exploration. One might even say it is a sojourn to find the meaning of life, if there is one, in the unforgiving but awe-inspiring world of the California Desert. Enjoy the ride.

Portable studio documents contemporary British youth culture, and was created in collaboration with the young people Appleson met and photographed on the streets of Birmingham in 2014. Inspired by the way identities are now curated online, the project works with a wide range of individuals to create an 'archive' of found and commissioned material, exploring identity and experience as expansive, multimedia portraits. Portable Studio inverts the traditional idea of the studio portrait/street photograph - the 'snapshot' is now just the starting point. In 2014 Trevor Appleson was commissioned by MAC Birmingham and the Library of Birmingham to create a new body of work exploring the city’s youth culture. Equipped with a film camera and a plain black cloth to use as a backdrop for his photographs, Appleson went out into the streets of Birmingham to its music venues and its shopping districts, in daytime and at night and photographed its youth, from ravers to girl guides, most in their teens and early twenties. Portable Studio will feature approximately 200 portraits alongside a fascinating archive donated by the sitters; a unique mix of physical and digital material ranging from crumpled diaries to selfies posted on social media, the contents of ‘memory boxes’, to vintage family photographs and Google search histories. The book is divided into three sections:Portraits: grouped by location and ‘tribe’, ravers, punks, rockers, school kids etc.Archives: 70 personal archives from selected subjects invited to collaborate further.Index: an annotated index completes the project with notes and descriptions. Supported by Arts Council England, Portable Studio is a critical document of contemporary British youth culture, made in collaboration with a selection of the 700 young people Appleson photographed for his commission.

Tidal Rhythms: Change and Resilience at the Edge of the Sea is a collaborative effort by photographer Stephen Strom and award-winning essayist Barbara Hurd. Strom’s images, taken along beaches in the Gulf of California and the Northern California and Oregon coasts, document a world teeming with ancient life-forms, clinging to rocks and finding nourishment but revealed for only a few hours before the tidal waters return. The primitive flora and fauna together create transient marine landscapes whose complex patterns resonate with what we humans perceive as beauty. Following the rhythms of Strom’s images as they travel between intimate portraits and expansive vistas, Hurd’s lyrical and philosophical essays both continue and complicate those cadences as she explores not just resonance, but also disturbance. As artist and writer move us from high tide to low tide and from the panoramic to the minuscule and back again, the reader is confronted with the larger issues of what happens as the seas rises, warms, and acidifies. Tidal zones are one of the first landscapes to be threatened—almost invisibly—by global climate change. Mussels, barnacles, and tidal pools are flung and ruffled or warmed and acidified in ways that stress the lives of those who live there. Shells begin to thin, species migrate north, and habitats literally disappear, yet few people are even aware of these amazing environments. Change, of course, is part of an ancient pattern. For billions of years, the sea has risen and fallen, and life-forms have managed to adapt or not. But the current pace of change confronts us with a new and urgent question: Can the long-established but delicately balanced worlds between tidelines evolve rapidly enough to enable continued sustenance and maybe even a new beauty? In Tidal Rhythms, we are given the gift of a new world-view.