Ming Smith's poetic and experimental images are icons of twentieth-century African American life. One of the greatest artist-photographers working today, Smith moved to New York in the 1970s and began to make images charged with startling beauty and spiritual energy. This long-awaited monograph brings together four decades of Smith's work, celebrating her trademark lyricism, distinctively blurred silhouettes, dynamic street scenes, and deep devotion to theater, music, poetry, and dance--from the "Pittsburgh Cycle" plays of August Wilson to the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra. With never-before-seen images, and a range of illuminating essays and interviews, this tribute to Smith's singular vision promises to be an enduring contribution to the history of American photography. Copublished by Aperture and Documentary Arts

Ming Smith's poetic and experimental images are icons of twentieth-century African American life. One of the greatest artist-photographers working today, Smith moved to New York in the 1970s and began to make images charged with startling beauty and spiritual energy. This long-awaited monograph brings together four decades of Smith's work, celebrating her trademark lyricism, distinctively blurred silhouettes, dynamic street scenes, and deep devotion to theater, music, poetry, and dance--from the "Pittsburgh Cycle" plays of August Wilson to the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra. With never-before-seen images, and a range of illuminating essays and interviews, this tribute to Smith's singular vision promises to be an enduring contribution to the history of American photography. Copublished by Aperture and Documentary Arts

“A literary experience unlike any I’ve had in recent memory . . . a blueprint for this moment and the next, for where Black folks have been and where they might be going.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) What does it mean to be Black and alive right now? Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work—images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The book presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics. In answering the question of what it means to be Black and alive, Black Futures opens a prismatic vision of possibility for every reader.

As anyone who has wielded a camera knows, photography has a unique relationship to chance. It also represents a struggle to reconcile aesthetic aspiration with a mechanical process. Robin Kelsey reveals how daring innovators expanded the aesthetic limits of photography in order to create art for a modern world.

In her last publication Trilogy (Kehrer), Jessica Backhaus has taken a path into abstraction, which is consistently continued here - with analog, photographic methods. Cut out transparent paper reacts to the heat of intense sunlight, deforms, rises, and casts shadows. The photographer who arranged and staged these compositions becomes an astonished observer of events on which she has only limited influence, the documentarist of a visual experimental arrangement, a poetic choreography of intense colors in the sunlight. This artist book is published in an edition of 750 signed copies.

The Magazine of Photography and Ideas. As the United States navigates a political moment defined by the close of the Obama era and the rise of #BlackLivesMatter activism, Aperture magazine releases "Vision & Justice," a special issue guest edited by Sarah Lewis, the distinguished author and art historian, addressing the role of photography in the African American experience. "Vision & Justice" includes a wide span of photographic projects by such luminaries as Lyle Ashton Harris, Annie Leibovitz, Sally Mann, Jamel Shabazz, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems and Deborah Willis, as well as the brilliant voices of an emerging generation―Devin Allen, Awol Erizku, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Deana Lawson and Hank Willis Thomas, among many others. These portfolios are complemented by essays from some of the most influential voices in American culture including contributions by celebrated writers, historians, and artists such as Vince Aletti, Teju Cole, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Margo Jefferson, Wynton Marsalis and Claudia Rankine. "Vision and Justice" features two covers. This issue comes with an image by Richard Avedon, Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader, with his father, Martin Luther King, Baptist minister, and his son, Martin Luther King III, Atlanta, Georgia, March 22, 1963.