Random House New Releases - Photography - Subjects & Themes - Historical

Caffe Lena by Tim Robbins

2013-10-08T00:30:00-05:00

Caffe Lena Inside America's Legendary Folk Music Coffeehouse
Written by Jocelyn Arem
Photographed by Joe Alper
Foreword by Tim Robbins

Hardcover, 296 pages | powerHouse Books | Music - Folk & Traditional; Photography - Subjects & Themes - Historical | $49.95 | 978-1-57687-652-7 (1-57687-652-7)

In 1960, burgeoning actress and defiant dreamer Lena Spencer opened a small, grassroots coffeehouse in the quaint upstate New York town of Saratoga Springs. Within her then-husband’s plan to start the Caffè as a means for the couple to artistically flourish while “making enough money to retire in Europe” lay the seed of a more impactful cultural contribution that would change music history forever. It was a time in America when a coffeehouse could be something more—a focal point for a different sort of people, radical new ideas, and notably, emerging artists. Caffè Lena’s humble stage regularly welcomed musicians such as a young Bob Dylan in 1961, the singer/activist Bernice Johnson Reagon in 1962, and a pre-“American Pie” Don McLean in 1965. Quickly, Caffè Lena took its place among the nation’s foremost incubators of an American folk movement that inspired a generation of musicians, artists, and thinkers and a country in need of a new vision of equality, freedom, and understanding.

Fortunately for posterity, camera shutters were often snapping in time to the music, and so an intimate visual record of Caffè Lena’s early years exists. Now, thanks to years of dedicated digging and detective work by the Caffè Lena History Project—to unearth Lena’s secret memoirs, collaborating with photographers to identify and rescue mysterious negatives, and collecting stories from the original artists to highlight these materials—the time has come to share this treasure trove of authentic and rare Americana with the world. Caffè Lena: Inside America’s Legendary Folk Music Coffeehouse brings more than 200 never before seen, evocative images and stories to the public. Early 1960s photographs of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger and modern-day images of Rufus Wainwright and Patty Larkin blend with rare memorabilia and an oral history derived from more than 100 original interviews of artists who have graced Caffè Lena’s stage over the decades, including Ani DiFranco, Utah Phillips, Dave Van Ronk, Spalding Gray, and other luminaries of the folk, blues, jazz, and theater worlds.

This exclusive time capsule chronicling the heyday of Caffè Lena—now the country’s oldest continuously operational folk music coffeehouse—provides an insightful look at the many artists whose poetic lyrics cast a mesmerizing spell over a generation, and who remain beloved today.

“Caffè Lena holds an important place in the folk and traditional music communities. For me it was the gateway to so many things I hold dear about music.”
—Scott Goldman, The GRAMMY Foundation

“The story of Caffè Lena is the secret history of the folk-music scene. Lena was a pioneering woman in a man's world and her story needs to be told.”
—Holly George-Warren, The Road to Woodstock

“Lena Spencer was a rare person with a shining spirit who created a small world of her own. The magic of her Caffè cannot be analyzed, computerized, or explained.”
—David Amram, Musician

Che's Afterlife by Michael J. Casey

2012-06-06T00:30:00-05:00

Che's Afterlife The Legacy of an Image
Written by Michael J. Casey

eBook, 400 pages | Vintage | Photography - Subjects & Themes - Historical; History - Latin America; Political Science - Globalization | $11.99 | 978-0-307-80765-6 (0-307-80765-7)

In 1960, Cuban photographer Alberto Korda captured fabled revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara in what has become history's most reproduced photo. Now Michael Casey tells the remarkable story of this image, detailing its evolution from a casual snapshot to an omnipresent graphic—plastered on everything from T-shirts to vodka to condoms—and into a copyrighted brand. As Casey follows it across the Americas and through cyberspace, he finds governments exploiting it and their dissenters attacking it, merchants selling it and tourists buying it. We see how this image is, ultimately, a mercurial icon that still ignites passion—and a reflection of how we view ourselves.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Pilgrimage by Doris Kearns Goodwin

2011-11-08T00:30:00-05:00

Pilgrimage
Written by Annie Leibovitz
Introduction by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Hardcover, 246 pages | Random House | Photography - Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions; Photography - Subjects & Themes - Historical | $50.00 | 978-0-375-50508-9 (0-375-50508-3)

Pilgrimage took Annie Leibovitz to places that she could explore with no agenda. She wasn’t on assignment. She chose the subjects simply because they meant something to her. The first place was Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts, which Leibovitz visited with a small digital camera. A few months later, she went with her three young children to Niagara Falls. “That’s when I started making lists,” she says. She added the houses of Virginia Woolf and Charles Darwin in the English countryside and Sigmund Freud’s final home, in London, but most of the places on the lists were American. The work became more ambitious as Leibovitz discovered that she wanted to photograph objects as well as rooms and landscapes. She began to use more sophisticated cameras and a tripod and to travel with an assistant, but the project remained personal.

