Category Archives: Photography

Feb 17 2023
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Books, DVDs, Photography, Pop Culture

The Entertainment Forecast

Feb. 17 – Feb. 23

‘Idol’ returns, Billy Crudup sells timeshares on the moon & Monopoly’s twisted roots

Who’ll hit the jackpot on the new season of “American Idol”?

FRIDAY, Feb. 17
Hello Tomorrow
Ten-episode dramady stars Billy Crudup (from The Morning Show) as a traveling salesman in a future world offering timeshares on the moon. Far out! (Apple TV+).

Carnival Row
Second half of the final season of the fantasy drama, set in a world where humans and creatures clash and starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, starts tonight (Prime Video).

The 12th Victim
True-crime four-part docuseries sheds startling new light on an infamous 1958 case of Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, a teenage couple charged and convicted of brutally killing 11 victims at random (8 p.m., Showtime).

SATURDAY, FEB. 18
A Rose for Her Grave: The Randy Roth Story
Christell Stause, Colin Egglefield and Laura Ramsey star in this TV adaptation of a best-selling novel by true-crime author Ann Rule, about a notorious serial wife-killer and the fearless woman who final brings him to justice (8 p.m., Lifetime).

Two contestants survey their surroundings in new episodes of “Naked and Afraid.”

SUNDAY, Feb. 19
Naked and Afraid
Cue the naked bums and the pixels—it’s a new season of the ultimate survival series, which puts contestants in all kinds of inhospitable places wearing nothing but their birthday suits. Who’ll endure, and who’ll “tap out,” in Mexico’s notorious Devil’s Canyon, or the brutal jungles of Guyana? (8 p.m., Discovery Channel).

Magnum: P.I.
Re-filling the sand-filled shoes originally worn by Tom Selleck, Jay Hernandez returns for a new season of this reboot to the role of the Oahu private eye now solving crimes in the same TV universe as Hawaii Five-0 (9 p.m., NBC).

American Idol
The show that pioneered TV’s musical competition genre returns for season 21 with judges Luke Bryan, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie leading the search for America’s next singing sensation (8 p.m., ABC).

Biography: WWE Legends
In this corner… Explore the careers and private lives of wrestling superstars in this new docuseries (8 p.m., A&E).

Tournament of Champions IV
Who’s tough enough to chew their way to the top? You’ll find out in this new season of Guy Fieri’s food-competition series, in which chefs from across America clash in a series of high-stakes challenges (8 p.m., Food Network and Discovery).

MONDAY, Feb. 20
American Experience: Ruthless—Monopoly’s Secret History
And you thought the popular, iconic board game was just about moving little tokens around a square, gobbling up property deeds, buying houses and hotels and collecting rent. But the story of how it came to be, as told in this insightful documentary, is one of theft, deception and corporate double-dealing. Should we be surprised? (9 p.m., PBS).

Secrets of Spain
Where are the best stops to pause for a nosh in a trek across Spain. Siblings Giaconda and George Scott, who grew up there, take viewers on a guided tour of great places to dig into the cuisine (and the culture) of the region off the beaten tourist track (10 p.m., Cooking Channel).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Just ahead of this year’s 95th annual Academy Awards, Red Carpet Oscars (Thames & Hudson) is a lavish, photo-packed coffee-table treasury of some nine decades of fashions at the entertainment world’s biggest, most culturally impactive annual event. Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett wrote the foreword.

“Get Back” to the heyday of mop-top mania in this lavish, luminous re-release of Harry Benson’s The Beatles (Taschen), a coffee-table compendium of images (some classics, others rarely seen) by the esteemed Scotland-born photog who chronicled most of the Fab Four’s tours, TV appearances, press conferences, play times and movie productions.

TUESDAY, Feb. 21
Bodycam: On the Scene
Tonight’s episode, “Miracle Escapes,” follows officers as a suspect suddenly pulls off, with a policeman wedged half-inside, half-outside of the car, and then other officers rescue a man perilously stuck on a train track (10 p.m., Investigation Discovery).

Snowfall
Tune in for the beginning of the sixth and final season of the gritty drama series about the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic in California, and various lives it directly affected (FX and Hulu).

