Photography is an amazing thing. It takes a real-time moment and captures it in a two-dimensional image we can look at again and again. It is the chronicle of a split second that contains all the history that went before it and all the history that has come after it. And of course, certain photographic images have the ability to burn into our imaginations, transform our individual and collective psyches and become part of our makeup. Who can forget seeing the Earth photographed for the first time from space, or the image of President Kennedy riding confidently in the open motorcar? Here are four books packed with stunning photographs that will sit handsomely and disarmingly on a coffee table until someone opens them, beholds their pages and unleashes their latent power.

A provocative retrospective of the last half-century, Harry Benson: Fifty Years in Pictures by Harry Benson, gives insight into the renowned photographer’s world. A gutsy, tenacious and award-winning photojournalist, Benson’s career includes numerous covers for magazines such as Life, People and Vanity Fair. Here are portraits of the people who once captured the headlines the Beatles, the presidents, sports figures like Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and a young O.J. Simpson images sure to evoke a mixture of emotions, from joy and angst to nostalgia. One of the more poignant photographs is Benson’s shot of President Nixon giving his farewell speech to his Cabinet and White House staff. The anguished faces of his wife and children as they stand loyally by his side speak as eloquently about that agonizing moment as any prose document could. Benson’s first-hand captions and behind-the-scenes stories add an exciting element to the visual chronicles. If there’s a historian, "culture-as-art" buff or budding photojournalist in your life, Benson’s book would be a wonderful inspiration. Another career spanning 50 years is celebrated in Ansel Adams at 100 by John Szarkowski, which marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of America’s foremost landscape photographers. Szarkowski, director of the Centennial Exhibition of Adams’ work, (which will be on tour through fall 2003) has chosen 114 of the artist’s characteristically striking black and white landscape photographs, in which, as he puts it, "each element is articulated with perfect precision." Ansel Adams is best known for his photos of Yosemite National Park, the California coast and other wilderness areas of the American West and this hefty volume contains many of his signature prints. A master at conveying both the enormous grandeur and the fragile details of a landscape, Adams had a tremendous impact not only on the art world, but on the environmental movement as well. For black and white film aficionados or nature lovers, this book is a treasure, and it even includes a reproduction print, suitable for framing a gift within a gift! Allowing nature to be its own best advocate is also the idea behind Remains of a Rainbow: Rare Plants and Animals of Hawaii by David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton. Liittschwager and Middleton have been photographing endangered animals and plants since 1986, but this volume is the result of a four-year collaborative effort dedicated to the ecosystem of Hawaii. Many of the state’s endangered flora and fauna species are so rare they do not exist anywhere else on earth. The authors have showcased 142 of these singular species in exquisite, individual photos to accentuate the magnificence of each and bring attention to the tragedy of declining biodiversity on the island and in the world at large. What at first seems just a lovely picture book of exotic plants and animals is also an urgent exhortation to save one of the richest natural environments on the planet. This book is a call to action; seeing these photos is sure to evoke a response in even the most unwilling environmentalist.

And for the environmentalist who doesn’t need much prodding, consider a beautiful new version of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, with photographs by Michael Sewell. Leopold’s Almanac is a classic of nature writing that should be on the main shelf of any environmentalist’s library, right next to Thoreau’s Walden and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

First published in 1949, a year after the author’s death, the Almanac takes readers on a seasonal journey as Leopold works to restore the land at his small homestead in Sand County, Wisconsin. In this new edition, Sewell’s photography illustrates the time-honored text with splendid color photographs taken on location at Leopold’s property. This is a great book to read snuggled under a blanket (treat yourself!) or to give to anyone on your list who could use a closer communication with the natural world.

Linda Stankard is a writer in Cookeville, Tennessee.

