Photo Book Pick of the Day: Events of the Social, Portraiture and Collective Agency

Events of the Social:
Portraiture and Collective Agency

African Photography from The Walther Collection

This delightful photo-essay catalog focuses on themes of gender, race, class and social change across three generations of African photography.

Events of the Social is a comprehensive investigation into photographic works by artists from the African continent and its diaspora. Taking the politics of the “colonial gaze” as its starting point, the book looks at the diverse complexity of the nineteenth-century archive through a selection of vintage portraits, cartes de visite, postcards and album pages.

Grace Ndiritu, “Lying Down Textiles,” from the series Still Life , 2005-2007

Three generations of African artists from the 1940s till now then chart the changing features of African societies through portraiture, exploring notions of the self, gender, sexuality, race, social status and politics. The book also examines landscape and the built environment, showing how architecture and spatial planning convey social order and ideology while reflecting experiences of migration, colonialism, war and industrialization.

Dawit L. Petros, “Untitled (Prologue II),” from the series The Stranger’s Notebook , 201. © The artist.

Another group of artists, born after the mid-1970s, explores issues of social identity, lineage, questions of belonging and personal experiences. Artists featured include Sammy Baloji, Jodi Bieber, Mimi Cherono Ng’ok, Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, David Goldblatt, Seydou Keïta, Zanele Muholi, Malick Sidibé and Mikhael Subotzky.

Co-published with The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm / New York

(Reviewer’s note: contains some nude images)

Seydou Keïta, “Untitled,” 1952-1955.

Events of the Social: Portraiture and Collective Agency African Photography from The Walther Collection

  • Edited with text by Elvira Dyangani Ose
  • Book Design: Gabrielle Guy
  • 200 pages, 232 images
  • 6.75 x 9 in. / 17 x 23 cm
  • Softcover
  • US$ 45.00 / € 30.00
  • ISBN 978-3-96999-087-2

3 Gift Books for the Multicultural Child in Your Life

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Don’t Decorate that Tree until You’ve read French Country Cottage Christmas

You may think that you’ve got a some good ideas and track record on decorating your Christmas tree, but you might want to wait until you take a look at the new book called French Country Cottage Christmas: Inspiration for a Beautiful and Festive Holiday. This coffee table book is full of beautiful photographs that will inspire you in ways that you’ve never never considered, as well as provides tips and techniques on how to make it all happen.

Written by stylist, photographer, and French Country Cottage blogger, Courtney Allison, this tastemaker has brought French country style to the United States in other publications, but this is the first one that is specifically for the Christmas holidays. Even more specifically, it is the first one that is over 80% just about decorating your tree (the other 20% is about entertaining, recipes, and setting your table for those holiday dinners).

Considering the amount of people that she thanks in the credits, it is clear that Courtney put her heart and soul into this tome. Not only does she decorate many of the pictured trees, or maybe even all, she also had a good number of them shipped to Paris from the United States for placement in that true French setting. That’s reflected in both authenticity and accuracy when it comes to her French styled trees.

We’re also impressed that the book is a hardcover, which means it’s durable, and it doesn’t have a paper jacket, which means you can handle it a lot without tearing any important pages. Because you’re going to want to keep flipping through this photo book for decorating inspiration before, during, and after the holidays.

Published by Gibbs Smith, find it on Amazon here:

French Country Cottage Christmas

Holiday Recipe: Sipi’s Oven Roast Lamb Chops with Lemon and Oregano

Author Tessa Kiros’s new cookbook, Now and Then A Collection of Recipes for Always (Murdoch Books) is a curated collection of 150 new recipes that warm the heart and kitchen, and which includes Tessa’s personal reflections and favorite food memories.  It also includes several ideas and combinations for delicious holiday dishes, such as:

  • Warm Malva Pudding Cake with Whisky Sauce
  • Raspberry Creme Brulee
  • Gingerbread
  • Ricotta and Jam Pastries
  • Chocolate Cake, Sour Cherries and Clotted Cream
  • Sugar Lemon Tart
  • Kourabiedes With Pecans And Chocolate Chips
  • Pistachio Biscuits With Figs, Raspberries And Rose Syrup

One tasty recipe that Tessa Kiros shares with us here is for Sipi’s Oven Roast Lamb Chops with Lemon and Oregano.

Photography Credit: Manos Chatzikonstantis

Sipi’s oven roast lamb chops with lemon and oregano

Says Tessa: “These are the ones my mom always made in the oven at home – a big trayful. I loved scraping the bottom of the dish with chips!

