‘The first ascent of Everest in the summer of 1953 was one of the twentieth-century’s greatest triumphs of exploration. George Lowe’s exploits on the mountain would become legendary. He was one of the lead climbers, forging the route up Everest’s Lhotse Face without oxygen, and later cutting steps for his partners up the summit ridge. He had ‘put up a performance’, so described the expedition leader John Hunt, ‘which will go down in the annals of mountaineering as an epic achievement of tenacity and skill’. For his own part, George was just happy to be on the mountain, playing his part in doing something he loved. In this new book, a trove of unpublished original photographs and other rare materials from the George’s personal collection are brought together for the first time. Stunning landscapes, candid portraits and action shots describe the day-by-day moments of this historic expedition as never before.

At home in Cornwall, with book proofs spread out on the kitchen table, designer Liz House and I direct the final layouts.

The most famous Everest photo of them all – taken by Ed Hillary on the top of the world. It is 11.30am on 29 May 1953. Tenzing stands on the summit of Everest and waves his ice-axe on which are hung the flags of Britain, Nepal, the United Nations and India. On reaching this sacred spot, Tenzing placed a packet of biscuits and a handful of lollies into a hole in the snow as a gift to the Gods. There is no summit shot of Ed as he never took one. Tenzing didn’t know how to use a camera, and, as Ed always joked, it didn’t seem like the right sort of place for a lesson. ‘You know, I’m probably the only Everest climber in the world who doesn’t have a big summit photograph of himself above the mantelpiece’, he once said, ‘and it doesn’t bother me one bit.’

After success on Everest, the expedition’s photographs appeared in newspapers across the globe. Ed Hillary returned from the mountain one of the most famous men in the world; not so for George, who happily managed to escape the limelight.

Original glass slides from the 1953 Everest expedition are gathered on my lightbox. All the photographs taken higher than the South Col were on 35mm colour film. Since then many black-and-white enlargements and prints have been made from these colour transparencies.

George’s trusty Kodak Retina II – a companion on all his New Zealand climbs and later travels in the Himalaya and Antarctica. This camera took many of the images that appear in this new book. George was used to handling his Retina II in tough conditions and by Everest it was second nature. During the night, when forty degrees of frost and more were normal, he slept with it in his sleeping-bag to keep it warm. High on the mountain, with strong winds and extreme unpleasantness, he carried it round his neck, tucked inside his down jacket but ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. At high-altitude in snow he always kept it simple – shooting almost everything with a shutter speed of 1/100 s and an aperture of f/8 with a normal ultra-violet filter.

Renowned adventure photographer Martin Hartley gets to grips with George Lowe’s Kodak camera. Martin helped me by creating new images of special objects – prints, maps, goggles, even George’s trusty ice-axe – all of which appear in The Conquest of Everest for the first time.

Contact prints of original photographs, many from the New Zealand 1951 expedition to the Garhwal Himalaya. This was the first of George and Ed Hillary’s many adventures together. Ed would later write that it was George who ‘set off the spark that finally got us both to the Himalayas’.

Over the course of creating George’s Everest memoirs and gathering together materials from his rich lifetime of adventure, I came across a small bundle of letters at his house neatly tucked away at the bottom of an oak chest. Sometime later, another small cluster of dusty envelopes appeared, their distinctive red and blue edges calling out within a large stack of faded newspapers. Then, whilst slowly sorting through some old glass slides, a handful more were revealed. After a bit more rummaging, George’s wife Mary pulled a file down from a high shelf. Inside were yet more letters, including many that George had gathered when returning home to New Zealand after the Everest celebrations had quietened down. In time other members of his family also shared their memories and gradually a rare collection of correspondence came together.

My daughter Nell gives me a helping hand. As the granddaughter of polar explorer Sir Wally Herbert, it will not be long before little Nell joins me on an adventure. Not Everest though – more likely the Arctic, where her mum, author Kari Herbert grew up. For now, my next book for Thames & Hudson will celebrate another special chapter of George’s life: the crossing of Antarctica. It will be published in 2014.’

Find out more about The Conquest of Everest over on our website.

Huw Lewis-Jones will be giving various talks across the UK from 29 May onwards, starting at Stanfords in London, where he will be joined by famous faces from the mountaineering community including Sir Chris Bonington, Stephen Venables, Doug Scott and other special guests. Check out our events page to see all of Huw’s events.

