“Dafydd Jones’s photographs capture the future establishment at their most unguarded.”— FT How To Spend It
Cambridge Balls is the sensational new book by bestselling society photographer Dafydd Jones. The Cambridge University colleges are renowned for many great alumni and important achievements… and also a series of marathon all-night parties, known as the May Balls, held annually to celebrate the end of the academic year. Dafydd Jones, who according to The New York Times, ‘goes about his business with cheery zest and a wicked eye’, has been granted unique access to this hidden world of revelry since 1981, during which the author of England: The Last Hurrah and Hollywood Confidential has captured an extraordinary tableau of antics and shenanigans now beautifully reproduced on these pages. From former British Prime Minister David Cameron in his Bullingdon coat to victorious rowing teams celebrating into the night, from gate crashers punting across the river to the more international student groups of modern times toasting their successes, this is a fascinating portrait of jubilation among the young, the wealthy and the academic elites of one of the world’s most famous universities.

Praise for England: The Last Hurrah…
“Wonderfully ironic, every point in the picture ignites and knows how to entertain very well.” — Lovely Books
“Dafydd catches those moments of genuine exhilaration, wealth and youth.” — The Hollywood Reporter
Praise for Hollywood Confidential…
“With his new collection of photographs, Dafydd Jones offers a sensational dive into the excitement of the awards season in the 1990s.” — Vanity Fair France

Praise for New York: High Life / Low Life…
“The New York book is an evocative historical document, brimming with nostalgia and menace.” –– Hannah Marriott, The Guardian
Praise for Dafydd Jones…

“Modest though he is, Dafydd’s photographs will endure for having perfectly captured a society on the brink of decline.” –– Country & Townhouse podcast
“Sublime vintage photographs…” –– Hermione Eyre, The Telegraph
“Some carefully tended public images are punctured with such rapier precision that one can hear the hiss as they deflate.” –– Mitchell Owens, The World of Interiors

A century after Theodore Dreiser and F. Scott Fitzgerald mapped the American Dream’s promise and peril, Lauren Greenfield’s latest photographic monograph, The Queen of Versailles: An American Allegory, arrives in bookstores to visually recapture the origin story behind her hit 2012 documentary film and the 2025 Broadway musical—collectively transforming a documentary mirror onto the national stage, where wealth, overreach, and reality-TV culture converge in one distinctly American aria. Named by The New York Times as “America’s foremost visual chronicler of the plutocracy,” and the best-selling author of four award-winning monographs that incisively deconstruct turn-of-the-century America (Fast Forward, Girl Culture, Thin, Generation Wealth), Greenfield now presents The Queen of Versailles: An American Allegory—the first publication of the complete photographic series from the iconic documentary, featuring essays by Greenfield and longtime collaborator and curator Trudy Wilner-Stack.

The Letting Go is a long-standing, performative, and participatory practice by artist Natascha Stellmach. It explores themes of vulnerability and empowerment. Following a meditation and in response to the question, “What would you like to let go of?”, the practice involves identifying, naming, embodying, and experiencing healing and impermanence through the body. Its method includes ritual tattooing without ink (a bloodline tattoo) to address a personal obstacle and initiate an intimate enquiry.

Over a period of almost 10 years, Stellmach performed more than 120 sessions with individuals in galleries and privately, including herself. Through evocative photography, academic research, and participant-contributed selfies and reflections, the publication invites readers to embrace “the wonder in our wounds” and offers a deeply human portrait of what it means to let go.

The book includes a foreword by acclaimed actor Sandra Hüller, as well as essays by curator and arts writer Kelly Gellatly and psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. Matthew McArdle.

China, nearly half a century after economic transformation and development, is changing not just itself, but the world around it. The BRI (Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure and economic development program initiated by the Chinese government) promises investments in countries along the ancient overland trading routes between China and the West, with maritime arcs around Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Arabian peninsula, down the eastern coast of Africa and through the Mediterranean. In this book are selected many distinctive, wonderful shots taken in about 21 countries participating in the BRI, covering 50 regions and a distance of over 267,000 kilometers the author visited from early 2023 to late 2025 as photographer. Through words and pictures, he takes the reader on a tour along the new Belt and Road, showing it as it is actually unfolding in the real world across Asia, Central Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and Africa. This book serves as a good observation and thinking of the reality of China today.

