How do photojournalists get the pictures that bring us the action from the world's most dangerous places? How do picture editors decide which photos to scrap and which to feature on the front page?

Find out in Get the Picture, a personal history of fifty years of photojournalism by one of the top journalists of the twentieth century. John G. Morris brought us many of the images that defined our era, from photos of the London air raids and the D-Day landing during World War II to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. He tells us the inside stories behind dozens of famous pictures like these, which are reproduced in this book, and provides intimate and revealing portraits of the men and women who shot them, including Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and W. Eugene Smith. A firm believer in the power of images to educate and persuade, Morris nevertheless warns of the tremendous threats posed to photojournalists today by increasingly chaotic wars and the growing commercialism in publishing, the siren song of money that leads editors to seek pictures that sell copies rather than those that can change the way we see the world.

Ghost Image is made up of sixty-three short essays—meditations, memories, fantasies, and stories bordering on prose poems—and not a single image. Hervé Guibert’s brief, literary rumination on photography was written in response to Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, but its deeply personal contents go far beyond that canonical text. Some essays talk of Guibert’s parents and friends, some describe old family photographs and films, and spinning through them all are reflections on remembrance, narcissism, seduction, deception, death, and the phantom images that have been missed.

Both a memoir and an exploration of the artistic process, Ghost Image not only reveals Guibert’s particular experience as a gay artist captivated by the transience and physicality of his media and his life, but also his thoughts on the more technical aspects of his vocation. In one essay, Guibert searches through a cardboard box of family portraits for clues—answers, or even questions—about the lives of his parents and more distant relatives. Rifling through vacation snapshots and the autographed images of long-forgotten film stars, Guibert muses, “I don’t even recognize the faces, except occasionally that of an aunt or great-aunt, or the thin, fair face of my mother as a young girl.” In other essays, he explains how he composes his photographs, and how—in writing—he seeks to escape and correct the inherent limits of his technique, to preserve those images lost to his technical failings as a photographer.

With strains of Jean Genet and recurring themes that speak to the work of contemporary artists across a range of media, Guibert’s Ghost Image is a beautifully written, melancholic ode to existence and art forms both fleeting and powerful—a unique memoir at the nexus of family, memory, desire, and photography.

From the late 1800s to the early 1950s, painted wall signs were a major mode of advertisement for both national companies and local businesses across America. Many of these artistic messages, now faded, peeling, and partially covered, still peek out from the storefronts, barns, alleyways, warehouses, theaters, and even stagecoach stops they once decorated.

Photographer Jeff Holder and author Cynthia Haas explore this often overlooked art form in Arkansas and show us signs that appear mysteriously in the rain, signs that are curiously painted in remote places, images and words now only half decipherable. From Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, and Grapette Soda to Kis-Me-Gum, Uneeda Biscuit, and Snowdrift Flour, the logos and slogans are at once familiar and enigmatic. Archival photographs reference the time
when these brightly colored messages covered the facades of downtown buildings. Of particular interest in this book are the profiles of three “wall dogs,” or sign painters, who remember the difficulties and joys of their unusual profession.

Ghost Signs of Arkansas ties us to a gentler past, a time when Main Street was the center of a community’s life, before mass media forced grand-scale advertising from brick walls to the television screen. In documenting a fading but valuable traditional art form, this book fills a gap in both the cultural fabric of Arkansas towns and the history of American art.

In a time when image is indeed everything, our personal appearance has a tremendous effect on nearly every aspect of our lives on a daily basis. Our choice of hairstyle can mean the difference between acceptance and rejection by groups and individuals. The choices made by African Americans are particularly charged, often affecting the wearer and the viewer in unique and sometimes life-altering ways.

Good and Bad Hair emerges out of photographer Bill Gaskins's traveling photo exhibition of the same name. The book features 60 evocative photographs of African American men, women, and children, documenting contemporary black hairstyles and their role as a feature of African American culture.

On one level, the photographs present readers with a variety of popular and personal approaches to wearing one's hair. On another level, they isolate what amounts to a bold, assertive departure from the common definition of American beauty that excludes the physical features of many people of African descent. This narrow definition of beauty has created a race-based measurement for what is considered "good" and "bad" hair. Gaskins's pictures identify African Americans from different regions of the United States who expressively symbolize their sense of self and often their sense of an African or black identity through their hair.

Shortlist, 2022 Witold Pilecki International Book Award

With an Introduction by Timothy Snyder
Polish journalist Pawel Pieniazek was among the first journalists to enter the war-torn region of eastern Ukraine and Greetings from Novorossiya is his vivid firsthand account of the conflict. He was the first reporter to reach the scene when Russian troops in Ukraine accidentally shot down a civilian airliner, killing all 298 people aboard. Unlike Western journalists, his fluency in both Ukrainian and Russian granted him access and the ability to move among all sides in the conflict. With powerful color photos, telling interviews from the local population, and brilliant reportage, Pieniazek’s account documents these dramatic events as they transpired.

This unique firsthand view of history in the making brings to life the tragedy of Ukraine for a Western audience. Historian Timothy Snyder provides wider context in his superb introduction and explores the significance of this ongoing conflict at the border of East and West.