Photography is an amazing thing. It takes a real-time moment and captures it in a two-dimensional image we can look at again and again. It is the chronicle of a split second that contains all the history that went before it and all the history that has come after it. And of course, certain photographic images have the ability to burn into our imaginations, transform our individual and collective psyches and become part of our makeup. Who can forget seeing the Earth photographed for the first time from space, or the image of President Kennedy riding confidently in the open motorcar? Here are four books packed with stunning photographs that will sit handsomely and disarmingly on a coffee table until someone opens them, beholds their pages and unleashes their latent power.

A provocative retrospective of the last half-century, Harry Benson: Fifty Years in Pictures by Harry Benson, gives insight into the renowned photographer’s world. A gutsy, tenacious and award-winning photojournalist, Benson’s career includes numerous covers for magazines such as Life, People and Vanity Fair. Here are portraits of the people who once captured the headlines the Beatles, the presidents, sports figures like Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and a young O.J. Simpson images sure to evoke a mixture of emotions, from joy and angst to nostalgia. One of the more poignant photographs is Benson’s shot of President Nixon giving his farewell speech to his Cabinet and White House staff. The anguished faces of his wife and children as they stand loyally by his side speak as eloquently about that agonizing moment as any prose document could. Benson’s first-hand captions and behind-the-scenes stories add an exciting element to the visual chronicles. If there’s a historian, "culture-as-art" buff or budding photojournalist in your life, Benson’s book would be a wonderful inspiration. Another career spanning 50 years is celebrated in Ansel Adams at 100 by John Szarkowski, which marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of America’s foremost landscape photographers. Szarkowski, director of the Centennial Exhibition of Adams’ work, (which will be on tour through fall 2003) has chosen 114 of the artist’s characteristically striking black and white landscape photographs, in which, as he puts it, "each element is articulated with perfect precision." Ansel Adams is best known for his photos of Yosemite National Park, the California coast and other wilderness areas of the American West and this hefty volume contains many of his signature prints. A master at conveying both the enormous grandeur and the fragile details of a landscape, Adams had a tremendous impact not only on the art world, but on the environmental movement as well. For black and white film aficionados or nature lovers, this book is a treasure, and it even includes a reproduction print, suitable for framing a gift within a gift! Allowing nature to be its own best advocate is also the idea behind Remains of a Rainbow: Rare Plants and Animals of Hawaii by David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton. Liittschwager and Middleton have been photographing endangered animals and plants since 1986, but this volume is the result of a four-year collaborative effort dedicated to the ecosystem of Hawaii. Many of the state’s endangered flora and fauna species are so rare they do not exist anywhere else on earth. The authors have showcased 142 of these singular species in exquisite, individual photos to accentuate the magnificence of each and bring attention to the tragedy of declining biodiversity on the island and in the world at large. What at first seems just a lovely picture book of exotic plants and animals is also an urgent exhortation to save one of the richest natural environments on the planet. This book is a call to action; seeing these photos is sure to evoke a response in even the most unwilling environmentalist.

And for the environmentalist who doesn’t need much prodding, consider a beautiful new version of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, with photographs by Michael Sewell. Leopold’s Almanac is a classic of nature writing that should be on the main shelf of any environmentalist’s library, right next to Thoreau’s Walden and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

First published in 1949, a year after the author’s death, the Almanac takes readers on a seasonal journey as Leopold works to restore the land at his small homestead in Sand County, Wisconsin. In this new edition, Sewell’s photography illustrates the time-honored text with splendid color photographs taken on location at Leopold’s property. This is a great book to read snuggled under a blanket (treat yourself!) or to give to anyone on your list who could use a closer communication with the natural world.

Linda Stankard is a writer in Cookeville, Tennessee.

Photography is an amazing thing. It takes a real-time moment and captures it in a two-dimensional image we can look at again and again. It is the chronicle of a split second that contains all the history that went before it and all the history that has come after it. And of course, certain photographic images have the ability to burn into our imaginations, transform our individual and collective psyches and become part of our makeup. Who can forget seeing the Earth photographed for the first time from space, or the image of President Kennedy riding confidently in the open motorcar? Here are four books packed with stunning photographs that will sit handsomely and disarmingly on a coffee table until someone opens them, beholds their pages and unleashes their latent power.

