An eclectic group of photography books:
The Bathers, photographed by Jennette Williams (Duke University Press, $39.95, 9780822346234/0822346230, November 2009) 
Over a period of eight years, Williams photographed women bathers in the historic baths of Istanbul and Budapest. Her platinum prints are both sensual and ethereal, and if some of the scenes look familiar, it's because she alludes to classic images of women in paintings. Williams hopes to present a different way of viewing the female form, "women unabashedly at ease in displaying their bodies transformed by age, circumstance and gravity."
Hard Knocks: Rolling with the Derby Girls, photographed by Shelley Calton (Kehrer Verlag, $38, 9783868280548/3868280545, September 2009) 
Calton says, "Derby is really about empowered women breaking barriers and creating new boundaries." Yes, indeed, with their elbows and knees and sharp hips. These women rock 'n' roll, with names like Vanna Whitetrash, Flame & Rage and Hardcora. Women putting on lipstick, hooking stockings to garter belts, skating, falling, screaming and, finally, celebrating--the black-and-white photographs seem to come with a soundtrack, they are so immediate and real.
Gray Land: Soldiers on War by Barry Goldstein (Norton, $29.95, 9780393072969/0393072967, November 2009) 
Goldstein spent two years photographing and interviewing more than 59 members of an armored battalion. The photographs are stunning and spare, as are the interviews. Lt. Col. Kathy Platoni, combat psychologist: "You just can't keep the multiple ways people died over here straight... PTSD is rampant. Soldiers who have horrific and death-defying injuries are being billed by the Pentagon." Capt. Tracy Kerr, chaplain: "I don't get paid to cry. I get paid to perform. Not being able to cry is what I do here." Capt. Joseph Peppers: "This is my thirty-fourth month in Iraq... I'm really tired... drained... you can't fight a war forever. It will ruin you inside. It will ruin you. There is no glory in any of this." Staff Sgt. Thomas Taylor: "There is no other place I would rather be than right here... it is still a brotherhood in every sense of the word."
Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals, photographed by Christopher Payne, essay by Oliver Sacks (MIT Press, $39.95, 9780262013499/0262013495, September 2009) 
The barbershop at St. Lawrence State Hospital, with sea-green walls and white trim, looks innocuous; the autopsy theater at St. Elizabeth's Hospital looks ominous. Unused grave markers and cemeteries are unbearably sad, witness to the horror and neglect that was inevitable in most places. "If my heart could speak, I'm sure it would say, I wish I were someplace else today," reads a patient's poem written on a basement wall. The "grandiose but melancholy architecture" is stately yet horrifying--the Buffalo State Hospital, photographed at night, looks like a movie set for an old-fashioned vampire story. Asylum is a "heart-breaking testimony both to the pain of those with severe mental illness and to the once-heroic structures we built to try to assuage that pain."
A Journey Through Literary America by Thomas R. Hummel, photography by Tamra L. Dempsey (Val de Grâce Books, $45, 9780981742519/0981742513, October 2009) 
This absolutely gorgeous book belongs in every book lover's library. Beginning with Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, ending with E. Annie Proulx and Richard Ford, Thomas Hummel examines the relationship between place and an author's identity, writing about 26 authors, with brief biographies and excerpts of their prose. Tamra Dempsey's photographs are the perfect enhancement to Hummel's essays. Willa Cather is evoked with golden prairies and a farmhouse in a sunset-red sky; Langston Hughes with brownstones and Bailey's Funeral Home in Harlem; Raymond Carver with the site of his childhood home in Yakima ("living on a staple of bitterness") and the Cornerhouse Restaurant and the marina in Port Angeles.
Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild, photography by Michael Forsberg (University of Chicago Press, $45, 9780226257259/0226257258, October 2009) 
The Great Plains region is the most endangered and least protected ecosystem in North America, although these haunting, beautiful, majestic photographs seem to belie that statement; nevertheless, it's true, and if this magnificent book inspires people to do their best to save it, all the better. In the meantime, the book is a feast. Fox kits play, backlit by the sun; a cougar slinks away in the night; in the Nebraska Sandhills a wall cloud highlights a windmill against a peach sky; bison leave tracks in the snow; the highly social black-tailed prairie dogs greet the morning, and each other, with kisses and grooming. Fabulous.
Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle by Michael Benson (Abrams, $55, 9780810949485/0810949482, October 2009) 
Michael Benson has collected images of space from world observatories and from space ("from space"--that still is so incredible), some of them well-known, many that have never been published. Even with familiarity, they still have the ability to astonish and astound. How could one ever get tired of the Carina Nebula? Or the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, or the Pelican Nebula? Truly, it seems as if we are witnessing our very creation. Not just for astronomy aficionados, this is a book for dreamers and poets.
A Shadow Falls, photographed by Nick Brandt (Abrams, $50, 9780810954151/081095415X, September 2009) 
Nick Brandt continues his project to photograph the landscape and animals of East Africa with this magnificent volume. The photos are lush, elegant and often noble. Some are so intimate they appear to be studio shots but are not. Two entwined giraffes, a zebra perfectly reflected in water, a lion with a wind-blown mane, regal elephants--all are captured in masterful images.
The Bears in My Life: A Collection by Jon Henri McCracken (Bennett & Hastings, $49.95, 9781934733394/1934733393, October 2009) 
McCracken has been collecting bear images since childhood, and this almost-200 page coffee-table book is the result. More carved bears than you'd think would be possible, and that's not all--a North Borneo baby carrier with sun bear teeth, a wine bottle stopper and a fine collection of book covers, illustrations and postcards. He writes about tourism and bear images, bears in different cultures, bear worship and, sadly, bear genocide. In this slightly off-beat book for bear lovers and collectors, it's easy to get caught up in McCracken's "never ending passion for Bear."
