There’s nothing quite like a relationship with an aged pet—a dog or cat who has been at our side for years, forming an ineffable bond. Pampered pets, however, are a rarity among animals who have been domesticated. Farm animals, for example, are usually slaughtered before their first birthday. We never stop to think about it, but the typical images we see of cows, chickens, pigs, and the like are of young animals. What would we see if they were allowed to grow old? Isa Leshko shows us, brilliantly, with this collection of portraits. To create these portraits, she spent hours with her subjects, gaining their trust and putting them at ease. The resulting images reveal the unique personality of each animal. It’s impossible to look away from the animals in these images as they unforgettably meet our gaze, simultaneously calm and challenging. In these photographs we see the cumulative effects of the hardships of industrialized farm life, but also the healing that time can bring, and the dignity that can emerge when farm animals are allowed to age on their own terms. Each portrait is accompanied by a brief biographical note about its subject, and the book is rounded out with essays that explore the history of animal photography, the place of beauty in activist art, and much more. Open this book to any page. Meet Teresa, a thirteen-year-old Yorkshire Pig, or Melvin, an eleven-year-old Angora Goat, or Tom, a seven-year-old Broad Breasted White Turkey. You’ll never forget them.

Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries

Arts & Photography

Baur, Gene

Leshko, Isa

Tucker, Anne Wilkes

Photography & Video

University of Chicago Press

Chen Changfen (b. 1941) began to photograph the Great Wall twenty years before the Chinese government officially adopted it as the national symbol in 1984. This fascinating book presents a small fraction of his decades-long study of the monumental form and conveys the fertile range of themes and ideas that Chen has investigated, each informed by traditional Chinese art, history, and philosophy. Combining a unique blend of traditional and contemporary technical processes, Chen’s richly evocative photographs at once celebrate the remarkable series of building campaigns that produced the Wall and memorialize the thousands of conscripted laborers whose lives were sacrificed to its construction. One of the most striking features of Chen’s photographs is their unexpected variety of perspectives and moods, capturing the vicissitudes of weather, time, and human history that have acted upon it. By excluding the people, highways, factories, and modern buildings that encroach on and daily destroy sections of the Wall, however, Chen eliminates major aspects of the Wall’s present reality from his pictures. In a thoughtful essay and interview with the artist, Anne Wilkes Tucker probes the meanings of such omissions and guides the reader through Chen’s extraordinary images. The Great Wall of China is essential reading for photographers, historians, and travelers.

The Great Wall of China: Photographs by Chen Changfen

History

Yale University Press

The art world has recently witnessed an international phenomenon, literally "red hot" in its pulsating energy, as new artists from Asia have been redefining the parameters of the contemporary scene. Featuring works from an extraordinary private collection in Houston, this book surveys the most innovative art trends coming out of Japan, China, South Korea, and Vietnam. The spotlight focuses on the generation of artists who emerged after the political and economic upheavals of the late 1980s and early 1990s, among them Takashi Murakami, Chen Wenling, and the Luo Brothers.

Red Hot: Asian Art Today from the Chaney Family Collection

de Lima Greene, Alison

Li, Vivian

Starkman, Christine

Martin, Elliott Zooey

Sanchez, Marisa C.

History & Criticism

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

War/Photography surveys both iconic and newly discovered photographs of war and conflict, from daguerreotypes documenting the Crimean and American Civil Wars to digital images made by soldiers in 21st-century Iraq. Accompanying a landmark exhibition opening at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, it is generously illustrated with over 525 powerful images and includes texts by some of today's most important scholars of war photography. This ambitious book offers a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between photography and armed conflict.
The featured works represent a range of perspectives—from journalists to soldiers to ordinary citizens—and span six continents, yet together they communicate the consummate experience of war: its brutality, humanity, and even humor. The book's essays investigate the immediate impact, dissemination, and historical influence of war photography.