A provocative retrospective of the last half-century, Harry Benson: Fifty Years in Pictures by Harry Benson, gives insight into the renowned photographer’s world. A gutsy, tenacious and award-winning photojournalist, Benson’s career includes numerous covers for magazines such as Life, People and Vanity Fair. Here are portraits of the people who once captured the headlines the Beatles, the presidents, sports figures like Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and a young O.J. Simpson images sure to evoke a mixture of emotions, from joy and angst to nostalgia. One of the more poignant photographs is Benson’s shot of President Nixon giving his farewell speech to his Cabinet and White House staff. The anguished faces of his wife and children as they stand loyally by his side speak as eloquently about that agonizing moment as any prose document could. Benson’s first-hand captions and behind-the-scenes stories add an exciting element to the visual chronicles. If there’s a historian, "culture-as-art" buff or budding photojournalist in your life, Benson’s book would be a wonderful inspiration. Another career spanning 50 years is celebrated in Ansel Adams at 100 by John Szarkowski, which marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of America’s foremost landscape photographers. Szarkowski, director of the Centennial Exhibition of Adams’ work, (which will be on tour through fall 2003) has chosen 114 of the artist’s characteristically striking black and white landscape photographs, in which, as he puts it, "each element is articulated with perfect precision." Ansel Adams is best known for his photos of Yosemite National Park, the California coast and other wilderness areas of the American West and this hefty volume contains many of his signature prints. A master at conveying both the enormous grandeur and the fragile details of a landscape, Adams had a tremendous impact not only on the art world, but on the environmental movement as well. For black and white film aficionados or nature lovers, this book is a treasure, and it even includes a reproduction print, suitable for framing a gift within a gift! Allowing nature to be its own best advocate is also the idea behind Remains of a Rainbow: Rare Plants and Animals of Hawaii by David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton. Liittschwager and Middleton have been photographing endangered animals and plants since 1986, but this volume is the result of a four-year collaborative effort dedicated to the ecosystem of Hawaii. Many of the state’s endangered flora and fauna species are so rare they do not exist anywhere else on earth. The authors have showcased 142 of these singular species in exquisite, individual photos to accentuate the magnificence of each and bring attention to the tragedy of declining biodiversity on the island and in the world at large. What at first seems just a lovely picture book of exotic plants and animals is also an urgent exhortation to save one of the richest natural environments on the planet. This book is a call to action; seeing these photos is sure to evoke a response in even the most unwilling environmentalist.

And for the environmentalist who doesn’t need much prodding, consider a beautiful new version of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, with photographs by Michael Sewell. Leopold’s Almanac is a classic of nature writing that should be on the main shelf of any environmentalist’s library, right next to Thoreau’s Walden and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

First published in 1949, a year after the author’s death, the Almanac takes readers on a seasonal journey as Leopold works to restore the land at his small homestead in Sand County, Wisconsin. In this new edition, Sewell’s photography illustrates the time-honored text with splendid color photographs taken on location at Leopold’s property. This is a great book to read snuggled under a blanket (treat yourself!) or to give to anyone on your list who could use a closer communication with the natural world.

Linda Stankard is a writer in Cookeville, Tennessee.

A remarkable homage to Earth’s most ephemeral element, Water Music is a luminous collection of photographs by Marjorie Ryerson accompanied by essays, poems and songs from an international lineup of musicians as they pay tribute to a precious natural resource: water. “I was enthralled by the challenge of capturing on film the astonishing breadth of ways in which water presents itself,” Ryerson, a professor of communications at Castleton State College, writes in the book’s preface. Her breathtaking pictures feature the capricious substance in a variety of locales and incarnations silvery rivers and dusky swamps, cascading rain and frozen falls, from the mighty Mississippi to the Puget Sound.

