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Photo Book Reviews

Holiday 2006: A Round Up of Photo Gift Books by Frank Lovece A coffee-table photo book is the Type O blood of presents. Anybody can receive it. Article rating: 9.84

Think about it: It's the all-purpose present. Everyone's got some hobby or interest that's sure to be covered by a book of professional photographs.  Does your husband like dogs? Does your sister hike the Himalayas?  Do your kids listen to Jay-Z and Tupac?  World-class photographers have been all over all of that.

But where these tomes are really a help are with people like your sister-in-law … or your office-mate … or the coach of your softball team – all people whom you know and really want to give a gift to, but aren't intimate friends.

For that circle of acquaintance, a coffee-table photo book is more personal and thoughtful than a picture frame or some other semi-generic gift – but not so much so that they'll be calling you up the next time they need help moving a couch.

And if the recipient is a photography buff -- whether of landscapes, portraiture, fashion, sports or just about any other kind of picture – then a coffee-table photo book will really click.

Here's our cross-section roundup of 20 notables of 2006, niched into a half-dozen handy categories.  We guarantee that one of these will be right for your special – or even your not-so-special – someone!

FOR NATURE LOVERS

Big Sky: Wild West Panorama (Firefly Books, $45) by Tim Fitzharris  – The Audubon cover photographer, Popular Photography columnist and BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year offers twelve plates each of six subjects, from the mountains (the Rockies, the Sierra Nevadas) to the prairies (the High Plains) to the oceans (the Pacific) white with foam. http://www.timfitzharris.com/

Butterflies of the World (Abrams, $35) by Gilles Martin & Myriam Baran – Talk about your shutterbugs. French photographer Martin and animal behaviorist Baran zoom in on nature's ultimate before-and-after pictures. http://www.gilles-martin.com/  (in French)

Galen Rowell: A Retrospective (Sierra Books, $50) – Life and National Geographic photographer and mountain-climber Galen Avery Rowell (1940-2002) blazed over a hundred first ascents of new routes in Yosemite Valley. He and his wife and business partner, Barbara Cushman Rowell, died in a small-plane crash. Friends and fans, from Tom Brokaw and Robert Redford to fellow nature photographer Frans Lanting annotate Rowell's life across 175 images from all phases of his career. http://www.mountainlight.com/  (Galen & Barbara Rowell)

Speaking of Lanting….

Life: A Journey Through Time (Taschen Books, $50) by Frans Lanting – From microorganisms to human organs, from the Galapagos to Gaea, the much-lauded Dutch photographer chronicles every aspect of Mother Earth in his book portion of a multimedia exhibition by Naturalis, the Netherlands' National Museum of Natural History.  http://www.lanting.com/

Rainforest (DK, $40) by Thomas Marent – There's nothing more colorful than a bit of jungle fever. From Peru to Papua New Guinea, covering animals from ants to Anacondas, this first book by Swiss shooter Marent comes bundled with a 70-minute CD of rainforest sounds. www.thomasmarent.com/cms/

Seeds: Time Capsules of Life (Firefly Books,$60) edited by Alexandra Papadakis – For gardening buffs and anyone else who leans more toward flora than fauna, consider this compendium of electron photomicroscopy by British visual-arts professor Rob Kesseler, seed morphologist Wolfgang Stuppy as they capture botanical sex. Which isn't sexy, but beautiful nonetheless.  www.robkesseler.co.uk/ 

FOR THE SPORTS FAN

Photo / Stoner: The Rise, Fall, and Mysterious Disappearance of Surfing's Greatest Photographer (Chronicle, $40) by Matt Warshaw and Jeff Divine – Ron Stoner was the James Dean of surfers. Before the Beach Boys got everybody surfin' now, Stoner's 1960s pix for Surfer Magazine captured a now-lost era of Project Gemini optimism and transistor-radio innocence. He walked away into the sunset, but his photographs remain. http://www.mattwarshaw.com/  and http://www.surfart-online.com/JDivine.htm

A Year in Sports (Abbeville, $55) by Neil Leifer – You know that famous shot of Muhammad Ali standing over a KO'd Sonny Liston? Yeah, that's Leifer. Sports Illustrated, for which he's shot over 200 covers, gave him pretty much carte blanche to cover what the title says. No guy's guy (or sporty girl) should be without. http://www.neilleifer.com/

