Author Description

Street Photography by an Award-Winning Crime Novelist<br/><br/>Mark Coggins is best known for his award-winning series of crime novels featuring private eye protagonist August Riordan. But observant readers will know that many of the Riordan books are illustrated with scene-setting photographs taken by him. Now, in Street Stories Coggins points his lens at the broader world, capturing images of daily life from cities across the globe that, as he says in his artist statement, "convey the energy, communal bonds, and in some cases, inherent mystery and alienation of urban life."<br/><br/>The lushly produced volume includes 52 black and white images reproduced in tritone from the cities of Amsterdam, Berlin, Kyoto, New Orleans, Palermo, Prague, San Francisco, Tokyo, and many more—each evoking a narrative. As the Chicago Tribune commented in a review for an exhibition featuring Coggins's photography, "People like to put a story to the art they look at. That aspect really comes across in the work. We can see where the two aspects of his life [author and photographer] really complement each other."<br/><br/>The book closes with an essay on street photography by writer, publisher, and letterpress printer Alastair Johnston.<br/><br/>Mark Coggins's photographs have been shown in galleries across the United States and Europe, including exhibitions jurored by acclaimed photographers and curators Amy Arbus, Elizabeth Avedon, Judy Dater, Henry Horenstein and Michael Kenna. His work has won multiple awards, been featured in solo and small group shows, and been published in numerous books and periodicals.