With more than 150 never-before-published duotone images, taken between 1892 and 1930, this collection explores the history of the Chicago River and the impact its reversal had on the watershed all the way to the Mississippi River. Offering the most complete description available of the river reversal, the stories told here provide a better understanding as to how it was done and why it was necessary, as well as how the water from the Chicago River is treated. The photographs were pulled from a glass plate photo collection taken by the Sanitary District of Chicago.

The Lost Panoramas: When Chicago Changed its River and the Land Beyond

Arts & Photography

Cahan, Richard

WILLIAMS, Michael

Photography & Video

CityFiles Press

Since the first snapshots were taken in 1888, Americans have used simple, inexpensive cameras to record their life stories. In the process, they have left behind millions of pictures that document the story of America. Now, for the first time, these personal photographs have been gathered together to tell the nation's history.

Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America

Osborn, Nicholas

Richard Nickel is an urban legend of sorts. He is remembered for his brave and lonely stand to protect Chicago's great architecture, and for his dramatic death in the rubble of the Stock Exchange Building. He is remembered, too, for the photographs he left behind. This is a book about one man's relationship with his city, a remarkably personal story told through compelling photographs. Richard Nickel's Chicago is for people who love the city, and for people all over the world who value city life.

Richard Nickel's Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City

Individual Artists

Chicago: City on the Move

Williams, Michael and Richard Cahan and Bruce Moffat

Embracing old-world skills in a technological age, Edgar Miller was Chicago’s last Renaissance artist. He was a fine painter, a master wood carver, and one of the nation’s foremost stained glass designers. He could sculpt, draw hunting portraits, and was considered a pioneer in the use of graphic art in modern advertising. His artistic genius came together in four artistic studios he built on Chicago’s north side in the 1920s and 1930s. He touched almost every inch of the studios with daring and surprise. He took rustic brick, crude stone, salvaged tile, found glass, steel, and wood, then Edgarized” the homes with stained glass windows, frescos, murals, tile work, and wood carving. This collection contains over 400 images of the homes, which remarkably remain intact today.

Edgar Miller and the Hand-Made Home: Chicago's Forgotten Renaissance Man

IPPY Award Gold Medalist for Great Lakes: Best Regional Non-Fiction
With more than 150 never-before-published duotone images, taken between 1892 and 1930, this collection explores the history of the Chicago River and the impact its reversal had on the watershed all the way to the Mississippi River. Offering the most complete description available of the river reversal, the stories told here provide a better understanding as to how it was done and why it was necessary, as well as how the water from the Chicago River is treated. The photographs were pulled from a glass plate photo collection taken by the Sanitary District of Chicago.

Like the art of Maya Romanoff, this book is awash in colors, surprises, and new ideas that will open the readers' eyes to the possibilities of interior spaces. It charts the rise and showcases the work of the man once known as Multifarious Maya, who burst onto the American design scene as a wunderkind in the 1960s when he took his quirky obsession with hand-dyeing fabric and created a line of high-fashion clothes. Fast Company magazine dubbed him “the man who made tie-dye hip for non-hippies.” Then he switched to embellishing entire rooms to create spectacular spaces—walls, ceilings, and floors—never before imagined. Space is his grand canvas. Like British designer William Morris more than a century before, Romanoff believes in the value of handcrafted art. He works with artisans all over the world to create one-of-a-kind designs. Fittingly, each book is wrapped in handmade paper made in Romanoff's Chicago factory.

Multifarious: Maya Romanoff's Grand Canvas

Architecture

Presenting her breathtaking photographs alongside revealing interviews with those who knew her best, this volume is the first attempt to put Vivian Maier's work in context and create a moving portrait of her as an artist. Though she created more than 120,000 negatives during her lifetime, only a few were ever seen by others. Shortly after her death in 2009, the first group of her unseen photographs--gritty with humanity and filled with empathy and beauty--were shown online. What followed was a firestorm of attention, catapulting Maier from previous obscurity to being labeled as one of the masters of street photography. Her work has appeared in numerous museum exhibits and a feature-length documentary on her life and art has already been planned. Features more than 300 duotone photos printed on 105# paper with flood varnish.

Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows

Since her death in 2009, Vivian Maier has become a photographic phenomenon. Her story—thousands of photo negatives and prints found in a storage locker and sold for pennies at auction—has stirred millions around the world. Maier was a painfully private woman who now speaks powerfully through the photographs she took only for herself. This new collection offers readers a chance to follow Maier as she travels the world, including images of France, Italy, Malaysia, Yemen, Puerto Rico, and America. These eye-to-eye portraits, published for the first time, are the single constant in her lifetime of photographic work. Maier is often cast as a quirky, antisocial character, moving on the outskirts of real connection. But these photographs show something more. Printed with the latest technology, the book utilizes a modified four-color process that produces images akin to traditional silver gelatin prints. Combined with 15u stochastic screening, Maier's 96 photographs in this volume are spectacularly sharp, full-range black-and-white reproductions.

Eye to Eye: Photographs by Vivian Maier

For more than a decade, Paul Kitagaki Jr. has been reliving the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. More than 110,000 ethnic Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes at the start of World War II and transported to desolate detention centers after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in early 1942. Paul Kitagaki’s parents and grandparents were part of that group, but they never talked about their experience. To better understand, Kitagaki tracked down the subjects of more than sixty photographs taken by Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams and other photographers. This book is a result of that work, which took Kitagaki on a ten-year pilgrimage around the country photographing survivors of camps. Using black-and-white film and a large-format camera similar to the equipment of photographers in the 1940s, Kitagaki sought to mirror and complement photographs taken during World War II―while revealing the strength and perseverance of the subjects. He photographed and interviewed the subjects or their children to discover who was in the pictures. Some wanted to forget; some wanted to remember. Some lost everything; some found new direction. He heard stories about heroic soldiers and those unwilling to fight for a country that put them behind barbed wire. Each person has something to say. Each adds their unique personal history. They all are determined to make sure it never happens again.

Behind Barbed Wire: Searching for Japanese Americans Incarcerated During World War II

Kitagaki Jr., Paul

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the CityFiles Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by CityFiles Press

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the CityFiles Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Lost Panoramas: When Chicago Changed its River and the Land Beyond

Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America

Richard Nickel's Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City

Chicago: City on the Move

Edgar Miller and the Hand-Made Home: Chicago's Forgotten Renaissance Man

The Lost Panoramas: When Chicago Changed its River and the Land Beyond

Multifarious: Maya Romanoff's Grand Canvas

Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows

Eye to Eye: Photographs by Vivian Maier

Behind Barbed Wire: Searching for Japanese Americans Incarcerated During World War II