War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath

Michels, Will

Zelt, Natalie

Shows elementary, high school, and college classrooms, labs, kitchens, language labs, and lecture halls

American Classroom: The Photographs of Catherine Wagner

Wagner, Catherine

Museum of Fine Arts. Houston

Scientific knowledge and televised travel to the moon have not entirely diminished human fascination with our closest neighbor in space. Quest for the Moon and Other Stories represents the humanistic and scientific flights of fancy and the resultant images captured by cameras across a century of imagination and discovery. These photographic images from the Quest for the Moon exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, were selected "to convey the qualities of beauty, wonder, and artistry . . . that have stimulated our fascination with the moon and propelled our quest to reach it," notes Anne Wilkes Tucker in her introduction. Selected images include evocative nineteenth-century photographic views of the moon, such as a ghostly 1852 daguerreotype. Twentieth-century images include the upturned faces of Soviet citizens greeting Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the Earth; space walks; the lunar surface; and eerie juxtapositions of space, light, and objects like the Hubble telescope in full profile. A final section recalls the spiritual link humans forged with astronomical objects before space travel enabled a physical link. The text provides contextual background for each photographic image.

Quest for the Moon and Other Stories: Three Decades of Astronauts in Space

Ivy, Dennis

In 1984, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of their portrait studio, Kaye and Sonia Marvins proposed to build a photographic portrait collection for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Their passion to build this collection came from their long-standing interest in portrait photography and as Mr. Marvins explained, “because Houston Has been very good to my family and me, and we wanted to do something in return." Since the initial exhibition, the generosity of Sonia and Kaye Marvins, Michele and Michael Marvins, Libby and Buz Marvins, and Kaye Marvins Photography, Inc. has allowed the museum to acquire an additional thirty-two fine art portraits.  In 1929, Sonia and Kaye emigrated from Poland. Having known each other since they were twelve, they married in 1933, moved to Houston in 1935, and opened their own studio in 1945. As the studio prospered, Kaye Marvins became active in the Professional Photographers of America, serving as president of the local, state, and southwest chapters. He also taught portrait photography all over the United States. In 1984, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of their portrait studio, Kaye and Sonia Marvins proposed to build a photographic portrait collection for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The Sonia and Kaye Marvins Portrait Collection

Thompson, William R.

Olvey, Maggie

Davis, R. Eric

Tighe, Harlow

Individual Artists

This collection of photographs form part of Richard Misrach's Desert Cantos series. They feature the beauty, mystery and abuse of the American desert with images as diverse as secret nuclear test sites, space shuttle landings, arts happenings and natural disasters.

Crimes and Splendors: The Desert Cantos of Richard Misrach

Solnit, Rebecca

Misrach, Richard

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Brassai: The Eye of Paris

Offers a profile of the French photographer and gathers a selection of his works

Brassaï

J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

HOWARD, Richard

Berman, Avis

National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Football is an American phenomenon, and Texas fans have long embraced the sport with unrivaled fervor. In 2002, when a new professional football team hit the Lone Star State, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, recognized a unique opportunity to record history in the making. Although millions of photographs of football exist, the first year of a NFL team has never been captured. The museum and the Houston TEXANS have collaborated to document the team’s first season. From the NFL players’ draft to the TEXANS’ opening day to the final game of the Houston team’s inaugural year, both the quiet and the frenetic rhythms of a major-league football enterprise are vividly charted. More than just a strict chronicle, The Houston TEXANS reveals every angle of the team that was founded by Robert C. McNair and has won the hearts of Texas football fans. Award-winning photographer Robert Clark (Friday Night Lights) was granted unprecedented access to the team. He took action shots and players’ portraits; shot views of training camp and weight-room sessions; and produced memorable images of the players and their families outside of the public’s intense gaze. He also photographed Mr. and Mrs. McNair, the coaches, and other staff members that are part of the business of professional football. Seen together, the approximately 150 photographs provide a penetrating and intimate look into the world of the Houston TEXANS. This book is being produced in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name to be held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from September 13 through December 7, 2003. Both the book and exhibition pay tribute to the football team that has taken Texas by storm.

First Down, Houston: The Birth of an NFL Franchise

Herskowitz, Mickey

Clark, Robert

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Books by Tucker, Anne Wilkes