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 22
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal
True-story documentary series about a prominent South Carolina family whose lives start to unravel after the death of a teenager in a boating accident (Netflix).

Breaking Ground
Documentary about a Kansas neighborhood working to restore their community—and trying to “break ground” by rebuilding other Black and brown communities across the country (streaming on PBS Voices on YouTube).

THURSDAY, Feb. 23
Outer Banks
The adventure continues in tonight’s kickoff of season three of the teen mystery drama, set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, as the scrappy group known as the Pogues—washed ashore on an idyllic island—face more obstacles in tracking down the legendary treasure (Netflix).

Jabari Banks as Will as Olly Sholotan as Carlton in “Bel-Aire”

Bel-Aire
Season two of the Fresh Prince “reimagined” spinoff series begins tonight, with Jabari Banks as young Will Smith, who journeys from the mean streets of Philadelphia to the gilded, gated mansions of Hollywood (Peacock).

Sep 19 2014
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Books, Music, Photography, Pop Culture

Moving Pictures

A spectrum of boundary-crossing music photography

 Danny Clinch_Still Moving

Danny Clinch:

Still Moving

By Danny Clinch

Hardcover, 296 pages, $50 (Abrams)

 

Clinch, a preeminent music photographer and Grammy Award-nominated documentary film director, has used his camera to chronicle a spectrum of popular performers in both explosive performances and during reflective private moments for Rolling Stone, SPIN, Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ and other publications. This handsome collection of his work—with a title taken from a Willie Nelson song and featuring powerful portraits as well as more photojournalistic, fly-on-the-wall shots of a Who’s Who of boundary-crossing rock, country, blues, hip-hop and soul performers—is a visual feast for music lovers of all kinds.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Aug 28 2014
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Books, History, Photography, Pop Culture

Not-So-Simpler Times

Re-examining the era of James Dean, ‘Ozzie & Harriet,’ & ‘I Love Lucy’

The Forgotten Fifties_cover

The Forgotten Fifties

By James Conaway

Hardcover, 224 pages, $45 (Skira Rizzoli)

From the pages and archives of LOOK magazine, a publication that defined the Fifties in images and words, comes this handsome photographic celebration of the complicated, often contradictory era that transformed America’s identity through an unprecedented confluence of socio-economics, culture and politics at the end of World War II. With 200 color and black and white photos, it’s a chronological museum of memories charting the ups and downs of a nation as it finds its way through the often mixed signals of Ozzie and Harriet and I Love Lucy, John F. Kennedy, James Dean, Disneyland, suburban prosperity, urban slums and other touchstones from an era that wasn’t quite as simple as it might seem.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Aug 22 2014
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Books, Photography, Pop Culture

Go, Dog, Go

Examining the long tale of the hot dog wiener

Man Bites Dog

Man Bites Dog

By Bruce Kraig & Patty Carroll

Softcover, 200 pages, $19.95 (Rowman Publishing)

Summer is the season for hot dogs, and so it’s perfect time to check out this book going deep into the world of the wiener, exploring just how those humble little links grew up to become such powerful icons of all-American culture. The author, a respected “hot dog scholar,” examines franks from one end to the other, looking at their history and lore, the places where they’re sold, the people who market them from stands and pushcarts, and the simple, mouth-stretching pleasures they’ve always promised. Rich with information as well as color photos, it also includes 25 pages of recipes and suggested toppings.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Jul 29 2014
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Books, History, Photography

WWI in Photos

The many ways photography became a factor in first “great war”

The Great War

The Great War—The Persuasive Power of Photography

Edited By Ann Thomas / Text by Ann Thomas & Anthony Petiteau

Hardcover, 142 pages $45 (Abrams)

 

The first “great war” was a turning point for many things, and one of them was the use of photography, as both and Allied forces and their enemies employed the technology to spy, strategize, communicate, commemorate, manipulate, stir up public support for the cause, and record events for posterity. This collection of images, along with a well-researched historical narrative about the many ways photography factored into both sides of the conflict, both on the battlefields and at home, is a fascinating look at how “media” shaped the world’s perception of events long before 24-hour news came along.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Jun 30 2014
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Books, Photography, Sports