Joan Kron’s remarkable career spans from her early work as a costume designer at NBC Universal to her later roles as a reporter, writer, and editor for prominent New York publications, including the New York Times, New York Magazine, and Allure. In The Renegade Housewives of the 1960s, Kron’s voice—strong-willed, witty, and incisive—resonates on every page as she details her life. Alongside her business partner and close friend of the ‘60s, Audrey Sabol, Kron corresponded and collaborated with artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, and Marisol Escobar. The two were known for their leadership at the Y Arts Council in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where iconic events and exhibitions shaped a local arts community. Drawing on a rich collection of personal stories and an extensive private photographic archive, this extraordinary written and visual memoir offers an intimate portrait of Joan Kron’s life while also illuminating the vibrant creative landscape of 1960s Philadelphia and beyond.

British Portuguese Paula Rego (1935–2022) carved out her place in international art history with a self-possessed, uncompromising expression and a burning commitment to fighting oppression and lack of freedom. She grew up in Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar’s dictatorship, which imposed strong constraints, especially on women’s freedom, and throughout her long career Rego dissected the relationship between gender, the body and power in a dark, fantastical visual language. At a time when authoritarian forces are on the rise across the world and women’s right to control their own bodies is under pressure, her images feel more relevant than ever. The exhibition Paula Rego – Dance Among Thorns presents Rego’s powerful and unsettling body of work in its full breadth. The catalog includes all works on display and a collection of new texts by the exhibition’s curator Kari J. Brandtzæg as well as by Catarina Alfaro, Isabel Freire and Jennifer Higgie. Together, they sketch an intense and nuanced portrait of an artist who never ceased to challenge – whether aesthetically or politically.

Long considered anonymous, a striking portrait of an old man in the Kunsthistorisches Museum is now attributed to the Baroque genius Gian Lorenzo Bernini, a rare and remarkable discovery. Almost life-size, the bust grips viewers with its piercing gaze and palpable presence. Bernini, famed creator of Apollo and Daphne and architect of St. Peter’s Square, is known to have painted only for his own pleasure, and fewer than twenty works survive as autograph paintings. This book traces the thrilling investigation behind the attribution and reveals how Bernini infused paint with sculptural force, redefining the boundaries between painting and sculpture.

A portrait of an eminent jewelry artist and her unique creations!

Inspired by the Arte Povera movement, the Italian jewelry artist Annamaria Zanella (b. 1966) uses base materials, which only gain meaning through their context. Corroded metal or found objects convey statements that can be both political and personal in nature. Zanella wants to bring the soul of the material to light through the work of her own hands.

The color used is intended to evoke feelings and reactions. To this end Zanella studied the history of colors and their production, especially that of her unmistakable blue. She produced a blue pigment according to a recipe from the fourteenth century, invoking in its modern use pioneering artists such as Giotto, Wassily Kandinsky and Yves Klein.

Annamaria Zanella is represented in numerous museums, including Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (FR); Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (DE); Die Neue Sammlung The Design Museum, Munich (DE); Museum of Arts and Design, New York (US); Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim (DE); Museo degli Argenti, Florence (IT); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (GB); Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (IT); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York (US); Swiss National Museum, Zurich (CH).

Text in English and Italian.

Artisans of Israel is a very special book on crafts. Author Lynn Holstein is in search of a national identity in the artisanry of the still young country – and she finds it in the unifying pursuit for innovation. Forty artists, including Jews, Muslims and Christians, tell their stories and show in five different trades how emancipation can be promoted through creativity. Working with one’s hands stands unfailingly at the centre of this reflection. From the hybrid of cultural and religious backgrounds emerges a unique compilation that brings together the fields of metalwork and jewellery, ceramics, textiles, paper and wood. This compilation portrays a sensitive and inspiring portrait of Israel and its inhabitants. This book accompanies an exhibition at The Open Museum, Tefen (IL), in January 2018.

