Details: The Architect's Art

Architectural details are the fashion statements of buildings, communicating their messages to passersby in much the same way that Ancient edifices conveyed message to people before written language became the norm. A lavish and scholarly tribute to ornamentation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture, DETAILS: THE ARCHITECT'S ART explores this fascinating theme in over one hundred full-color photographs that recapture the meaning - and the pleasure - of looking at architectural detail. Sally B. Woodbridge is an architectural historian and critic who lives in Berkeley and has been writing books and articles about California architecture and architects for more than 50 years. Roz Joseph is a photographer born in the Bronx, New York in 1926. She later studied photography in New York City. She is stylistically comparable to Henri Cartier-Bresson. She said, "without distortion or trickery I try to uncover the eloquence in what would otherwise appear to be ordinary, common situations, and thereby awaken sensitivities for fresh experiences." During the 1960s, she shot almost exclusively in black and white and processed her silver gelatin prints in her own darkroom in New York City. In the mid-1960s, she won the grand prize in a photo competition run by the Saturday Review. The award allowed Roz to return to Europe to pursue more photography. In 1970, Roz moved from New York City to San Francisco which she called a "color city." She shifted to shooting exclusively in color film. Joseph began to examine two new subjects in her photography: abstracted architecture and city scenes, and the cross-dressing culture of San Francisco. These color architectural details became a series known as "City Art". In 1991, Chronicle Books published this book, a beautiful montage of Roz Joseph's architectural photography. Roz Joseph currently lives in San Francisco with her husband, writer Elliott Joseph.