text: In focus: National Geographic Photography Book | Best Design Books
  In focus: National Geographic Photography Book
  The Collectors Series edition of In Focus (published by National Geographic) is simply the existing book at a smaller trim size. This magnificent collection of 280 photographs by many of the world's greatest photographers tells the tale of portrait photography over time in page after page of arresting images. Each photograph stands proudly on its own, yet taken together, they tell a much more complex and subtle story of the ever-evolving art form in constant creative response to new ideas, new eras, and new technologies.
  Through the years, National Geographic magazine's staff photographers have often elevatedstock depictions of "exotic" cultures into haunting glimpses of other lives.
  In Japan a geisha takes a break during her long makeup session
  Goldfinches ride on the head of a woman in Kabul, Afghanistan
  In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits presents a century of captivating images of ordinary people from around the world – 280 photographs of pleasure, grief, stoicism, shyness and sheer endurance.
  In Soviet Murmansk, near the Arctic Circle, a child gives her age in response to the photographers question
  Posters of Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen are paraded on Taiwan's National Day, which celebrates the 1911 revolution that overthrew China's last dynasty
  In thoughtful essays, five photographers frankly assess changing notions of authenticity and discuss their own methods of capturing a stranger's personality on the run. In the beginning, the magazine showed people stiffly posed in their native costumes, viewed as anthropological specimens. Advances in camera technology created a greater degree of intimacy and spontaneity. Then came color film, which ushered in an era dominated by corny themes and perkily posed subjects in brightly hued clothing. The 1970s marked a new honesty in portraiture, a willingness to go beyond the superficial to investigate the small moments that make up daily life everywhere.
  Mud-smeared man from the Asaro River Valley prepares to portray an evil spirit in a New Guinea tribal dance
  A Peruvian boy mourns his sheep, killed by a hit-and-run taxi driver. Contributions from National Geographic readers helped replace his flock
  In Focus draws upon the magazine's complete archives to raise intriguing questions about how editorial choices help define our understanding of the world. For example, in 1981, National Geographic published Sam Abell's elegiac portrait of Rosa-the last of the Yahgan Indians of Terra del Fuego-wreathed in atmospheric smoke against a dark background, in the stately tradition of Edward S. Curtis.
  T.J. Symondss father sent him from South Dakota to work on a ranch in Nevada
  The gallery of portraits in this splendid book includes many memorable faces, from the unnerving grin of the Wodaabe tribesman in Niger (who wears colorful makeup as part of a courtship ritual) to the sunny self-possession of a child in Murmansk who holds up four tiny fingers to indicate her age. Beautiful women abound–they have helped sell the magazine from its earliest days. "As the decades go by, people everywhere seem more at ease being photographed. But they remain as fascinating as ever, perhaps because we'll never know what they were thinking when the shutter clicked." Cathy Curtis
  In Goma Sushitsa, Bulgaria, a mother grieves over a picture of her late son
  "This is truly one of the great books of people pictures, a treasure chest of images truly deserving the self-imposed subtitle of "greatest portraits".
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