Deborah Klochko Livres

Eden or paradise, that place of perfect happiness, is an ideal that resonates across times and cultures. Picturing Eden assembles the work of contemporary photographers looking for their own paradises, some from a place of contemplation and restoration, some from a place of loneliness and despair. The differences between the heavens they seek and the comparatively dark, messy earth they are limited to charge their work with both political and environmental concerns--this is no heaven. And yet sometimes they make it seem so. By looking at the notion of paradise and the garden through the photographic lens, the book highlights the original lost innocence and the ongoing significance of a humanistic environment, and considers paradise's place in the history of art. Picturing Eden includes work from Adam Fuss, Alec Soth, Doug and Mike Starn and Sally Mann among others.

Founded by Ansel Adams, directed by Minor White, and staffed by such luminaries as Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model, and Edward Weston, the first fine-art photography department in the United States was created in 1946 at the California School of Fine Arts (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute). Under White's leadership and against a backdrop of revolutions in photography as an art form, this dynamic faculty developed the modern photography curriculum, bringing a new academic pedigree to the medium and establishing the future of photography education. The Moment of Seeing is much more than a history of the program and those who comprised it. Including White's never-before-published writings on the teaching of photography, it is also a rich gallery of iconic images by both renowned faculty members and the dedicated students they taught.