To supplement her photographs, Ryerson compiled the wonderful, water-inspired reflections of a stellar group of songsmiths. Big-name contributors to the volume include Dave Brubeck, Mark O’Connor, George Winston, Mickey Hart and RenŽe Fleming, among many others. The book also contains the sheet music to some very special tunes, like Pete Seeger’s River of My People and Bruce Cockburn’s Water Into Wine. Revenues from sales of this unique volume will go to the Water Music Fund, which was established at the United Nations Foundation to provide clean water to people all over the world.

Bringing together her revelatory portraits of some of the biggest names in the music industry, American Music is a collection of Annie Leibovitz’s greatest hits and the ultimate photo album for any fan. From tattooed tough-guy Eminem to angelic songstress Emmylou Harris and the velvet-voiced Mary J. Blige, the images in this intuitive, passionate volume reflect the varied nature of American song today.

Leibovitz’s entree into the world of professional picture-taking happened at Rolling Stone magazine, where she became chief photographer in 1973. Over a 10-year period she documented the music business, producing an unmatchable portfolio of work and building her own extensive archive, which is represented in the new volume along with a host of new material. With photos of Ray Charles, Steve Earle, Dolly Parton and Anita O’Day, among others, Leibovitz covers all the musical genres, and her reverence for her subject matter penetrates each and every image. (Our favorite: A youthful Bruce Springsteen, iconic in biker boots and blue jeans, eating Ritz crackers in his kitchen.) Biographical info about each musician and insightful essays written by notable artists round out the volume. By turns innocent, sexy and edgy, American Music is a landmark release in the career of one of our finest photographers.

Because the aim of most photographers is to renew a viewer’s sense of wonder, they tend to render the world in ways that challenge the eye, unsettle the mind and stir the spirit. Just in time for the holidays, three large-scale, lavish photography books featuring both cutting-edge and classic images have arrived to test our sensibilities and make us re-view reality. If you’re buying for an art lover this season, put these handsome volumes at the top of your shopping list.

Re-envisioning the everyday as the exotic, turning common moments into milestones, the camera revises customary existence, makes it seem mysterious. In Diane Arbus: Revelations (Random House, $50, 351 pages, ISBN 0812972201), the transformative effects of this little device are amply represented. Providing a thorough overview of the career of Arbus, a ground-breaking photographer who got her start in the fashion industry in the 1940s, Revelations covers three decades and features 200 full-page reproductions of her work. Arbus brought a singularly honest way of seeing to the picture-taking process, offering fresh perspectives on the familiar world, depicting humanity in all its varied shades. From bench-sitters in Central Park to sideshow freaks, female impersonators and frosty debutantes, the black-and-white photos in Revelations expose the drama inherent in the mundane, the theatricality simmering beneath the surface of normal life. With selections from her famous Untitled series, shot at homes for the mentally retarded, Revelations is the most comprehensive treatment of Arbus’ photography ever to appear. Published to coincide with an international retrospective of her work, these smoky photos, all classic Arbus, are a wonderful document of American culture.

Visual excavations After police chased and gunned down a dangerous fugitive on her Virginia property, photographer Sally Mann took pictures of the tire tracks and torn trees, the residual marks of a pursuit that, regardless of its impermanence, altered her home forever. The imprint of the past upon the present is a recurring theme in her luminous new book, What Remains (Bulfinch, $50, 132 pages, ISBN 0821228439), and Mann seeks and captures this quality in places where history is etched upon the landscape, in locales as varied as Antietam, where some of the Civil War’s fiercest fighting occurred, and a forensics study site, where bodies decompose in the woods.