I get the butcher to cut the lamb chops thin and I leave some fat on the chops as it’s meltingly delicious when roasted with the lemon. They must be served warm and, if it is cold outside, serve on heated plates. Lovely with Boereboontjies (page 29) or chips.”

Serves 4

  • 1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) thin cut lamb chops, just under 1 cm (½ in) thick max (15–20 chops) with some fat
    juice of 2 lemons (about 8 tablespoons)
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 30 g (1 oz) butter, cut into small chunks
  • 3 heaped teaspoons dried
  • Greek oregano, plus a little extra to serve

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Quickly rinse or wipe the lamb chops over with moist paper towels to get rid of any stray bits of bone. Pat dry. Put into a large roasting dish where they fit in a single layer.

Splash with the lemon, season well with salt and pepper and add the olive oil. Scatter the pieces of butter around and sprinkle the oregano over, crushing it a bit between your fingers. Turn through to coat both sides of the chops.

Pour 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) water around the sides of the dish. Cover the dish with foil and bake for about 20 minutes until pale but cooked, with a good amount of sauce.

Remove the foil, lower the oven to 180°C (350°F) and return the dish to the oven for another 20 minutes or until the chops have a good deep golden colour and the sauce has thickened and is bubbling and sticky in parts (there’s no need to turn the chops over and, depending on your oven, you can turn it to Fan to get the chops more golden if you like). Serve hot with a little extra oregano scattered over.

 

ABOUT TESSA KIROS

Tessa Kiros is international cookbook royalty. She helped define the modern illustrated genre and has sold more than 700,000 copies across multiple titles, languages, and decades. Her previous cookbooks include Apples for Jam, Falling Cloudberries, Provence to Pondicherry, Twelve, Food From Many Greek Kitchens, Limoncello and Linen Water, and Piri Piri Starfish. Tessa’s upbringing and lifelong wanderlust has seen her collect culinary experiences from all over the world. Born in London to a Finnish mother and Greek-Cypriot father, she grew up in South Africa. After many years traveling and working, she settled with her husband Giovanni in Italy, where they raised daughters Yasmine and Cassia. She divides her time today between Italy and Greece. Now & Then is her eleventh cookbook and it’s her definitive new work: 150-plus recipes with gorgeous lifestyle photography reflecting on the food that has shaped her, but also encompassing her table today. Her new cookbook taps into our renewed appetite for nostalgia, in cooking and in life. It calls out to Tessa Kiros devotees, as well as speaking to younger readers through the mediums of color, energy, authority, and the healthful deliciousness of her evolving modern table. This is Tessa Kiros as we haven’t known her; for 2023 and beyond.

Now and Then A Collection of Recipes for Always

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Murdoch Books (October 3, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages

Veggie Hotels is a Coffee Table Guidebook to the Best Vegan Hotels around the World

It’s hard not to love a travel and food book that includes page-sized photographs of beautiful places you can visit and delicious meals that you can eat. Especially if you are a vegetarian or vegan looking for that a special spot where you can be all that you can be without compromising your uniqueness. VEGGIE HOTELS is one of those books.

What is a veggie hotel? The answer a simple, it’s a place where vegetarians like to stay and resort. The luxury guidebook VEGGIE HOTELS is a collection of over 60 vegetarian, vegan, and vegan-friendly hotels and bed-and-breakfasts from all around the world. The hotels range from the United Kingdom to Peru, from Spain to India, from Croatia to do United States. Many profiles also include delicious recipes of a healthy and vegetarian nature, such as fennel in Apple Salad, Black Venere Rice with Carrot Aioli, and Vegan Nut Cutlets with Beet-Horseradish Carpaccio and Quinoa.

An example of hotel selections is the Essentis Ecohotel in Berlin, which is an entirely vegan hotel in the center of the city, and is the first organically-certified hotel in Berlin. The hotel’s restaurant is called Amaranth, and only serves organically-grown and created food.

If you’re looking for something a bit warmer, head down to the Mani-Sonnenlink in Greece. The hotel is considered an oasis built around feng shui principles, and is the first organically-certified hotel in Greece. The location offers both bungalows and apartments. The founders originally installed themselves in Greece to live the simple life of olive farmers, and to follow those daily rhythms and practices. Now, they own the globally-distributed prize-winning organic Mani Olive Oil family of products. The hotel follows that purity of spirit of the olive oil farmer, and is 100% Mediterranean in nature and appeal. The water at this boutique resort is deep blue and turquoise, and is where guests can get together for company, meditation, music, or privacy.

If this wets your appetite, there are plenty more veggie hotels to discover.

Teneues, 978-3961710454, Hardcover, 272 pages‎

Find it here