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Bystander

Name: Bystander
Author: Colin Westerbeck,Joel Meyerowitz
ISBN: 9780821217559

by Colin Westerbeck, Joel Meyerowitz

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Overview

This landmark book chronicles the development of a kind of photography that is created out of the energy and chance juxtapositions found in everyday life on the street. Street photography is at the heart of what makes photography unique. An unprecedented study that is the first history of this tradition ever published, Bystander explores street photography through a discussion of the medium's masters - Atget, Stieglitz, Strand, Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Kertesz, Evans, Levitt, Frank, Arbus, Winogrand, and many others - and reveals along the way much about the craft and creative process of photography. Profusely illustrated with the work of more than eighty photographers, the book is composed of four parts separated by lively folios of pictures. Each part discusses a different era - from the early days of the medium in nineteenth-century Europe, to America in the late twentieth century - and devotes entire chapters to the key figures of that period.

About the Author, Colin Westerbeck,Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Meyerowitz is a photographer best known for his large-format color work published in Cape Light and several other books. He began his career as a street photographer and is the co-author of Bystander: A History of Street Photography. His photographs have been shown worldwide, including exhibits at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Recently he produced his first feature film, POP, a diary of a trip he made with his son and his aging father, who had Alzheimer's disease.

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Editorials

Library Journal

This substantial book embraces the history of street photography as social and cultural document. Generously illustrated with black-and-white photographs as well as a small selection of color images, the book touches upon the work of acknowledged masters such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andr Kertsz, Paul Strand, Bill Brandt, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and many others. Farm Security Administration photographers, including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, also receive their due along with contemporary American photographers Weegee (Arthur Fellig), Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, and Helen Levitt-to name just a few. This ambitious effort is perhaps most successful in bringing together the work of these classic photographers in a thoughtful, coherent study of this fascinating genre of photography. Westerbeck is associate curator of at the Art Institute of Chicago and Meyerowitz is a photographer (Bay/Sky, LJ 12/93). Highly recommended, especially for large public libraries and academic libraries.-Raymond Bial, Parkland Coll. Lib., Champaign, Ill.