Baseball Fan-Tography

Amateur pix taken by fans shows baseball behind the scenes

Fantography_San Diego Baseball

Fantography: San Diego Baseball

By Andy Strasberg

Softcover, 128 pages, $24.99 (Arcadia Publishing)

 

The author, a lifelong baseball lover and 20-year Padres employee, presents this collection of amateur photos taken by fans (including plenty from his own collection) for a decade-by-decade snapshot of goings-on in and around the San Diego fields that were home to Hall of Famers Dave Winfield, Goose Gossage, Rickey Henderson, Ozzie Smith and Roberto Alomar. The only “fantography” rule: No photos of game action. So, instead, it’s page after page of one-of-a-kind, behind-the-scene, sideline and in-the-stands shots, showing the intense connection of fans to their hometown team, year after year, win or lose. For baseball fans of any stripe, everywhere, it’s a hit.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Jun 10 2014
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Books, Photography, Pop Culture

Now That’s Cool

Exploring the elusive concept through attitude, style and pop culture

American Cool

American Cool

By Joel Dinerstein & Frank H. Goodyear III

Hardcover, 196 pages (Prestel Publishing, $49.95)

 

Who’s cool? What’s cool? We’re not talking air temperature, but the concept, the iconic designation of attitude, style and pop-cultural transcendence. This collection of 100 chronically displayed images of “cool,” (now all on display in a special exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.), plus insightful essays, examines the ever-morphing concept of cool through a prism of personalities from early movie actors and actresses Veronica Lake, Humphrey Bogart and Greta Garbo, to contemporary stars including Johnny Depp, director Quentin Tarantino and late-night host Jon Stewart. Needless to say, it’s cool!

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Jun 03 2014
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Books, History, Photography

Window on Early America

Vintage color photos reveal nation’s late-1800s beauty

 

An American Odyssey

By Marc Walter & Sabine Arqué

Hardcover, 600 pages (Taschen, $200)

ANDO_UPDATED_2010_XL_INT_3D.TIF

Yes, it’s pricey, and if it falls on your foot, you’ll know it—it’s one seriously big, heavy book. But it’s also a thing of beauty and wonder: a stunning collection of the first color photographs ever taken of America. Produced between 1988 and 1924 and marketed as picture-postcards by the Detroit Photographic Company, these images capture people, places and goings-on from nearly every state (at that time), in stunning clarity—wide open spaces, packed city streets, cowboys and Indians, miners and mill workers, railroads and rivers—a spectacular, century-old tapestry of the United States that unfurls, page by page, like a lost scroll of some of our nation’s earliest visual treasures.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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May 30 2014
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Books, History, Photography

WWII Crash Course

Time-Life re-intros book line, promises to make ‘instant experts’

World War II in 500 Photographs

Softcover, 272 pages / $17.95 (Time-Life)

World War 2 in 50 Photographs

Marking a re-launch of the venerable Time-Life line that churned out many a bookshelf-filling volume in the 1960s and ’70s, this photo-packed chronicle of the world’s greatest conflict promises to make its audience “instant experts” through a sweeping, comprehensive mix of information and graphics. Timed for release around the 75th anniversary of the onset of WWII—and designed for a new readers accustomed to information packaged in easily digestible bits and bytes—it’s an engrossing encyclopedia of all the major personalities, conflicts and events of the war, including Pearl Harbor, D-Day and Iwo Jima, and also includes numerous stats, timelines and other data-rich features.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

 

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May 27 2014
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Books, Photography

Sun & Fun

A celebration of the joys of summer in words & pictures

Summertime

Summertime

Edited by Joanne Dugan

Hardcover, 144 pages, $29.95 / Kindle edition $12.99 (Chronicle Books)

 

Ah, summertime: Just the word itself evokes images of vacation, school-free childhood days stretching endlessly toward the horizon, sun and skies and warm-weather frolics. This lovely coffee-table collection captures the potent essence of that most special, universally nostalgic season with more than 80 photos, from a variety of photographers and depicting a spectrum of seasonal activities, with quotes and musings from writers, philosophers other notables—like St. Francis of Assisi, who noted, “A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.” Even better, of course, if that sunbeam is in the summer!

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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