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The Water's Edge and Becoming

• Becoming, by Michelle Sank
• The Water's Edge, by Michelle Sank
• The Old Order and The New: PH Emerson and Photography
• Motherland, by Simon Roberts
• The Black House, by Colin Jones
• A Few Streets, A Few People, by John Comino-James
• The British Landscape by John Davies
• Unseen UK: A book of photographs by the people at Royal Mail
• American Surfaces: Photographs by Stephen Shore
• A Different Light, by Richard Heeps
• Tumulus, by John Miles
• Dan Holdsworth, a Photoworks Monograph
• Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work, by Britt Salvesen
• Reflections, by Norman Forster
• Golden Gate, Richard Misrach
• Family: Photographers Photograph their Families
• Scotland’s Coast: A Photographer’s Journey, Joe Cornish
• Augustus F Sherman: Ellis Island Portraits 1905–1920
• Earthsong, Bernhard Edmaier
• Paul Strand: Southwest
• Fear This, Anthony Sau
• Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye
• Many Are Called, Walker Evans
• Teenage, Joseph Szabo
• The Fat Baby: Stories by Eugene Richards
• Homes Fit for Heroes: Photographs by Bill Brandt 1939–43
• Tina Modotti & Edward Weston: The Mexico Years, Sarah M Lowe
• Time in space: photographs by Chrystel Lebas
• René Burri Photographs, Hans-Michael Koetzle
• Markings: Sacred Landscapes from the Air, photographs by Marilyn Bridges
• Josef Sudek: Poet of Prague, A Photographer’s Life
• Consuming the American Landscape, by John Ganis
• Landscape: The world’s top photographers and the stories behind their greatest images, by Terry Hope
• Aquarium: Photographs by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
• 360° Imaging: The photographer’s panoramic virtual reality manual, by Philip Andrews
• The Scots: A Photohistory, by Murray MacKinnon and Richard Oram
• Twins, photographs by Mary Ellen Mark
• Fine Art Photography: Creating Beautiful Images for Sale and Display, by Terry Hope
• The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, by Scott Kelby
• Home Photography: Inspiration on your doorstep, by Andrew Sanderson
• The Photographer’s Website Manual, by Philip Andrews
• The History of Japanese Photography, by Anne Wilkes Tucker, Dana Friis-Hansen, Kaneko Ryuchi and Takeba Joe
• Revelation: Representations of Christ in Photography, by Nissan N Perez
• Photoshop for Photography: The Art of Pixel Processing, by Tom Ang
• Soma, by Andreas Gefeller
• Carlo Mollino Polaroids
• Edward Weston: A Legacy, by Jennifer A Watts

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The young and the not so
South African photographer Michelle Sank has been living in England for 20 years. She has two books recently published by UK galleries, one of which, The Water's Edge, has just been on show at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. The Water's Edge is co-published by Liverpool University Press and in collaboration with Working at the Edge of the World, a sound archive created by writer Joanne Lacey which holds recordings of memoirs from around 50 women who work, or worked, in or around Liverpool's waterfront, or from there went to sea. The book features portraits of 25 of the women preceded by an essay by Lacey with transcripts from the sound archive in which the women tell their story. In an area not renowned for softies the women work or have worked in a truly diverse range of roles: from dockers, painters and heavy plant drivers, to more 'traditional' women's work as barmaids, caterers, cleaners and stewardesses, and Sank completes the mix with a woman police officer, a 'dancer' and a 'good time girl'. All life is here. It's a fine strong set of environmental portraits of strong women, and the excerpts published from the sound archive provide an entertaining historical context for the pictures.

Sank's other book, Becoming, is the result of five years photographing portraits of young people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Although ostensibly five separate series - one of which, Teenagers Belfast, was shown at Belfast Exposed Gallery (co-publisher of this book) in late 2005 - it all hangs together perfectly. In an afterword to the work fellow (and as yet more famous) South African David Goldblatt quotes from your very own Ag magazine (issue 42): “From today, portrait photography is dead”. He does not go on to disagree with David Lee's assertion, instead to hold up the work of Michelle Sank as the exception which proves the rule. Of it he says: “It includes but goes beyond a sense of the presence of the person portrayed as flesh and form, it includes but goes beyond circumstance and context. It goes to what I can only call spirit, spirit as life force somehow held or embedded in the picture.” Sank's subjects are in various stages of youth, not quite children, never quite adults; yet despite the uncertainties associated with the transitional state they occupy, they look a pretty confident bunch.

The Water's Edge, by Michelle Sank, is published by Open Eye Gallery and Liverpool University Press at £19.95, ISBN 1-84631-084-9.

Becoming, by Michelle Sank, is published by Belfast Exposed Photography and Ffotogallery, Wales at £18.00, ISBN 1-872771-67-X.

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