reviewed by Charles Dee Mitchell Editor Liu Heung Shing began gathering images for this forty-year survey of Chinese photography in 1997. He searched China for photographers once employed by the Maoist government either as official photographers or with the state-run media, elderly men and women who still had negatives in shoeboxes under their beds and prints they had shown no one for decades...

reviewed by Mary Anne Redding The first three photographers awarded monographs in 2005 by Critical Mass, Photolucida's annual juried competition, were Hiroshi Watanabe, Louis Palu, and Sage Sohier. The three small books were published in 2007...

reviewed by Charles Dee Mitchell Modern physics teaches us that what we perceive as solid mass is composed mostly of empty space. It's a difficult concept to get your mind around, especially when you stump your toe or fill a cup with coffee, but the photographs German photographer Michael Wolf has taken in Chicago depict our urban skyscraper environments as a model of that concept...

reviewed by Ryon James Katy Grannan has always been drawn to "lost souls" as subjects. In her earlier work, she allowed her subjects to find her through indirect means such as classified ads and word-of-mouth (Model Americans, Aperture 2005). With The Westerns, Grannan has taken the initiative and sought out the desired individuals, approaching people in public that spark her interest...

reviewed by John Cohen Lead Belly: A Life in Pictures is a celebratory view of the great musician, filled with testimonials, poems and memories from Huddie Ledbetter's family, friends and admirers, such as Tom Waits, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin and many others who saw the greatness of Lead Belly's music...

reviewed by Alex Sweetman For a long time it was said that anyone meeting Robert Frank would be well advised to steer clear of the subject of The Americans. It had a way of making Robert irritable. But not anymore, not since Gerhard Steidl became involved in "The Robert Frank Project,"...

by John Cohen Steidl has just reissued a little book, Pull My Daisy, loaded with photographic power, a document from a phase in Robert Frank’s long career when Robert abandoned still photography to make his first film...

by Jerome Poynton In 1947 Robert Frank arrived in New York from Switzerland with his camera. His first photo job was shooting Moe, Larry and Curly – The Three Stooges – on a bus tour from high school to high school in Queens...

by Walker Evans Walker Evan's prescient essay on his friend Robert Frank, reproduced here in its entirety...

We asked a group of photographers and writers to share their personal stories about Frank and his masterpiece, here are their responses...

from Karl Baden & Covering Photography Robert Franks' photographs are seminal works of art that are rarely seen outside of his own monographs or exhibitions. Karl Baden has researched the appropriation of Franks' photographs as book covers and has published his findings on the phenomenal website Covering Photography.

from Jeff Ladd It was fifty years ago that the greatest book of photography ever published made its appearance. To celebrate this occasion on May 15th, the same day that the first edition of Les Americans was published in France in 1958, Steidl and DAP planned an evening with Robert Frank at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade movie theater in New York City...