Taschen books you should love
Since the beginnings of Taschen Publishing in 1980 there has been an impressive growth from their original productions of Comic Books to their currently works on Photo Books.
Benedikt Taschen started out from simple origins, collecting new and rare comics.
However, in 1980, he opened up his first comic book store in Cologne, Germany at 18 years old, where he sold all that he had collected.
Then he published his first book, Sally Forth.
He stabilized his team with a man for worldwide distribution, an administration man, and himself running the company.
They celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2010, still going strong!
Let’s see some of Taschen’s most interesting works :)
Alfred Stieglitz was a photographer, writer, publisher and a curator.
He founded the Photo-Secession movement when wanting to advance the creative possibilities of photography.
In 1903, he started publishing Camera Work as a magazine.
Later on, all of the magazine’s pictures were put into a photo book published by Taschen: Camera Work by Alfred Stieglitz.
Mario Testino is known by many to be one of the most exclusive photographers for fashion and celebrities.
What made him so famous with royalty and celebrities was his portraits of Princess Diana of Wales in 1997.
Testino has shot editorials for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and GQ.
Private View by Mario Testino, however, includes images of Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, as well as others.
He expresses his art using attitude and style, distinctly classic with a hint of contemporary glamour.
Taschen, usually only publishing 100 books a year, has published several photo books from Testino.
Jim Heimann spent over three years taking pictures about surfing creating a collection of 900 images into this one book.
He not only charts the evolution of the sport but also shows the lifestyles of surfers as well as the philosophy behind it.
Surfing by Jim Heimann has five chapters, starting out by tracing the first European contact in 1778 all the way up until today.
He searched collections, institutions, as well as archives from everywhere around the world. Heimann also includes essays about the sport.
With more than 250 million practitioners of Yoga for the physical, spiritual, and mindful practice that is now world wide compared to the thousand year journey from monasteries in the Himalayas.
It is this recent boom that made Michael O’Neill want to photograph this important junction in the history of Yoga.
While O’Neill is known for photographing famous people, he went to photograph the most influential yogis of this generation including B.K.S. Iyengar, Shri K. Pattabhi Jois and Colleen Saidman.
This one project took over ten years to complete as O’Neill traveled around the world to traditional monasteries and much less known dedicated-to-the-art spots to discover the history of yoga.
O’Neill breaks a record in On Yoga, including over 200 images that many people would only dream of.
He includes the history of yoga as well as it is today.
Two important masters of meditation even include essays on yoga in today’s life as well as the history.
The last volume in LaChapelle’s trilogy is Heaven to Hell after starting out with LaChapelle Land in 1996.
Unlike the first two volumes in this trilogy, Heaven to Hell by David LaChapelle has twice as many photographs using his ability to focus on the lens of issues in today’s societal concern.
David LaChapelle uses some of the most famous faces on the planet and asks us how we feel about our relationships with gender, glamour, and status.
Instead of showing apocalyptic messages, he shows why celebration is required.
He is indeed contemporary photography.
Taking who the world is today and showing it the ups and the downs of society.
