'The Art of the American Snapshot' examines the evolution of this most common form of photography. The book shows that among the countless snapshots taken by American amateurs, some works, through intention or accident, continue to resonate long after their intimate context and original meaning have been lost.

"Collection of pictures gathered by the authors during a two-year search in which they canvassed neighborhoods and knocked on people's doors, asking to see people's dusty albums and yellowing scrapbooks."--From jacket flap

In Soldier Snapshots Jay Mechling explores how American men socially construct their performance of masculinity in everyday life in all-male friendship groups during their service in the military. The evidence Mechling analyzes is a collection of vernacular photographs, “snapshots,” of and by American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and aviators. Since almost all of the snapshots are photographs taken of men by other men, this book offers a unique view into the social construction, performance, and repair of American masculinity. Mechling guides the reader from the snapshots to ideas about the everyday lives of male soldiers to ideas about the lives of men in groups to ideas about American culture. In his introduction Mechling offers his thoughts about how to undertake the interdisciplinary study of American culture; he draws from history, folklore, anthropology, sociology, rhetoric, psychology, gender and sexuality studies, ethnic studies, popular culture studies, and visual studies to reveal the intricacies of how men use their folk practices in an all-male group to manage the paradoxes of their friendship and comradeship under sometimes stressful conditions. Soldier Snapshots begins with a brief history of war photography and establishes the nature of vernacular photography: the snapshot. This is followed by a jargon-free discussion of the key ideas about masculinity and the vernacular practices of men in groups, exploring male friendship, the important role of play in men’s relationships, and the ways “animal buddies” adopted by male friendship groups actually tell us even more about male friendship and issues of trust. In the final section Mechling’s careful analysis reveals how the men employ different folk practices—including rough-and-tumble playfighting, building human pyramids, bathing naked in public, cross-dressing, hazing, and gallows humor—in order to manage their relationships. Regardless of the man’s sexual orientation and sexual identity, the strong heterosexual norm in the military means that the men must find ways to understand and even enact or perform their feelings of bonding while still defining those feelings and acts as heterosexual.

An examination of the contradictions within a form of expression that is both public and private, specific and abstract, conventional and countercultural. Snapshots capture everyday occasions. Taken by amateur photographers with simple point-and-shoot cameras, snapshots often commemorate something that is private and personal; yet they also reflect widely held cultural conventions. The poses may be formulaic, but a photograph of loved ones can evoke a deep affective response. In Snapshot Photography, Catherine Zuromskis examines the development of a form of visual expression that is both public and private. Scholars of art and culture tend to discount snapshot photography; it is too ubiquitous, too unremarkable, too personal. Zuromskis argues for its significance. Snapshot photographers, she contends, are not so much creating spontaneous records of their lives as they are participating in a prescriptive cultural ritual. A snapshot is not only a record of interpersonal intimacy but also a means of linking private symbols of domestic harmony to public ideas of social conformity. Through a series of case studies, Zuromskis explores the social life of snapshot photography in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century. She examines the treatment of snapshot photography in the 2002 film One Hour Photo and in the television crime drama Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; the growing interest of collectors and museum curators in “vintage” snapshots; and the “snapshot aesthetic” of Andy Warhol and Nan Goldin. She finds that Warhol’s photographs of the Factory community and Goldin’s intense and intimate photographs of friends and family use the conventions of the snapshot to celebrate an alternate version of “family values.” In today’s digital age, snapshot photography has become even more ubiquitous and ephemeral—and, significantly, more public. But buried within snapshot photography’s mythic construction, Zuromskis argues, is a site of democratic possibility.

The New York Times #1 best-selling series. Includes 3 novels by Ransom Riggs and 12 peculiar photographs. Together for the first time, here is the #1 New York Times best seller Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and its two sequels, Hollow City and Library of Souls. All three hardcovers are packaged in a beautifully designed slipcase. Also included: a special collector's envelope of twelve peculiar photographs, highlighting the most memorable moments of this extraordinary three-volume fantasy. MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN: A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in this groundbreaking novel, which mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling new kind of reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. HOLLOW CITY: September 3, 1940. Ten peculiar children flee an army of deadly monsters. And only one person can help them—but she's trapped in the body of a bird. The extraordinary adventure continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. LIBRARY OF SOULS: A boy, a girl, and a talking dog. They're all that stands between the sinister wights and the future of peculiar children everywhere. Jacob Portman ventures through history one last time to rescue the peculiar children from a heavily guarded fortress. He's joined by girlfriend and firestarter Emma Bloom, canine companion Addison MacHenry, and some very unexpected allies.

The Lebanese photographer Marie al-Khazen seized every opportunity to use her camera during the years that she was active between 1920 and 1940. She not only documented her travels around tourist sites in Lebanon but also sought creative experimentation with her camera by staging scenes, manipulating shadows, and superimposing negatives to produce different effects in her prints. Within her photographs, bedouins and European friends, peasants and landlords, men and women comfortably share the same space. Her photographs include an intriguing collection portraying her family and friends living their everyday lives in 1920s and '30s Zgharta, a village in the north of Lebanon. Yasmine Nachabe Taan explores these photographs, emphasizing the ways in which notions of gender and class are inscribed within them and revealing how they are charged with symbols of women's emancipation to today's viewers, through women's presence as individuals, separate from family restrictions of that time. Images in which women are depicted smoking cigarettes, driving cars, riding horses, and accompanying men on hunting trips counteract the common ways in which women were portrayed in contemporary Lebanon.

During the nineteeth century, something vital went missing: the human being. In Unsuspecting Souls, Barry Sanders examines modern society's indifference to the individual. From the Industrial Revolution, where the disappearance of care for human beings begins slowly, to our own age, where societal events require less person–to–person interaction, Sanders laments that what makes us most human is slowly dying. Our days are filled with little but a continuous bombardment of "information," demands on our attention, that brings us out of our world and into one of inhumanity and abstraction. We are losing entirely any palpable attachment to our physical reality. And we've also lost the original sense of a collective consciousness. This loss has been fomenting for two centuries now, dating back to the rise of European powers and worldwide colonization. This has led to the notion that we need to define what is torture, an idea that not long ago would have seemed absurd, and need to pick our poisons among several forms of radical fundamentalisms, each one not only a threat to the other but a threat to humanity itself. From Edgar Allen Poe to Abu Ghraib, this is a fascinating and worrisome story, impeccably researched and compellingly written.