Full-Circle: William Scott Centenary Exhibition
(Enniskillen, 15 February – 31 August 2013)
For more information click here

William Scott: Divided Figure
(Hastings, 27 April – 10 July 2013)
For more information click here

William Scott: Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings
(Wakefield, 25 May – 29 September 2013)
For more information click here

William Scott: Simplicity and Subject
(Bath, 7 September – 17 November 2013 )
For more information click here

Find out more about William Scott: Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings by clicking here

More information about Taxidermy can be found on our website.

‘First up, we asked for some old-fashioned audience participation, with ideas and words that ‘contemporary art’ brings to mind. We were overwhelmed by great suggestions, as seen here – everything from ‘serious’, ‘confusing’ and ‘rubbish’ to ‘crazy’, ‘catchy’ and ‘hypnotic’.

Then after a quick run-through some of the most unexpected materials that artists have used (elephant dung, crushed cars and chocolate among them) we looked at inventive techniques and the sort of playful, open-ended questions that artists today often like to pose.

After that, it was time to find the next generation of artists in our very own audience! As we talked about everything from Yves Klein’s obsession with the colour blue to Cy Twombly’s unusual painting technique and Robert Morris’s floppy felt sculptures, the kids were asked to doodle on their handouts with their own ideas and pictures.

Francis Alys’s mysterious ‘Sign Painting Project’ – in which he invited Mexican sign-painters to copy his own original artwork – inspired lots of great words and pictures, with the children looking carefully to spot the differences between one painting and the next, as well as drawing their own versions, which ran from the funny to the surreal and abstract.

Vija Celmins’ artwork ‘To Fix the Image in Memory’ – also focusing on the idea of the original and copy – was another favourite, with the kids invited to work out which of her 22 stones were the 11 originals she had found on a walk in New Mexico and which were her meticulously painted 11 bronze copies. Not easy, we decided – but there was some careful looking and great guesswork in evidence!

We were delighted to have such an intelligent and energetic session with the bright young things of Cambridge – many of whom followed us afterwards to a book signing at Heffer’s next door.

Thanks to all for such a fun day!’

You can read more about Jacky and Suzy’s book What is Contemporary Art? on our website.

Image 5 credit: Francis Alÿs, Untitled, 1994 Oil on canvas and synthetic polymer paint on sheet metal, three panels, small panel by Francis Alÿs 31.8 x 25.4, medium panel by Emilio Rivera 91.4 x 71.4, large panel by Juan Garcia 120 x 91.4. Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York

Image 6 credit: Vija Celmins, To Fix the Image in Memory, 1977–82 Stones and painted bronze, eleven pairs, dimensions variable Gift of Edward R. Broida in honour of David and Renee McKee. Photo Thomas Griesel. Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York.

And here is a video made by Todd of a piano falling through the air, piece by piece:

For more information about Things Come Apart, visit our website.

‘It is a rare thing that you get to see inside an artist’s sketchbook, so I count myself very lucky to have been able to spend the last two years combing through the wonderful, unseen pages of doodles, drawings, and pasted on bits-and-bobs that comprise the pages of animators’ visual diaries. These sketchbooks are the equivalent of a sleeper’s dream catcher – they are filled with an animator’s (often private and personal) scribbled-down skeletons and seeds of moving images and short films.

But while the drawings in these sketchbooks are static, they do tell the story of a process, revealing an artist’s mind uninhibited, and representing a place of rest between long hours of animating and/or working on the computer. In Animation Sketchbooks you will discover pages of character designs, storyboards, to-do lists, colour tests, train passenger sketches, and unconscious (drawing-while-talking-on-the-phone) doodles. This book contains an unprecedented collection of 50 animation artists’ personal sketchbooks.

What the book cannot show, however, is the magic of all of this passionate work coming to life. The following selection of clips will allow you to see beyond the pages and discover how those sketchbook doodles manifest in the artists’ final work.

Spanish artist Isabel Herguera took her sketchbook to India and filled it with colourful, layered and collaged images that became the basis of her film AMAR.

According to Italian animator Simone Massi, it has taken him 20 years to produce 20 short films (totalling just 1 hour of animation), which have been created from 35,000 beautiful, dark drawings on paper. Have a look at his film Nuvole: Mani (Clouds: Hands):

Canadian animator Malcolm Sutherland loves animation and is incredibly prolific. He sent me hundreds of pages from his sketchbooks, of which he has a multitude. It was incredibly hard to choose just a few to showcase in the book. He has worked for the National Film Board of Canada as well as produced films independently. Check out his film Umbra, which won best animated film on Vimeo last year.

