An impressive work not only for botany enthusiasts and students of Japanese culture, but for all lovers of striking...
A debut volume offers an intimate look at the beauty of the bonsai tree.
The importance of bonsai as a cornerstone of traditional Japanese culture cannot be overstated. This collection features more than 70 color photographs taken at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum in Washington, D.C. By means of a brief foreword, Voss explains his relationship with these particular specimens over the course of nearly two decades: “From my first glimpse of the trees all those years ago, I knew implicitly that there was something to be learned from them, from their endurance and quiet dignity.” These photographs are so vivid that readers may momentarily forget that they are viewing two-dimensional images. In addition to the shades of green, brown, and gray that one might expect to see, there are also a few surprising splashes of other colors throughout the book. The title refers to the term used for the maintenance and shaping of bonsai trees. Voss wisely employs minimal text, thereby keeping the focus on his images, where one feels a sense of history and movement in the trunks and branches. Captions, formatted discreetly in the margins, reveal the year training began (if known) for each specimen along with its Latin and English names. The author helpfully provides an index where readers can find additional information about a particular specimen of interest. Some of the bonsai pictured have been in training for over a century, and one in particular, a Japanese white pine, dates back to 1625. This volume also contains a short but powerful afterword by Michael Hagedorn, author of Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk. Based on these remarkable images, it’s easy to see how Voss was captivated by the bonsai’s meditative tranquility. Clearly, the author achieves his goal of conveying, in his words, “their grace in the passage of time, their peace and the invitation they extend to include oneself in the natural order of things.”
An impressive work not only for botany enthusiasts and students of Japanese culture, but for all lovers of striking photography as well.Pub Date: June 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-58516-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Stephen Voss Photography
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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