Buildings inhabit and symbolize time, giving form to history and making public space an index of the past. Photographs are made of time; they are literally projections of past states of their subjects. This visually striking meditation on architecture in photography explores the intersection between these two ways of embodying the past. Photographs of buildings, Joel Smith argues, are simultaneously the agents, vehicles, and cargo of social memory. 
In The Life and Death of Buildings photographers as canonical as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Laura Gilpin, Lewis W. Hine, and William Henry Fox Talbot enter into visual dialogue with amateurs, architects, propagandists, and insurance adjusters. Rather than examine photographers' aims in isolation, Smith considers how their images reflect and inflect the passage of time. Much as a building's shifting function and circumstances substantially alter its significance, a photograph comes to be coauthored by history, growing layers of meaning to which its maker had no access.

The Life and Death of Buildings: On Photography and Time

Arts & Photography

Smith, Joel

Photography & Video

Princeton University Art Museum

Existentialism: A Philosophical Inquiry: A Philosophical Inquiry

Existentialism asks some of the most fundamental questions about human existence: What gives our lives meaning and value? What is it to choose freely? How do I live an authentic life? How should I relate to myself and to others? In this book Joel Smith introduces and assesses the arguments and controversies surrounding these questions in an engaging way, providing a superb introduction to this important and perennial philosophical subject. 
Connecting existentialist themes with contemporary questions in ethics, philosophy of action, and the emotions, he brings existentialism to life. He does so by focusing on a set of distinctively existentialist questions and themes, including race and gender, whilst at the same time engaging with the classic existentialist texts from Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Fanon and others. The book is organised clearly around the following key topics: Life Subjectivity Meaning Freedom Angst Bad Faith Alienation Gender Race Authenticity 
Including chapter summaries and annotated further reading, Existentialism: A Philosophical Inquiry is the ideal starting point for anyone interested in this fascinating and important subject, in Philosophy as well as related disciplines such as Literature and Religion.

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Routledge

Experiencing Phenomenology

Phenomenology is the general study of the structure of experience, from thought and perception, to self-consciousness, bodily-awareness, and emotion. It is both a fundamental area of philosophy and a major methodological approach within the human sciences. Experiencing Phenomenology is an outstanding introduction to phenomenology. Approaching fundamental phenomenological questions from a critical, systematic perspective whilst paying careful attention to classic phenomenological texts, the book possesses a clarity and breadth that will be welcomed by students coming to the subject for the first time. Accessibly written, each chapter relates classic phenomenological discussions to contemporary issues and debates in philosophy. The following key topics are introduced and explained: <ul>
<li>the methodological foundations of phenomenology</li> <li>intentionality as the ‘mark of the mental’ and the problem of non-existent objects </li> <li>perceptual experience, including our awareness of things, properties, and events</li> <li>the experience of body, self, and others</li> <li>imaginative and emotional experience</li> <li>detailed discussions of classical phenomenological texts, including:</li> <li>Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint</li> <li>Husserl's Logical Investigations, Cartesian Meditations, and On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time</li> <li>Heidegger’s History of The Concept of Time, and Being and Time</li> <li>Stein's On the Problem of Empathy</li> <li>Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, and The Imaginary</li> <li>Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.</li> </ul> Also included is a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, making this book an ideal starting point for anyone new to the study of phenomenology, not only in Philosophy but related disciplines such as Psychology and Sociology.

Experiencing Phenomenology: An Introduction

Phenomenology is the general study of the structure of experience, from thought and perception, to self-consciousness, bodily-awareness, and emotion. It is both a fundamental area of philosophy and a major methodological approach within the human sciences. Experiencing Phenomenology is an outstanding introduction to phenomenology. Approaching fundamental phenomenological questions from a critical, systematic perspective whilst paying careful attention to classic phenomenological texts, the book possesses a clarity and breadth that will be welcomed by students coming to the subject for the first time. Accessibly written, each chapter relates classic phenomenological discussions to contemporary issues and debates in philosophy. The following key topics are introduced and explained: <ul>
<li>the methodological foundations of phenomenology</li> <li>intentionality as the ‘mark of the mental’ and the problem of non-existent objects </li> <li>perceptual experience, including our awareness of things, properties, and events</li> <li>the experience of body, self, and others</li> <li>imaginative and emotional experience</li> <li>detailed discussions of classical phenomenological texts, including:</li> <li>Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint
</li> <li>Husserl's Logical Investigations, Cartesian Meditations, and On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time
</li> <li>Heidegger’s History of The Concept of Time, and Being and Time
</li> <li>Stein's On the Problem of Empathy
</li> <li>Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, and The Imaginary
</li> <li>Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.
</li> </ul> Also included is a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, making this book an ideal starting point for anyone new to the study of phenomenology, not only in Philosophy but related disciplines such as Psychology and Sociology.