Suspended between two states of being, Mann’s oddly picturesque corpses and bones, which she imbued with a gray-green hue, are not quite matter, not yet spirit. Her ghostly vistas otherworldly and insubstantial seem to be forever dissolving. Using glass plates and the old-fashioned collodion method of photography, she achieved the gorgeous golden patina that makes the portraits of her children look aged and hazy, eternally antiquated. An artist of international acclaim, Mann was voted America’s best photographer by Time magazine in 2001. The boldness of her vision has earned her a reputation as a controversial artist unafraid of provoking viewers. Her extraordinary new book does just that. A photographic feast The ultimate picture book, Through the Lens: National Geographic Greatest Photographs is a classic compilation of the Society’s greatest visuals. Spanning a century, the pictures collected in this splendid volume represent some of the biggest names in photography, including Sam Abell, William Albert Allard and Jodi Cobb.

From Asia and South America to outer space, each chapter in Through the Lens is dedicated to a different geographical area, covering culture, nature and wildlife in photos that are, by turns, marvelous in their simplicity and breathtaking in their complexity. In Sicily, a line of laundry strung between fire escapes billows in the breeze. An Islamic woman, enveloped in white, waits in a Tripoli airport. International in its vision, vast in its scope, Through the Lens is a generous and memorable tribute to the world.

Because the aim of most photographers is to renew a viewer’s sense of wonder, they tend to render the world in ways that challenge the eye, unsettle the mind and stir the spirit. Just in time for the holidays, three large-scale, lavish photography books featuring both cutting-edge and classic images have arrived to test our sensibilities and make us re-view reality. If you’re buying for an art lover this season, put these handsome volumes at the top of your shopping list.

Re-envisioning the everyday as the exotic, turning common moments into milestones, the camera revises customary existence, makes it seem mysterious. In Diane Arbus: Revelations (Random House, $50, 351 pages, ISBN 0812972201), the transformative effects of this little device are amply represented. Providing a thorough overview of the career of Arbus, a ground-breaking photographer who got her start in the fashion industry in the 1940s, Revelations covers three decades and features 200 full-page reproductions of her work. Arbus brought a singularly honest way of seeing to the picture-taking process, offering fresh perspectives on the familiar world, depicting humanity in all its varied shades. From bench-sitters in Central Park to sideshow freaks, female impersonators and frosty debutantes, the black-and-white photos in Revelations expose the drama inherent in the mundane, the theatricality simmering beneath the surface of normal life. With selections from her famous Untitled series, shot at homes for the mentally retarded, Revelations is the most comprehensive treatment of Arbus’ photography ever to appear. Published to coincide with an international retrospective of her work, these smoky photos, all classic Arbus, are a wonderful document of American culture.

Visual excavations After police chased and gunned down a dangerous fugitive on her Virginia property, photographer Sally Mann took pictures of the tire tracks and torn trees, the residual marks of a pursuit that, regardless of its impermanence, altered her home forever. The imprint of the past upon the present is a recurring theme in her luminous new book, What Remains, and Mann seeks and captures this quality in places where history is etched upon the landscape, in locales as varied as Antietam, where some of the Civil War’s fiercest fighting occurred, and a forensics study site, where bodies decompose in the woods.

Suspended between two states of being, Mann’s oddly picturesque corpses and bones, which she imbued with a gray-green hue, are not quite matter, not yet spirit. Her ghostly vistas otherworldly and insubstantial seem to be forever dissolving. Using glass plates and the old-fashioned collodion method of photography, she achieved the gorgeous golden patina that makes the portraits of her children look aged and hazy, eternally antiquated. An artist of international acclaim, Mann was voted America’s best photographer by Time magazine in 2001. The boldness of her vision has earned her a reputation as a controversial artist unafraid of provoking viewers. Her extraordinary new book does just that. A photographic feast The ultimate picture book, Through the Lens: National Geographic Greatest Photographs (National Geographic, $30, 504 pages, ISBN 079226164X) is a classic compilation of the Society’s greatest visuals. Spanning a century, the pictures collected in this splendid volume represent some of the biggest names in photography, including Sam Abell, William Albert Allard and Jodi Cobb.

