Here are 100 books that Dandy Lion fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a child, I spent hours marveling at my father’s collection of ties. In love with tailoring, he taught me the meaning of “sprezzatura” and the joys that come from thinking of clothes as a part of yourself. Fashion returned to me as I studied philosophy, art history, and film. It took a few years, but then it just became clear to me that I had to talk about it. So I started writing, curating, and experimenting a bit more. I always say that fashion is a verb: my work is to explore what It can do, whether by curating a show, writing articles, or perusing local boutiques in my travels.
Before Instagram, we read about fashion. Well, we still do. At least, I do.
Francesca Granata has selected a series of fashion articles that are not only fun to read but are lynchpins to an understanding of the history of fashion, its quirks, and why we care so much about it.
You’ll find articles on military fashions, minis for men, and all the designers you should be curious about.
This is the first anthology of fashion criticism, a growing field that has been too long overlooked. Fashion Criticism aims to redress the balance, claiming a place for writing on fashion alongside other more well-established areas of criticism.
Exploring the history of fashion criticism in the English language, this essential work takes readers from the writing published in avant-garde modernist magazines at the beginning of the twentieth century to the fashion criticism of Robin Givhan-the first fashion critic to win a Pulitzer Prize-and of Judith Thurman, a National Book Award winner. It covers the shift in newspapers from the so-called…
As a child, I spent hours marveling at my father’s collection of ties. In love with tailoring, he taught me the meaning of “sprezzatura” and the joys that come from thinking of clothes as a part of yourself. Fashion returned to me as I studied philosophy, art history, and film. It took a few years, but then it just became clear to me that I had to talk about it. So I started writing, curating, and experimenting a bit more. I always say that fashion is a verb: my work is to explore what It can do, whether by curating a show, writing articles, or perusing local boutiques in my travels.
I love Dorothy Arzner’s films. And if you think you can’t deal with movies from the 1930s, think twice. Arzner was the only woman director in Hollywood; she was insanely popular and outrageously cool. Mayne’s book is about her coolness.
It’s an overture into an archive of pictures, tabloids, Hollywood gossip, and some of the best costumes around. Catherine Hepburn looked great in a silver moth costume (Christopher Strong, 1933), and Joan Crawford stunned in red (The Bride Wore Red, 1937). Mayne knows a thing or two about why we need more women directors.
Dorothy Arzner was the exception in Hollywood film history-the one woman who succeeded as a director, in a career that spanned three decades. In Part One, Dorothy Arzner's film career-her work as a film editor to her directorial debut, to her departure from Hollywood in 1943-is documented, with particular attention to Arzner's roles as "star-maker" and "woman's director." In Part Two, Mayne analyzes a number of Arzner's films and discusses how feminist preoccupations shape them, from the women's communities central to Dance, Girl, Dance and The Wild Party to critiques of the heterosexual couple in Christopher Strong and Craig's Wife.…
As a child, I spent hours marveling at my father’s collection of ties. In love with tailoring, he taught me the meaning of “sprezzatura” and the joys that come from thinking of clothes as a part of yourself. Fashion returned to me as I studied philosophy, art history, and film. It took a few years, but then it just became clear to me that I had to talk about it. So I started writing, curating, and experimenting a bit more. I always say that fashion is a verb: my work is to explore what It can do, whether by curating a show, writing articles, or perusing local boutiques in my travels.
I don’t know how many times I referred to chapters of this book in my lectures. And I don’t know how many times my students asked for more. But this is not an academia-only kind of affair.
Taylor’s book is an intelligent, curious, and meticulous investigation into all there is to love, appreciate, and discover about black aesthetics. He moves from black hair and Black Panther to questions of identity and intersectional debates. I’ll keep assigning it, and I’ll keep reading it.
Black is Beautiful identifies and explores the most significant philosophical issues that emerge from the aesthetic dimensions of black life, providing a long-overdue synthesis and the first extended philosophical treatment of this crucial subject.
The first extended philosophical treatment of an important subject that has been almost entirely neglected by philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of art
Takes an important step in assembling black aesthetics as an object of philosophical study
Unites two areas of scholarship for the first time - philosophical aesthetics and black cultural theory, dissolving the dilemma of either studying philosophy, or studying black expressive culture
Brings a…
As a child, I spent hours marveling at my father’s collection of ties. In love with tailoring, he taught me the meaning of “sprezzatura” and the joys that come from thinking of clothes as a part of yourself. Fashion returned to me as I studied philosophy, art history, and film. It took a few years, but then it just became clear to me that I had to talk about it. So I started writing, curating, and experimenting a bit more. I always say that fashion is a verb: my work is to explore what It can do, whether by curating a show, writing articles, or perusing local boutiques in my travels.
