A deeply affecting look at the reality of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2006-2008. Through Peter van Agtmael’s lens, a delicate humanity emerges amid the chaos and brutality of combat.

As an embedded photographer, van Agtmael follows the great sweep of the war with his camera — from graphic casualties, medical evacuations, and the aftermath of suicide bombings to moving portraits of young soldiers and their families recuperating, mourning, and surviving the harrowing consequences of war. Throughout, van Agtmael’s diaristic narrative provides context for the horrors he witnessed, while often revealing the dark, inevitable ironies that occur in an environment where the necessities of daily life are forced to intersect with unspeakable violence and death. By turns gritty, haunting, and deeply moving, the book is a document of loss — and a cogent reminder of the costs of war.

– Laura Valenti, Newspace Center for Photography

Softbound, 112 pages, 74 photographs

Sternbach makes her photographs in tintype, a labor-intensive technique little changed since it’s invention in the 1850s. Spontaneous and unpredictable, the streaks and tonal variations in the finished photographs reflect their hand-made character, the corners rubbed where they were held in the camera.

Posing on rocky outcrops, in front of uprooted trees, or on thick mats of woody flotsam, Sternbach’s surfers inhabit strange landscapes. The best of Sternbach’s photographs convey insistent longing. They are about relationships — the relationship between surfer and board, between human and landscape, between photographer and subject, and between the surfers themselves…she has discovered a new sort of home — a place without walls, defined only by belonging and the physicality of existence.

– Philip Prodger, Curator of Photography, Peabody Essex Museum

Hardbound, 80 pages, 52 photographs, cloth/embossed image on cover

Priya Kambli’s works introduce us to an unfamiliar language. These elegant statements force us to pause, to learn and utilize at least one new mode of translation. The reading requires effort; there are several distances to cross to unveil their full meanings. She applies her translation skills to images that derive meaning from cultural, inter-generational, and trans-global sources. She is making viewers — not from her family, not Indian, not first-generation immigrant — confront a set of symbols and relationships that do not fully reveal themselves on first encounter. The success of her work, however, lies in its eloquent capacity for fascination. It employs many devices; pattern, texture, screens, color, and mysterious deletions and exclusions weave a tale of vulnerability, transience, inheritance, and transformation. And the photograph as an evanescent container of memory has a vital role.

Kambli discovers her heritage in herself and her surroundings, employing a photographic strategy of longing as a means of translation. Her longing is both retrospective and anticipatory — longing for a future in which the past makes sense, in which a fragmented sense of self is made whole.

– George Slade, Independent Curator

Softbound, 64 pages, 32 photographs

The “Guardians” are former economists and dentists, engineers and singers, teachers and clerks — a corps of grandmothers perched on chairs throughout Russia’s finest museums, forming a kind of latter-day addition to artistic landscape. They are the guardians of the country’s masterpieces, but also of much more. This series of photographs reflects the singular role that these women play in both the Russian art world and society as a whole. These women occupy a significant place in Russia, purveyors of wisdom and keepers of cultural traditions. Grandmothers in some sense rule not only the museums, but also the streets.

One woman described how even on her day off, she comes to the museum to sit by a painting because it reminds her of the countryside during her childhood in Ukraine. “I’ve been working here for 10 years and it feels like one day, I love it so much,” she said.

The photographs that Freeberg took at four museums in Russia — the Hermitage and Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Tretyakov and Pushkin in Moscow — present a humanizing contrast. These guardians are not only visible, but exert a powerful hold over the viewer, in some sense helping to bring the art to life.

– Clifford J. Levy, New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief

Hardbound, 64 pages, 37 photographs, cloth/embossed image on cover, text in English and Russian

More about Guardians, click here!

Alejandro Cartagena photographs the particularities of the suburbs of Monterrey, Mexico, which are relatively new and often hastily built, reflecting a general disregard for planning. Over the years, various governmental policies resulted in new, decentralized cities with limited infrastructures where the pursuit of immediate financial gain trumped any interest in sustainability. Cartagena captures both the destruction that rapid urbanization has imposed on the landscape and the phenomenon of densely packed housing…

Ultimately Cartagena documents the chaos and destruction that result from scant or misguided urban planning. Understanding that overdevelopment is not just a local problem, he works hard as an artist to share his photographs as one clear plea for responsible, sustainable development in a rapidly changing world.

Hardbound, 108 pages, 36 color photographs. Introduction by Karen Irvine, Essay by Gerardo Montie Klint, Interview by Lisa Uddin.

Pointek’s project has a dark tenor. She readily admits that she is drawn to the uncanny, and is interested in the project having an underlying tension, a feeling of uneasiness and disturbance. However, it is not intended to be a grim essay on the effects of isolation on the human soul. Instead, Pointek believes the darkness is a powerful aspect of the human condition, one that is well-suited to express intimacy, vulnerability, and a depth of feeling. In describing the series, Pointek says, “The work is about the North, the Idea we have of the North, but in the end it is about a place we seek most of our lives…”

Pointek…is attempting to capture the essence of a place through the individuals who live there, to leave an impression, to reflect its intricacy, and to discover where the reality of the place brushes up against archetype and expectation.

Hardbound, 64 pages, 40 color photographs

Jennifer B Hudson’s book explores the tenderness of human relationships during illness and recovery. Each image is beautifully crafted and meticulously staged on hand-built sets. The viewer is transported to a world (perhaps the early 20th century?) where languishing patients are attached to antique apparatuses and fantastical, imagined medical equipment. The images are interspersed with touching, anonymous personal notes (handwritten or typed) — reminiscences of those who have tenderly watched over ailing loved ones.

While the visual language of MEDIC is imaginary, the language of love and loss is very real. The heartbreak of seeing a loved one suffer and the desire to assuage pain with a tender word and loving touch are universal. Hudson’s sensitive approach and compelling aesthetic infuse these subjects with new resonance.

Hardbound, 10” x 10”, 48 pages, 20 illustrations

Mila Teshaieva has documented the transformation of the three former Soviet republics on the shores of the Caspian Sea: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The battle for control of the region’s vast oil and gas reserves and the search for a national identity have led to far-reaching changes for the population, the environment and general social values. Teshaieva’s images reveal an atmosphere of insecurity, where people pin their hopes and expectations on a transformation whose direction remains uncertain. The photos leave the viewer with unanswered questions as to the relationship between the state and private identity, the ties between past, present and future, and how to pinpoint the boundary between a region’s rise or fall.

Essays by Christoph Moeskes, Maya Iskenderova, and Mila Teshaieva. Hardbound, 120 pages, 52 color illustrations.

Distributed by Kehrer Verlag