A striking collection of images that ably spotlight the balletic artistry of board sports.
Skateboarders and surfers defy gravity on a California beach in this vibrant photography book.
Averill, a photographer, surfer, and skateboarder, collects 10 years of his photos from the Venice, California, beach, which hosts an iconic surf culture as well as a thriving beachside skateboarding park (which, alas, is currently buried in sand because of COVID-19 restrictions). The setting offers a wealth of resonant visual juxtapositions. The ocean pictures feature surfers riding roughly 4-to-12-foot waves that curl into translucent green-blue pipes amid gorgeous beachscapes, where sea and sun mesh to drape the hills in a golden mist. The skateboard park is a riotous sea, frozen in stone, shaped in curves and undulations, and surfaced in perfectly smooth, gray concrete; it’s a terrain that looks simultaneously austere and sensuous through Averill’s lens. (A few photos cover excursions to grungier Los Angeles skateboarding sites, including a giant drainpipe and an abandoned swimming pool.) In part, the photos are an engaging fashion catalog; the surfers seem somewhat buttoned-down in their neoprene wetsuit uniforms, but the skateboarders feature a profusion of long hair and dreadlocks inside no-nonsense helmets and bulky padding on top of floridly tattooed skin, open to the sky. (Bridging the divide is a classic California tableau of a blond-haired woman in a bikini gliding along on a skateboard—while carrying a surfboard.) Still, there’s much commonality in the athleticism of surfers and skateboarders as they thread their ways along vertical surfaces and rocket off of them. Averill’s skateboard photos are particularly vivid in their portraits of elegant aerobatics; he captures the skaters high in midair, sometimes sideways or upside down, clinging nonchalantly—or not at all—to their flimsy boards. Their postures are crouched and twisted with spindly arms flung out for balance, yet poised and perfectly at ease. The result is a captivating vision of grace.
A striking collection of images that ably spotlight the balletic artistry of board sports.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73337-370-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: The Hesperium Group, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