Leibovitz went to Concord to photograph the site of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. Once she got there, she was drawn into the wider world of the Concord writers. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s home and Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott and her family lived and worked, became subjects. The Massachusetts studio of the Beaux Arts sculptor Daniel Chester French, who made the seated statue in the Lincoln Memorial, became the touchstone for trips to Gettysburg and to the archives where the glass negatives of Lincoln’s portraits have been saved. Lincoln’s portraitists—principally Alexander Gardner and the photographers in Mathew Brady’s studio—were also the men whose work at the Gettysburg battlefield established the foundation for war photography. At almost exactly the same time, in a remote, primitive studio on the Isle of Wight, Julia Margaret Cameron was developing her own ultimately influential style of portraiture. Leibovitz made two trips to the Isle of Wight and, in an homage to the other photographer on her list, Ansel Adams, she explored the trails above the Yosemite Valley, where Adams worked for fifty years.

The final list of subjects is perhaps a bit eccentric. Georgia O’Keeffe and Eleanor Roosevelt but also Elvis Presley and Annie Oakley, among others. Figurative imagery gives way to the abstractions of Old Faithful and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Pilgrimage was a restorative project for Leibovitz, and the arc of the narrative is her own. “From the beginning, when I was watching my children stand mesmerized over Niagara Falls, it was an exercise in renewal,” she says. “It taught me to see again.”

Memory Remains by Francesc Torres

2011-08-16T00:30:00-05:00

Memory Remains 9/11 Artifacts at Hangar 17
Photographed by Francesc Torres

Hardcover, 192 pages | National Geographic | Photography - Photo Essays; History - United States - 21St Century; Photography - Subjects & Themes - Historical | $50.00 | 978-1-4262-0833-1 (1-4262-0833-2)

This large landscape-format book, exquisitely designed and produced, features the remarkable photography created by Spanish artist Francesc Torres, who was granted special access to visit JFK International Airport's Hangar 17 after it became the repository for all significant non-human materials salvaged from the site of the World Trade Center after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. With his lifelong interest in questions of human memory and meaning, Torres creates photographs that turn twisted steel or smashed ambulances into objects of contemplation and wonder. Accompanying his chilling photography are several pieces of writing that address the question of what place the memory of 9/11 will take in the history of the United States and the world. Newsweek senior editor Jerry Adler writes the primary text of the book, explaining how the remains of Ground Zero came to be carried to Hangar 17 and what happened to them there. Torres himself, at home in lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001, writes a memory piece on that day and his feelings in the presence of the twisted remains months later. Yale historian David Blight offers a piece on how 9/11 will reshape American history. The book also includes a statement by the curator of the forthcoming 9/11 Museum at the World Trade Center, where some of these pieces will be displayed.

Che's Afterlife by Michael J. Casey

2009-04-07T00:30:00-05:00

Che's Afterlife The Legacy of an Image
Written by Michael J. Casey

Trade Paperback, 400 pages | Vintage | Photography - Subjects & Themes - Historical; History - Latin America; Political Science - Globalization | $15.95 | 978-0-307-27930-9 (0-307-27930-8)

Picturing Poverty by Cara A. Finnegan

2003-03-17T00:30:00-05:00

Picturing Poverty Print Culture and FSA Photographs
Written by Cara A. Finnegan

Hardcover, 260 pages | Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press | History - United States - 20th Century; Photography - Subjects & Themes - Historical; Social Science - Media Studies | $39.95 | 978-1-58834-118-1 (1-58834-118-6)

Working for the government's Farm Security Administration in the 1930s, photographers set out across the country to capture the human face of the Depression. Walker Evans' portraits of sharecroppers and Dorothea Lange's images of migrant families today stand as the most popular images from the FSA's project. Yet, in their own time, the pictures functioned as urgent, powerful reminders that one-third of the nation was in a real crisis. Focusing on these and other well-known FSA photographs, Finnegan examines how popular magazines constructed complex and often contradictory messages about poverty. Picturing Poverty also explores a moment in American history when visual images took center stage as the nation struggled with economic, political, and social strife. By striving to understand the original context of the photographs, Finnegan shines new light on the meanings of poverty, the Depression, and the various roles of the media. At once a persuasive analysis of FSA images and a balanced commentary on the role of the media, Picturing Poverty is above all a look into the difficult issue of how the mass media presents social issues to Americans.

Random House New Releases - Photography - Subjects & Themes - Historical

Caffe Lena by Tim Robbins

Caffe Lena Inside America's Legendary Folk Music CoffeehouseWritten by Jocelyn Arem Photographed by Joe Alper Foreword by Tim Robbins

Che's Afterlife by Michael J. Casey

Che's Afterlife The Legacy of an ImageWritten by Michael J. Casey

Pilgrimage by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Pilgrimage Written by Annie Leibovitz Introduction by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Memory Remains by Francesc Torres

Memory Remains 9/11 Artifacts at Hangar 17Photographed by Francesc Torres

Che's Afterlife by Michael J. Casey

Che's Afterlife The Legacy of an ImageWritten by Michael J. Casey

Picturing Poverty by Cara A. Finnegan

Picturing Poverty Print Culture and FSA PhotographsWritten by Cara A. Finnegan

Caffe Lena Inside America's Legendary Folk Music Coffeehouse
Written by Jocelyn Arem
Photographed by Joe Alper
Foreword by Tim Robbins

Che's Afterlife The Legacy of an Image
Written by Michael J. Casey

Pilgrimage
Written by Annie Leibovitz
Introduction by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Memory Remains 9/11 Artifacts at Hangar 17
Photographed by Francesc Torres

Che's Afterlife The Legacy of an Image
Written by Michael J. Casey

Picturing Poverty Print Culture and FSA Photographs
Written by Cara A. Finnegan