By Any Image Necessary

A portfolio of the best photo books for fall

What happened to the great American novel? The great American picture book bumped it off the bookshelf. This month sees the publication of Horst: Sixty Years of Photography (Rizzoli), a glamorous anthology of his classic fashion shots, marmoreal nudes, immaculate still lifes, and witty portraits—and this fall Bendel stores throughout America celebrate the book's publication with benefit exhibitions of sixty photographs, curated by Horst. Irving Penn's hefty tome Passage (Knopf)—a formidable objet d'art in itself—chronicles the evolution of the reticent master's cool, analytical eye. Art historian Martin Harrison evaluates the substance behind the style of fashion photography in an elegant, erudite volume, Appearances (Rizzoli). In Big Pictures (Bulfinch), Matthew Rolston's camp, arty lens transforms models and movie stars into "cultural symbols instead of mere individuals." The "psychodocumentary" photos of Mary Ellen Mark: 25 Years (Bulfinch) cut straight to the enigmatic hearts of lepers, circus performers, and runaways. Sheila Metzner's Color (Twin Palms) reproduces a retrospective of eighty images, some reviving a nineteenth-century color-printing process. With a cartographer's sense of linear abstraction, Herb Ritts maps out the bulges, bumps, and rumps of two bodybuilder lovers in Duo (Twin Palms). Edited by Amy Janello and Brennon Jones, The American Magazine (Abrams) glorifies the ephemeral medium on which this country's best writers, illustrators—and the above photographers—all cut their incisive teeth.

AMY FINE COLLINS