James Karales - Lot with 2 books: James Karales & Controversy and Hope - 2013-2014

You're bidding on two books by/on James Karales.

James Karales – James Karales
Publisher: Steidl, 2014
Hardcover, 176 pages
Size: 28x23cm
New in seal

James Karales (1930–2002) was big-time in the best time but is not as well known as he should be,” argues photographic historian Vicki Goldberg. This book will change that. Early in his career, Karales began a photo-essay documenting Rendville, Ohio, an important stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War and one of the few racially integrated communities in America in the late 1950s. These pictures demonstrate his striking ability to capture the essential qualities of a community, are reminiscent of images made for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s, and reflect Karales’ state of mind as he grappled with the racial issues that were to preoccupy him and America for many years to come.

Karales worked for Look from 1960 until it ceased publication in 1971. Among many important assignments for the magazine, Karales documented Martin Luther King and the 50 mile, five-day Selma (Alabama) march in 1965. 15 minutes before the end of the march, the sky darkened and Karales’ wide-angle shot of the protesters silhouetted against the horizon has since become an emblem of the march and has insured the photographer’s place in this tumultuous period of American history. Through this new publication we discover that Karales’ stature as a photojournalist and social documentary photographer par excellence is based on much more than one iconic image from Selma.


Controversy and Hope: The Civil Rights Photographs of James Karales
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press, 2013
Softcover, 125 pages, English
Size: 26.1x23.6cm
Condition: very good

Controversy and Hope commemorates the civil rights legacy of James Karales (1930-2002), a professional photojournalist who documented the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights with a dedication and vision that led the New York Times to deem his work "a pictorial anthem of the civil rights movement." Equipped with ambition and a B.F.A. in photography from Ohio University in 1955, Karales headed to New York and found work as a darkroom assistant to master photographer W. Eugene Smith. Karales's earliest photo-essays had already come to the attention of Edward Steichen, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which acquired two of Karales's photographs from his series on the Greek American community of Canton, Ohio. Another early photo-essay, on the integrated mining community of Rendville, Ohio, was featured in Karales's first solo exhibition, held in 1958 at Helen Gee's Limelight gallery in Greenwich Village. From 1960 to 1971, Karales worked as a staff photographer for Look magazine, traveling the world during a time of dynamic social change and recording the harsh realities he witnessed at home and abroad. The Village Voice described Karales's civil rights work as bearing "the weight of history and the grace of art." Controversy and Hope presents many of Karales's images from the era, including some photographs published here for the first time. Julian Cox, with the assistance of Rebekah Jacob and Monica Karales, has selected a bold representation of Karales's photographs, augmenting his visual legacy with biographical information and personal recollections. Civil rights leader Andrew Young, who appears in some of Karales's photographs, has provided a foreword to the volume.