Text in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Petra Zimmermann occupies a unique position among emerging contemporary jewelry artists: she shares their exciting approach to the subject of jewelry and the quotable adoption of the pop culture label for defining the auteur jewelry concept in which she succeeds, this time through historical reference. The artist draws on past encounters with costume jewelry from the previous century for her rings, bracelets and brooches. Comprised of bright, colorful synthetic forms, these objects receive a framework in which their artificial appearance contrasts to the dusty splendour of the historic costume jewelry. Beguiling pieces of jewelry emerge, which combine the present fascination for glamour with an element of progression, thus referencing the costume jewelry as an essential component in the production and construction of glamour in the portrait photography of the Hollywood diva. In her latest series of works, the artist uses mass media images of models, floral motifs, architecture and design objects which broaden her scope of cultural and social interpretations. Thus behind the visual opulence of her work, she succeeds in handling relevant aesthetic and social themes in her pieces; relevant for a generation that no longer struggles against traditional conventions, but that negotiates much more in an increasingly complex environment in the search for personal and historical coherence.

Petra Zimmermann is one of the most ambitious artists in contemporary jewelry. This book provides the first overview of her fascinating and exciting creative jewelry works with sumptuous images and scholarly articles.

Custodians brings together for the first time, in this beautifully compiled collection, images of many of Oxford’s most prestigious buildings along with some rarely seen, but wonderful venues and their ‘Custodians’. Photographer Joanna Vestey set out to explore the extraordinary colleges and buildings of Oxford, behind the closed doors, often beyond the reach of the 9.5 million visitors a year who come here, and to meet the ‘Custodians’ playing a pivotal role in perpetuating these world renowned institutions. Rarely do we get to catch a glimpse behind the closed facades of these iconic structures and to see the spaces that lie within. All the images have been captured in the University City of Oxford, known as the “City of Dreaming Spires” and show its extraordinary breadth of architecture since the arrival of the Saxons. It includes venues such as the 17th Century Divinity School, the mid-18th century Radcliffe Camera continuing through to the most recent award winning RIBA nominated chapel at Ripon College completed last year. Venues such as the Sheldonian Theatre and Christchurch College sit alongside perhaps lesser known venues such as The Real Tennis Courts or the John Martyr Pawsons cricket pavilion portraying the breadth and diversity constituting the city. The ‘Custodians’ and their surroundings enjoy equal status in Joanna’s formal compositions; they seem to belong together, yet do not fuse into one, thereby asking us to question how we are all largely shaped and influenced by the structures around us – how defined we are by them and how much they form us. Full of unexpected venues beautifully photographed, this book will appeal to the his-torian, city visitor, people interested in architecture and interiors as well as to the extensive alumni network of the colleges themselves. It will also appeal to an audience interested in contemporary photography.

During the day, painter and graphic artist Fred Bervoets (1942) works almost routinely at his large format etchings. At night, he lets his imagination run wild. The hundreds of drawings, sketches, doodles and paintings done in the margin today fill almost the entire ground floor of his studio home. The one thing they have in common, apart from their maker, is their modest A4 format.
The spontaneity of these small works on paper forms the heart of this book, which also includes Bervoets’ more monumental etchings since 2013. This one-of-its kind “print room” offers an impressive kaleidoscopic self-portrait of an absolutely unique artist.

Text in English and Dutch.

Many of Gauguin’s portraits of Breton and Polynesian sitters, as well as his self-portraits, include inanimate objects. Intriguing as these are, the works in Paul Gauguin’s portrait gallery have never really been the subject of a thorough study. This book, first published in English in 2005, fills a gap in the scholarly literature on Gauguin, one of the leading figures in post-Impressionist art, with an in-depth, well-illustrated examination of his portraits. An array of experts on Gauguin’s art reflect on the symbolic attributes his models were endowed with, and the meaning behind the evocative settings he chose for them. The authors explore the many aspects of the artist’s portraits, often in light of the remarks he made about his models, and focus on their importance in relation to his larger oeuvre. This book, which is intended as a standard text in this field, includes essays written by experts in Gauguin’s work, all established scholars and researchers.

Text in French.