From Asia and South America to outer space, each chapter in Through the Lens is dedicated to a different geographical area, covering culture, nature and wildlife in photos that are, by turns, marvelous in their simplicity and breathtaking in their complexity. In Sicily, a line of laundry strung between fire escapes billows in the breeze. An Islamic woman, enveloped in white, waits in a Tripoli airport. International in its vision, vast in its scope, Through the Lens is a generous and memorable tribute to the world.

Because the aim of most photographers is to renew a viewer’s sense of wonder, they tend to render the world in ways that challenge the eye, unsettle the mind and stir the spirit. Just in time for the holidays, three large-scale, lavish photography books featuring both cutting-edge and classic images have arrived to test our sensibilities and make us re-view reality. If you’re buying for an art lover this season, put these handsome volumes at the top of your shopping list.

Re-envisioning the everyday as the exotic, turning common moments into milestones, the camera revises customary existence, makes it seem mysterious. In Diane Arbus: Revelations, the transformative effects of this little device are amply represented. Providing a thorough overview of the career of Arbus, a ground-breaking photographer who got her start in the fashion industry in the 1940s, Revelations covers three decades and features 200 full-page reproductions of her work. Arbus brought a singularly honest way of seeing to the picture-taking process, offering fresh perspectives on the familiar world, depicting humanity in all its varied shades. From bench-sitters in Central Park to sideshow freaks, female impersonators and frosty debutantes, the black-and-white photos in Revelations expose the drama inherent in the mundane, the theatricality simmering beneath the surface of normal life. With selections from her famous Untitled series, shot at homes for the mentally retarded, Revelations is the most comprehensive treatment of Arbus’ photography ever to appear. Published to coincide with an international retrospective of her work, these smoky photos, all classic Arbus, are a wonderful document of American culture.

Visual excavations After police chased and gunned down a dangerous fugitive on her Virginia property, photographer Sally Mann took pictures of the tire tracks and torn trees, the residual marks of a pursuit that, regardless of its impermanence, altered her home forever. The imprint of the past upon the present is a recurring theme in her luminous new book, What Remains (Bulfinch, $50, 132 pages, ISBN 0821228439), and Mann seeks and captures this quality in places where history is etched upon the landscape, in locales as varied as Antietam, where some of the Civil War’s fiercest fighting occurred, and a forensics study site, where bodies decompose in the woods.

Suspended between two states of being, Mann’s oddly picturesque corpses and bones, which she imbued with a gray-green hue, are not quite matter, not yet spirit. Her ghostly vistas otherworldly and insubstantial seem to be forever dissolving. Using glass plates and the old-fashioned collodion method of photography, she achieved the gorgeous golden patina that makes the portraits of her children look aged and hazy, eternally antiquated. An artist of international acclaim, Mann was voted America’s best photographer by Time magazine in 2001. The boldness of her vision has earned her a reputation as a controversial artist unafraid of provoking viewers. Her extraordinary new book does just that. A photographic feast The ultimate picture book, Through the Lens: National Geographic Greatest Photographs (National Geographic, $30, 504 pages, ISBN 079226164X) is a classic compilation of the Society’s greatest visuals. Spanning a century, the pictures collected in this splendid volume represent some of the biggest names in photography, including Sam Abell, William Albert Allard and Jodi Cobb.

From Asia and South America to outer space, each chapter in Through the Lens is dedicated to a different geographical area, covering culture, nature and wildlife in photos that are, by turns, marvelous in their simplicity and breathtaking in their complexity. In Sicily, a line of laundry strung between fire escapes billows in the breeze. An Islamic woman, enveloped in white, waits in a Tripoli airport. International in its vision, vast in its scope, Through the Lens is a generous and memorable tribute to the world.

Photographers oftentimes needn’t look far to find their subjects: the sidewalk, the playground, any place with faces will do a locale where the human condition becomes fair game for the camera. But it takes a skilled eye to make the mundane appear mysterious, the commonplace seem transcendent.

This month’s gift books feature photographers who have done these things and more, proving that sometimes everyday reality renders the best art.

