Photography

Being in Pictures by Joanne Leonard

Water Music by Marjorie Ryerson

Being in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir

Joanne Leonard

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

Being in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir presents art and commentary by Joanne Leonard, exploring the themes of one woman's life in imaginative works that combine text and image to evoke the universal themes in women's lives.

Leonard is known for her compelling pieces, which mix elements of photography, collage, and memoir in evocative, dream-like creations. Leonard's early photographs in the 1970s were largely documentary, capturing scenes from inner-city Oakland and the winter Olympics.

As her art evolved, it increasingly turned to autobiographical and daringly intimate themes, including a failed marriage, miscarriage, single motherhood, her identity as a twin and as a daughter of survivors of the Holocaust, and the problems of memory and aging.

Joanne Leonard is Diane M. Krikpatrick and Griselda Pollock Distinguished University Professor Art and Women's Studies, Professor of Art, School of Art and Design, and Professor of Women's Studies, College of LSA, University of Michigan. Her photographs and photo-collage works have been published in Gardner's Art Through the Ages, Janson's History of Art, and Time Life Library of Photography. Her own writing appears in Modern Fiction Studies and Michigan Feminist Studies.

Sptember 2007
276 pages, 212 photographs

Water Music

Marjorie Ryerson, Photographer and Orchestrator

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

A photography book with a social conscience, Water Music affirms the intimate connection of water to the rhythms of our lives.

Water Music is first a tribute to the inspiration and magic of water. For photographer Marjorie Ryerson, a fascination with water grew from the challenge of capturing on film the astonishing breadth of ways in which water presents itself—the way, for instance, that Lake Superior at sunset turns from deep blue to gold, copper, blazing red, dusty pink, pewter, and, finally, shimmering black.

To accompany the dazzling photographs, Ryerson recruited some of the most important names in music. These world-class artists, from twenty-two countries on five continents, and from across the musical spectrum, have contributed memoirs, stories, poetry, music, and lyrics for Water Music, reinforcing the beauty of the images and the powerful message they convey.

In Water Music, image, words, and music merge to remind us why we must heed the message in Paul Winter's introduction—in spite of our reverence and awe, we have placed this most essential element in peril.

Thus Water Music is a piece of a much larger picture: the Water Music Project, which Ryerson initiated to celebrate the beauty of water and its connection to music and to our lives, but also to increase awareness about water issues through concerts, lectures, events, and educational outreach. She is donating her net royalties from sales of the book to the Water Music Fund, established at her request at the United Nations Foundation. The UNF will use the fund to aid water in the natural environment and to provide clean drinking water for families around the world.

Marjorie Ryerson is a teacher, journalist, photographer, and poet. She is professor of communication at Castleton State College, where she teaches journalism and photography. Ryerson lives in Randolph, Vermont.

August 2003
208 pages