I have a weakness for shoes, and I am happy to admit it. Shoes is a tiny but mighty book you’ll want to gift to everyone. Bretaña traces the history of shoes from chopines to Balenciaga’s platform Crocs. It’s just impossible not to flip through the pages–and you are sure to find yourself browsing the web in search of yet another coveted pair. An aside: your toddler might ask you for a pair of Katharina Denziger’s Racing Shoes (1965)–mine did.
Christian Dior famously noted that "the real proof of an elegant woman is what is on her feet." From the surprisingly sexy boots hiding under Victorian crinolines to the glittering T-strap heels worn by flappers dancing the Charleston, a woman's shoe choice has long been far more than a mundane practicality. Indeed, a beautifully shaped shoe can be a statement of wealth, style, or sexuality - and often all at once.
This petite volume presents 250 eye-catching examples from the 17th century to the present, including many of today's top designers such as Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Roger Vivier, and…
When I was young, my passions were flying and art. I became a pilot at age 17. Later, I became an architect, and much later, in 2000, I decided to become a fine art photographer. After ten years of shooting from the ground, I decided to take to the air again and began shooting aerial photographs, primarily of cities. I now have three aerial books published: LA NY, Thames & Hudson, Paris From the Air, Rizzoli, and London From the Air, Rizzoli. My aerial photographs are exhibited and collected throughout the world.
I think that Brad has an amazing photographer's eye.
Using drones, he has created a unique book of photographs of swimming pools from above. This could have been a mundane subject, but in Brad’s hands, each photo is perfectly framed, sized, and cropped to reveal geometry you would not expect, reminiscent of a colorful abstract painting. What I like about his work is how he can look at a pool and find the perfect abstract detail: a sinuous curve, geometric lines, and rectangles, little bits of pool furniture, blue sparkling water combined in a way that no one else would have seen.
In Pools From Above, aerial photographer Brad Walls captures the unexpected beauty, curves, hues and textures of unique aquatic architecture from around the world.
Produced over a span of three years in four countries, this photo collection is the culmination of Walls' long journey to discover the beauty in commonplace landscapes seen from unexpected vantages.
I’ve been living in and writing about Japan for two decades—it’s where my wife and I have raised a bicultural family and where I don’t think I’ll ever run out of stories I want to tell. Whether written by Japanese or non-Japanese, I love reading work that documents Japan and its culture in an honest and thoughtful way. I hope you’ll try some of the books on this list because, with so much Japan coverage today veering towards cultural exoticism and fetishism or leaning on familiar stereotypes and tropes, it’s even more important to seek out great Japanese writing.
This book is the perfect antidote to all the stereotypes written about Japan’s subcultures. Nothing annoys me more than coverage that labels Japan as weird, quirky, or bizarre when really it just has different elements to the culture of those who use such labels.
That kind of othering ignores that beneath the surface, there’s much that unites Japanese with Americans or Brits or anyone else. We all laugh, cry, and experience a similar raft of emotions from birth to death. What I love about this book, beyond Wong’s superb photography, is how his interviews humanize the cosplayers, gyaru and varied otaku he meets, while also offering insights into their passions and lifestyles.
The book will delve into the world of Japanese subcultures and the obsessive approach that many people take to their hobbies, passions and lifestyle choices. The Obsessed will contain photos and texts – such as potentially profiles, essays or features – of a diverse range of Otaku and other fans and followers of different subcultures, and will unveil what is behind these obsessions and what makes these people tick.
As a reader, I’m drawn to characters and subjects I can relate to. Strong women who go their own way, ones who march to their own drummer. There is a raw honesty to their stories with subjects of creativity, grief, and loss. And as a writer of both fiction and personal essay, I write about these same issues as well, subjects I seem to turn to again and again. When I write, I try to tap into the emotions that might be buried but I’m always looking to move my readers whether it’s with tears or laughter, and the women in the books I chose do that for me.
Hold Still by Sally Mann – another memoir by an intriguing, strong-willed, fascinating woman. I became interested in Sally Mann when I first saw her book of amazing photographs of her children, Immediate Family. Since then I kept up with her photography and was thrilled to read her memoir. She writes of her childhood in the south, her parents, her relationship with her husband and children, the controversy surrounding those early stages photographs, her career, and beyond in absolutely lovely prose accompanied by many photos. She’s an impressive, talented woman, and her success is well deserved.
This National Book Award finalist is a revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann.
In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.
Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications,…
My interest in photography began as a student at Pratt Institute, a preeminent art school, and I have worked in the field my entire adult life, not as a photographer but as a picture editor and photography critic. I was the Page One Picture Editor of The New York Times and wrote regularly about photography for the paper. I have published two biographies: one on Richard Avedon, among the more significant artists of the 20th century, and another on Sam Wagstaff, one of the earliest collectors who established the art market for photography; a book of collected reviews and essays called Photography After Frank; and essays on individual photographers for museum catalogues and artist’s monographs. I produced the 2011 documentary, Bill Cunningham New York.
As a photography critic for The New York Times, Grundberg was present when a generation of artists began to take apart the photographic image and transform its meaning in society. He wrote about post-modern practice in the present tense, as it was happening. This book is a collection of his reviews and essays from the 1980s when the medium was at a crossroads; the factual veracity of photography was enduring challenges at every turn and the valuation of the photograph as an art object was under critical scrutiny.
A leading critic's inside story of "the photo boom" during the crucial decades of the 1970s and 80s
"Grundberg . . . is a vibrant, opinionated, authoritative guide to the medium's past and present."-Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times, "Best Books of 2021: Visual Arts"
When Andy Grundberg landed in New York in the early 1970s as a budding writer, photography was at the margins of the contemporary art world. By 1991, when he left his post as critic for the New York Times, photography was at the vital center of artistic debate. Grundberg writes eloquently and authoritatively about photography's "boom years,"…
I worked for 25 years as a wilderness guide and outdoor educator on the Colorado Plateau and in Alaska, and the Grand Canyon is my favorite national park and one of my two favorite places on earth (the other being Alaska’s Brooks Range). My background in cultural anthropology has given me a deeper appreciation of what it took for indigenous peoples to make a living inside the canyon. And it’s a humbling perspective indeed. When I lived in Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon was my “backyard” weekend wilderness. I’m still drawn there and visit at least once a year, even while living up north.
Even the most perfect pictures simply cannot do the canyon justice—none of mine ever have. But the photographic montages of Klett and Wolfe come close; fusing historical shots with contemporary ones they took at the same location, from the same angle, they manage to show what impresses me most in the grand gorge: its timelessness, how little the geology and even the vegetation changes over decades.
This really puts human life into perspective. The images in this coffee table book for the discerning are daring, whimsical, playful, and experimental, all of which are qualities that the best guides and canyoneers display.
Using landscape photography to reflect on broader notions of culture, the passage of time, and the construction of perception, photographers Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe spent five years exploring the Grand Canyon for their most recent project, "Reconstructing the View". The team's landscape photographs are based on the practice of rephotography, in which they identify sites of historic photographs and make new photographs of those precise locations. Klett and Wolfe referenced a wealth of images of the canyon, ranging from historical photographs and drawings by William Bell and William Henry Holmes, to well-known artworks by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams,…
I’ve been a documentary photographer for the past 50 years and my work has been featured in major magazines in the United States and Europe including The New York Times Magazine, Life, Fortune, Geo, Time & Newsweek, and others.I have six books in print, including JAZZ with Wynton Marsalis & Nonfiction Photographs with filmmaker Errol Morris. I love teaching photography and co-founded the Essex Photographic Workshop in 1975. My work is in many collections, including The Peabody Essex Museum, The Worcester Art Museum, Polaroid Collection, Agfa Corporation, Participant Productions, Bose Corporation, Bibliotheque Nacionale, France. Solo exhibitions of my work include the Walker Art Center, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Burden Gallery.
There’s an image of a large white horse standing above a man who’s kneeling in front of him, gesturing toward the horse’s face with one hand. He is having a conversation with this horse, trying to convince him of something. It’s one of the most beautiful photographs ever! On another page is a fully feathered chicken being dried out, hanging upside down from a clothesline in what appears to be a field of wheat. It’s astonishing how beautiful this image is. Josef Koudelka is one of the great masters of photography who has taught us all how to see the mystery and awe in places we walk by every day. Through his work, Koudelka has shown me the breadth and depth that photography embraces.
About Exiles, Cornell Capa once wrote, Koudelka's unsentimental, stark, brooding, intensely human imagery reflect his own spirit, the very essence of an exile who is at home wherever his wandering body finds haven in the night. In this newly revised and expanded edition of the 1988 classic, which includes ten new images, Koudelka's work once more forms a powerful document of the spiritual and physical state of exile. The sense of private mystery that fills these photographs mostly taken during Koudelkas many years of wandering through Europe since leaving his native Czechoslovakia in 1968 speaks of passion and reserve, of…