After a 15-year collaboration, Colin Westerbeck, curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, and acclaimed photographer Joel Meyerowitz produced Bystander: A History of Street Photography, a masterful look at the medium that was first published in 1994. Reissued recently in paperback with an additional chapter covering current photographers, a new edition of Bystander the first-ever history of the genre is available from Bulfinch. As hefty and handsome as the first, the new book has ample examples of classic black-and-white street photography and authoritative chapters that provide a context for the pictures as well as their takers, photographers who, in a manner of speaking, eavesdropped with their eyes on couples kissing in parks, children fighting in alleys, on street vendors and bums. Unpremeditated, without artful interference, plot or pose, their photos were the products of coincidence that serendipitous synthesis of who, where and when. The trick, as the saying goes, was in the timing.

Bystander offers more than a century’s worth of unforgettable images, including the effortlessly elegant pictures of Brassa• and Henri Cartier-Bresson; the rootsy work of Walker Evans photos that defined a nation and the pitiless, probing, hardboiled images of ’40s press photographer Weegee, whose unforgiving flashbulb revealed humanity at its worst. Among the contemporary photographers mentioned in the book is Joel Sternfeld, whose color portraits of everyday Americans are collected in Stranger Passing, a provocative volume that accompanies a current exhibition of his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. With these sharp, vivid portraits, Sternfeld has captured the essence of our culture in its many manifestations: an Indian woman, brightly robed, pumping gas in Kansas City; a pair of summer interns on Wall Street who, with their fresh young faces and grown-up clothes, seem caught between boy- and manhood. The viewer can’t help but wonder about the narratives of these lives the before and after of every photograph. Proving that the term typical American defies definition, the gallery of characters in the book is diverse. Sternfeld, who has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Two wonderful essays by popular journalist Ian Frazier and Douglas Nickel, associate curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, complement his pictures.

Photographers oftentimes needn’t look far to find their subjects: the sidewalk, the playground, any place with faces will do a locale where the human condition becomes fair game for the camera. But it takes a skilled eye to make the mundane appear mysterious, the commonplace seem transcendent.

This month’s gift books feature photographers who have done these things and more, proving that sometimes everyday reality renders the best art.

After a 15-year collaboration, Colin Westerbeck, curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, and acclaimed photographer Joel Meyerowitz produced Bystander: A History of Street Photography, a masterful look at the medium that was first published in 1994. Reissued recently in paperback with an additional chapter covering current photographers, a new edition of Bystander the first-ever history of the genre is available from Bulfinch. As hefty and handsome as the first, the new book has ample examples of classic black-and-white street photography and authoritative chapters that provide a context for the pictures as well as their takers, photographers who, in a manner of speaking, eavesdropped with their eyes on couples kissing in parks, children fighting in alleys, on street vendors and bums. Unpremeditated, without artful interference, plot or pose, their photos were the products of coincidence that serendipitous synthesis of who, where and when. The trick, as the saying goes, was in the timing.

Bystander offers more than a century’s worth of unforgettable images, including the effortlessly elegant pictures of Brassa• and Henri Cartier-Bresson; the rootsy work of Walker Evans photos that defined a nation and the pitiless, probing, hardboiled images of ’40s press photographer Weegee, whose unforgiving flashbulb revealed humanity at its worst. Among the contemporary photographers mentioned in the book is Joel Sternfeld, whose color portraits of everyday Americans are collected in Stranger Passing, a provocative volume that accompanies a current exhibition of his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. With these sharp, vivid portraits, Sternfeld has captured the essence of our culture in its many manifestations: an Indian woman, brightly robed, pumping gas in Kansas City; a pair of summer interns on Wall Street who, with their fresh young faces and grown-up clothes, seem caught between boy- and manhood. The viewer can’t help but wonder about the narratives of these lives the before and after of every photograph. Proving that the term typical American defies definition, the gallery of characters in the book is diverse. Sternfeld, who has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Two wonderful essays by popular journalist Ian Frazier and Douglas Nickel, associate curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, complement his pictures.