Wisdom Girls: God Has a Plan

Children's Books

Literature & Fiction

Smith Family Publishing

Wisdom Girls: God Provides

Nature's Rhythms contains 111 poems divided into three parts: nature, love and reflections. Reflections is a combination of philosophy, spirituality, and humor. Truth, love, and happiness are all enjoyable facets of life. Each is sprinkled and seasoned to form the completeness of this book. The poems are no more than one individual's view of the universe. It would be satisfying to know that reading this book gives the audience a further appreciation of what we all have in common: the gift of life and perception.

Nature's Rhythms: Poetry: Love, Mirth and a Portrait of the Earth

Poetry

iUniverse

One of the most influential figures in the history of photography, Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was also one of the most precocious. Born in Luxembourg, raised in Wisconsin, and trained as a lithographer's apprentice, Steichen took up photography in his teens and by age twenty-three had created brooding tonalist landscapes and brilliant psychological studies that won the praise of Alfred Stieglitz in New York and Auguste Rodin in Paris, among others. Over the next decade, this young man--the preferred portraitist of the elite of two continents--was repeatedly acclaimed as the peerless master of the painterly photograph. This volume, covering the period from the late 1890s to World War I, highlights masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which houses the finest collection of Steichen's early work in the world, and reproduces them in near-facsimile through four-color digital offset lithography.
 Steichen worked with a designer's inventive eye, a Symbolist's poetic sensibility, an entrepreneur's charisma, and--above all--the originality and finesse of a creative and painstaking printer to establish ambitious new standards in artistic photography. Overlaying the subtle tone-poetry of his platinum prints with repeated washes of harmonious color, he created unforgettable images. In his three famous twilight views of New York's Flatiron Building, one of the landmarks of turn-of-the-century architecture, Steichen crafted a powerful symbol of a new age. His stunning sequence of Rodin's Balzac figure in the moonlight is presented here as are his nudes, with their frankly erotic sense of flesh and weight. And the intense energy of a decade comes to life in his portraits of a diverse cast ranging from Richard Strauss to J. P. Morgan, Maurice Maeterlinck to George Bernard Shaw--and Steichen himself, the founding auteur of a century of celebrity. In the accompanying text, Joel Smith explores Steichen's maturing artistry in the light of contemporary developments in photography, graphic design, and the decorative arts.
 This is a stunning visual record of the emergence of Steichen as a great artist and is one of the most important books to be published on his life and work in recent years.

Edward Steichen : The Early Years

Individual Artists

Princeton University Press

Born in Romania in 1914, Steinberg studied architecture in Milan and made a name for himself as a cartoonist before fleeing fascist Italy in 1941. Avidly sponsored by The New Yorker, he arrived in Manhattan the following year, only to join the military on a worldwide tour of duty, which he chronicled in the pages of the magazine. Through the 1950s, Steinberg's acute, spontaneous, fluid line was in constant demand among periodicals and book publishers throughout Europe and the United States. In sixty years, he worked with every editor The New Yorker has had, and he created art of every category it employed, including covers, cartoons, spot drawings, illustrations for Profiles, and multi-page portfolios. All 87 of Steinberg's covers are seen here in full colour, as well as colour drawings which originally appeared in black and white, and 25 thematic plate sections which explore his defining preoccupations. The accompanying essay by art historian Joel Smith considers Steinberg's work in the context of the magazine's evolution, during and after World War II, from a humorous weekly to one of the defining standard bearers of taste and intelligence in American letters.

Steinberg at the New Yorker

Comics & Graphic Novels

How To Create Comics & Manga

Harry N. Abrams

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Books by Smith, Joel