An impressively tattooed but unnamed Easter Island (Rapa Nui) man appears often in the pages of Pacific Island histories and museum catalogs. The Swedish ethnographer Dr. Knut Hjalmar Stolpe knew him only as Tepano, the Tahitian version of the Christian name Stephen. But what was his real Rapanui identity, and what can his life story tell us about the history of Easter Island?

This book reveals his identity, who illustrated him, and how he transcended the tragic events of 19th-century Rapa Nui to become one of the most iconic faces of the Polynesian past. The authors summarize the history of tattoo as practiced by Rapanui artisans, link that history to island geography, and present rare barkcloth sculptures as a visual record of tattoo patterns.

This title is the first in a new series on Polynesian Arts & Culture by Mana Press, in partnership with Floating World Editions.

For a list of future titles, visit: www.FloatingWorldEditions.com. For more on Rapa Nui, the Mana Gallery and Mana Books, visit: www.eisp.org.

First to translate two of the oldest accounts of Musashi’s career – the Bushû denraiki and the Bukôden – William de Lange presents a full biography of the most famous yet enigmatic of swordsmen. In doing so, he draws extensively on a wealth of additional and often neglected sources to reconstruct the meandering course of Musashi’s eventful life: his dramatic encounter with Sasaki Kojirô on Ganryû island, his multiple bouts with the famed Yoshioka brothers, and the remarkable gestation of his life’s influential work: The Book of Five Rings. In the course of this highly readable account, many of the convenient myths that have arisen around Musashi are debunked. The more controversial incidents of the warrior’s life that have been left hidden, perhaps deliberately, are uncovered: his troubled relationship with his father, his whereabouts during the battle of Sekigahara, the siege of Osaka castle, and the birth and death of an illegitimate child, which was an event that deeply influenced his art. The biography reveals how Musashi’s path through life was shaped by strong personal traits: his reckless valor in the face of danger, his sensitive intelligence in the fields of art and architecture, his generosity toward peers and pupils, and his defiant stubbornness in old age. The complex yet human portrait that arises is a far cry from the accepted one-dimensional caricature of this medieval swordsman.

Miyamoto Musashi (c. 1584-1645) is the most revered and celebrated swordsman in Japanese history; in Japan alone close to a thousand works have taken the ancient warrior as its subject. Unfortunately, our modern portrait of this folk hero is derived mainly from popular books, comics, and film, with little heed paid to the early denki, chronicles recorded by men who, though they had not known Musashi in his lifetime, faithfully recorded what was passed down by those who had. The Bushû Denraiki is the earliest such record still in existence. Completed in 1727 by Tachibana Minehide, the fifth generation master of Musashi’s Niten Ichi school of fencing, it is the most reliable record of Musashi’s life and exploits outside those from the hand of the master swordsman himself. Now, after three centuries, Minehide’s insight into this enigmatic and solitary swordsman are available to the English reader. His text throws a new and refreshing light on many aspects of especially Musashi’s early life-his troubled relations with his father, his first battle experience during Japan’s period of unification, the sad death of his illegitimate child, and of course his legendary duel on Ganryû island.

Margaret Mercer Elphinstone (1788-1867), with her powerful mind and independent spirit, was never daunted by adversity as she sought to realize her ambitions for her family against the background of intellectual upheaval and social and political change which followed the French Revolution and the end of the ancien régime. The turning-point in her life was her controversial marriage in 1817 with the general Charles de Flahaut (1785-1870), which, contrary to all expectations, resulted in one of the most successful partnerships in the ‘auld alliance’ between France and Scotland.

Whereas the life of her husband, the dashing Napoleonic general and diplomat Charles de Flahaut, is well known, Margaret has remained in the shadows. Yet this biographical study, based on unpublished correspondence in the Archives Nationales, Paris, reveals her to have been the more interesting of the two. It shows how much he depended on her brains, political judgment and artistic taste as well as her fortune to guide him in his career. Her lively, observant but wicked pen takes us with her on visits to Talleyrand, to the marquis de Lafayette, to the duchesse de Praslin, to house parties in stately homes of England and Scotland. Acknowledged a superb hostess, her descriptions of the menus, and entertainments organized in her homes in Scotland, London and Paris, and at the Flahaut embassies in Vienna and in London capture the flavor of those cosmopolitan gatherings. A lifelong liberal in politics and an upholder of Whig principles, her politicomanie inspires sharp comments on the opponents of Reform in England and on the self-seeking ministers of Louis-Philippe in France.

