Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudevill stars, leading thinkers. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the continent's original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared.

Inspired by the life of legendary photographer Edward Curtis, a series of tales about a photographer's developing relationship with the Native Americans he astonishes by showing them pictures of themselves is interspersed with parallel tales about an unsung soldier, a husband, and a father. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

In this gritty exposé, a firsthand look inside U.S. undercover operations targeting the immigrant smuggling, counterfeiting, and drug rings of Mexico’s dangerous mafia. Living under an assumed identity and risking his life were all in a day’s work for U.S. Government Agent Hipolito Acosta. He worked regularly in high-stakes undercover operations infiltrating Mexico’s murderous immigrant smuggling rings and drug cartels. Acosta’s investigations are legendary, both inside law enforcement and the crime cartels he helped neutralize. He had himself smuggled from Mexico to Chicago with a truckload of poor immigrants; worked his way into the confidences of a gang of international counterfeiters; socialized with some of Mexico’s most vicious drug lords; arrested a female smuggler by luring her across the U.S. border for an amorous rendezvous; and was the target of multiple murder plots by the criminals he put in jail. For three decades, Hipolito Acosta’s work routinely made national headlines, and he quickly gained a reputation as a daring crime fighter who used his intelligence and audacity to stay one step ahead of those who would kill him if his cover were ever blown. Acosta’s stories read like chapters from a page-turning crime novel, but The Shadow Catcher is more than a front-seat ride through the criminal underworld along the U.S./Mexico border. This heartbreaking exposé goes beyond sensational headlines and medals of honor to divulge what an agent endures in order to ensure that U.S. law is enforced and to reveal the unseen human side of illegal immigration.

The very first photographs of the nineteenth century were produced without the use of a camera. Today, having rediscovered camera-less techniques, a number of artists are using camera-less photography to create beautiful, startling images. Now available in an updated and fully revised edition, Shadow Catchers surveys the work of five leading practitioners – Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Adam Fuss, Garry Fabian Miller and Floris Neusüss – who, by casting shadows on light- sensitive paper or by chemically manipulating its surface, capture the presence of objects, figures or glowing light. The resulting pictures are consistently powerful, often with surreal effects and symbolic content. This is the first book to gather together the work of these key contemporary artists, revealing the technical processes and creative practices involved in their art. In an age of mass-produced imagery, Shadow Catchers offers a fascinating insight into a world of handcrafted photographs that are at once visually striking and intellectually stimulating.

It is 1892, and Jonathan Capewell, a farm boy who dreams of becoming a big-city detective, is sent from home to look after his mysterious grandfather. Grandpa is a traveling photographer, and his independent ways have never included family members -- certainly not his youngest grandchild. After a grueling journey, Jonathan and Grandpa shoot an image of a puzzling struggle on a raging river in the Maine woods. At first they don't suspect it's anything more than a logging accident. But later the scene comes back to haunt them when a stranger shows an uncommon interest in the undeveloped negatives. Who is this over-friendly stranger? Why does he seem so determined to have those pictures? The clues point to something that Jonathan has already begun to suspect: what happened on the rapids that day was no accident....

'Eden - it's where your life began, Madeleine. It's a place where the current of life runs stronger than anywhere else. In Eden the sun shines more fiercely, the rain strikes harder, and the trees are so green that it hurts your eyes. Eden is beauty and ugliness and joy and madness and decay. Beneath the great old silk-cotton tree, where the orchids and lianas hang right down to the ground, and the fireflies glitter like spangles from dusk till dawn...' Madeleine is left to bring up her younger sister in a remote cottage on the west coast of Scotland after her mother, Rose, has died in childbirth. Tainted by the discovery that she is illegitimate, Madeleine is plunged into poverty in London before marrying out of desperation a wealthy cousin of her father's, who does not know her true identity. And thus she comes to live at the old family estate of Eden in the hills of Jamaica, often talked about by her mother - a beautiful, decaying house with its overgrown garden, lush sugar plantation and myriads of secrets. Rose had loved Eden more than anything, and now Madeleine has to take her place there.