FOR FASHIONISTAS

In Vogue: The Illustrated History of the World's Most Famous Fashion Magazine (Rizzoli, $75) by Norberto Angeletti and Alberto Oliva – If the devil wears Prada, then he (or she) reads Vogue. Aside from the photos – Steichen, Frissell, Penn, Avedon, Bailey, Newton, Leibovitz, Testino, Webber, Ritts, God knows who else – you get the devil-in-the-details courtesy excerpts from such word guys as Truman Capote and Aldous Huxley. http://www.rizzoliusa.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780847828647

AMERICANA

Atomic Ranch (Gibbs Smith, $40) by Michelle Gringeri-Brown & Jim Brown – Publisher/photographer Jim and Editor Michelle are the populuxe couple behind this Portland, Ore., magazine devoted to mid-century ranch houses. And if you don't think lavish photos of Joseph Eichler tract homes and Eero Saarinen Womb Chairs are the grooviest things ever, then you've been living in your bomb shelter too long. http://www.atomic-ranch.com/

Kennedy Space Center: Gateway to Space (Firefly Books, $40) by David West Reynolds – Forget the text: With all due respect to the author of such epics as Star Wars: Episode I, The Visual Dictionary, it's the pictures here, spanning storied names from Carpenter to Columbia, that really tell the real story. (Apollo 11 launched in 1965??? Hoo boy!).  http://www.phaetongroup.com/reynolds.php

Life on the Lower East Side: Photographs by Rebecca Lepkoff, 1937-1950 (Princeton Architectural Press, $40) by Peter E. Dans and Suzanne Wasserman – You've got to love a golden girl who makes some of her work available through a place called Volcanic Video.  Lepkoff's been shooting New York City since the late 1930s, and this collection of 170 duotone photos will stir the melting pot of anyone who themselves or whose family came of age in that at-once legendary and infamous tenement neighborhood. http://www.rebeccalepkoff.com/

The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape (Chronicle Books, $40) by Erik Davis & Michael Rauner – San Francisco artist and photographer Rauner and New Age author Davis show that California isn't just a state; it's a state of mind. You know you know people this would be perfect for. That's just karma. http://www.michaelrauner.com/ and http://www.techgnosis.com/index_bio.html

FOR THE ART-PHOTO BUFF

Robert Mapplethorpe: Complete Flowers (teNeues Publishing, $150)  About the only Mapplethorpe book you could get for Granny. Call it nature au naturel.  http://www.mapplethorpe.org/

Eyes to Fly With: Portraits, Self-Portraits, and Other Photographs (University of Texas Press, $50) by Graciela Iturbide – One of Mexico's leading contemporary photographers finds the timeless tensions between past and present, life and death, angels and Indians in her often eerie portraits of villagers, herself and others. http://www.library.txstate.edu/swwc/wg/artist/iturbide/default.html

Face: The New Photographic Portrait (Thames & Hudson, $50)  by William A. Ewing – The director of the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, doesn't like the same old thing. Sure, you've gotta have noses, ears, eyes – but that doesn't mean photographers like Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Martin Parr and Rineke Dijkstra or designers like Tibor Kalman, among many others, can't explore issues of identify and, what the hey, have a little fun while they're at it. http://www.elysee.ch/actualite/index_en.html (English-language page for the Musée de l'Elysée,  Lausanne)

On the Street: 1980-1990 (Welcome Books, $40) by Amy Arbus – Look back in angst, er … not so much. Girls just wanna have fun, after all, and Diane's daughter inherited her mother's chops. From power suits and shoulder pads to post-punk musicians and po-mo artists to (she's everywhere! she's everywhere!) Madonna, it's the '80s – sort of like they were, but exactly like you imagined. http://www.amyarbus.com/

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

Life Platinum Anniversary Collection: 70 Years of Extraordinary Photography (Life, $30) by the Editors of Life Magazine – The all-purpose gift. It's got everything and everybody: Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Dorothea Lange, Irving Penn … and only thirty bucks suggested retail. http://www.life.com/Life/shop_life/0,26374,,00.html

Shelter Dogs (Merrell, $20) by Traer Scott – Man's best friend?  Humans' best friend.  Commercial and portrait photographer Scott lives with her husband in Providence, R.I., and volunteers at the local animal shelter. In 50 black-and-white portraits of mutts and purebreds alike, she keeps alive the memory of beautiful animals no longer with us.  Providence, indeed. http://www.traerscott.com/

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