A new photographic exploration of Chicago, a city which attracts the visitor with its profoundly American character. The book presents over 100 photographs shot in Chicago between 2006 and 2011, mainly in black and white. Several aspect of this diverse city are shown. Starting from the most celebrated downtown areas, where so many movies have been shot making them familiar to the entire world, to the suburbs and outskirts of the city, each with its own personality and charm. Page after page, empty streets mix with the most solemn of buildings and the waterfronts; people who work and live here meet other people who come from the Mid-West to check out unexpected urban landscapes. And then there are a number of photographs dedicated to the world of Blues, from the many clubs where the Blues are played and lived each night, to the Chicago Blues Festival, the great late Spring event attended by an extraordinary and multifarious public, who are as much a part of the scene as the artists on stage.

“All people need to be seen.” – Bruce Davidson. “America is still out there – You just have to look for it.” – Larry Niehues. “I’m proud to say I’m from the USA because I’ve really seen it with my own eyes – all the beauty and the destruction, the tradition and the innovation, the loud cities and the quiet little spaces.” – Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys). Larry Niehues, a French-born photographer who lives in the United States, traveled around the country for 5 years photographing modern day America while seeking out the continuing presence of a timeless post-war ‘old America’. Photographed using 35mm film, his portraits of people and iconic small town life (motels, diners, gas stations, cars), evoke mid-century American life in a way that is both authentic and powerful in the tradition of William Eggleston, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Davidson, and Robert Frank.

This publication emanates from an exhibition by the same title, displayed for the first time at the Alliance Française de Delhi. It is an attempt to trace the development of photography and the other allied visual arts in Pondicherry spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Drawn exclusively from The Alkazi Collection of Photography, at the core of this initiative is the unpublished album by renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, co-founder of Magnum Photos, who visited the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in April 1950. He took the last pictures of Sri Aurobindo Ghose in the company of his spiritual companion, the Mother. In addition, he meticulously penned his observations almost daily, creating a meta-text around the images, which presents a biographical and anecdotal supplement for his photographic endeavour. The visual material is further enhanced by some extraordinary images of Indian photographers from the same period such as Tara Jauhar and Venkatesh Shirodkar at Aurobindo Ashram, published here for the first time.

In this catalogue a conscious effort has been made to bring out a non-linear, yet credible history of how Pondicherry has been witness to the development of a unique visual trajectory. The use of images as evidence and document create a subtle interplay between cultural context and artistic intent, a conceptual linking of mannerisms and tropes those of landscape, architectural and portrait photography.

Modern Indian Painting presents a survey of Indian painting from the late 19th century to the present day, drawn from the private collection of Jane and Kito de Boer remarkable for its broad historical scope and wide range of artists. The book clearly delineates major developments over a long period of time, while contextualizing them with previously unpublished examples by major artists. The first part of the book features the de Boers talking about their passion for India and Indian art. The second part presents a history of modern Indian painting, with essays on the Bengal School, the so-called ‘Dutch Bengal’ artists, the Calcutta naturalists, the portrait painters of the Bombay School in the early 20th century, the Progressive Artists Group and the post-Independence artists of Bengal. The de Boer collection also contains strong representations of a few individual artists, such as Chittaprosad, Ganesh Pyne, Ramachandran and Broota, whose works are explored through essays and interviews. The fact that many of these chapters draw almost exclusively on the de Boer collection is a testament to its incredible size and breadth. In this volume, we hope to show how the collection takes a dispassionate view of the global status of Indian art, while at the same time revealing a commitment and long-term engagement with the country and its creativity. With contributions from Partha Mitter, Giles Tillotson, Yashodhara Dalmia, Sona Datta, Sanjay Kumar Mallik and Rob Dean.