American Fran Krause teaches animation at Cal Arts, works as a director on the new show Super F*ckers on Cartoon Hangover, and makes his own short films. His film The Nosy Bear was created entirely in a sketchbook – he shows you how here:

Here this is the final product:

New York animation artist Jeff Scher makes films much like you would draw in sketchbooks, watercolour painting every frame as if it were a new page. He regularly makes short films to post to his New York Times online op-ed blog.

Japanese animator Mirai Mizue’s work is pure stream-of-consciousness. Abstract and deeply complex, his drawings reference the unseen micro world just below the surface of an imagined science. He is currently working on a film created and uploaded a second (24 drawings) a day to be completed April 2013.

British artist Stephen Irwin won the British Animation Awards prize for Best Short Film in 2010 for his visually inventive short Black Dog’s Progress. A film that is as clever and unpredictable, side-by-side flick books flip and repeat, building up a rhythm and slowly revealing a very sad story about a dog.

Allison Schulnik is a painter who feels at home amongst a wild mess of materials, whose imagery consists of shells, flowers, cats, and creatures who inhabit the goriest fairy tales. In her film Mound, thick and sticky paint transforms seamlessly into clay, bringing her paintings to life.

You can see more of these artists’ works on their websites:

Fran Krause
Simone Massi
Isabel Herguera
Malcolm Sutherland
Jeff Scher
Mirai Mizue
Stephen Irwin
Allison Schulnik

Animation Sketchbooks can be purchased from our website for £29.95

For many urbanites, street art has become something more often associated with a gallery show or a clothing brand, but recent transformations in the geopolitical landscape have caused a reawakening of its authentic roots. Mia Gröndahl’s Revolution Graffiti charts the emergence of a powerful art movement that has spread across Egypt’s city walls with a heady mix of passion and optimism, ignited by the uprising that led to the revolution of 26 January 2011. The streets and squares that were filled with a sea of demonstrators soon became covered with murals and slogans that reflected the disparate feelings of anger, sorrow and euphoria. Today, Egyptian graffiti has grown into a strong social movement that allows ordinary citizens to communicate and acts as a visual expression of the revolution.

As the momentous events of the Arab Spring unfolded in the global media, we were first struck by the reported images of bravely defiant crowds, aerial views of teeming streets and films made by citizen journalists, uploaded to social media. Before too long, however, a different kind of imagery began to be emerge, that of graffiti. Newspapers and news channels such as The Guardian and the BBC began to publish photo stories of the flourishing graffiti that was both compelling and surprising. Graffiti had become part of the story, a symbol of a new-found freedom and a spontaneous way for people young and old to articulate what was happening at street level. It was also a demonstration of the power of art to encapsulate a tumultuous political landscape and visualize emotions more effectively than any number of column inches.

The revolution has been a catalyst for unlocking latent creativity and free speech, which has in turn been embraced by a public eager for change. Within this landscape of defiant and largely untutored expression, the aesthetics are not as important as the message; however, many artists limited by materials or without training have produced work that is stunningly effective. Those graffiti artists who have an arts background, such as graphic designers and art students, have in turn brought an extra dimension to the scene. With a more global outlook, this new generation of Egyptian artists have used wall painting and stencilling as an opportunity to explore artistic freedom and to critique society.

For many, the Arab Spring became synonymous with the idea of a ‘Twitter revolution’. In the case of Egypt, the extensive use of social media is said to have played a crucial role in organizing the uprising against Mubarak. It is, however, people’s actions that create revolutions, not just their tools. For example, at one point, Mubarak’s regime pulled the plug on internet services and so forced demonstrators to replace Twitter with an analogue version – hand-held signs, spreading the word of the next gathering. Both analogue and digital have played their part in this revolution as graffiti has given people a city-wide stream of thought-provoking words and images that are then disseminated to a worldwide audience. It could be said that graffiti has become the truest form of social media – so welcome to the graffiti revolution!

Revolution Graffiti is available from our website for £16.95

Writing in the Huffington Post, 2morrowknight said, ‘Thomas wants to change the game – he believes that sustainability is a war that needs to be fought and that advertising is at its center.’

In response to the article Thomas said, ‘I was really humbled to be recognized as an ‘Inspirational Leader’ by The Huffington Post alongside great personalities such as author Ted Rubin, former Mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom, actress and humanitarian Alyssa Milano, philanthropist Beth Kanter and many, many more.’

Along with the book, Thomas has also created a website where people can create ‘chains of good’, spreading the message of Goodvertising via social media in exchange for pages from the book.

Read more about Goodvertising here, or check out the Goodvertising Facebook and Twitter pages.

For more information, head to our website.

Read, comment on and share more book extracts on our ISSUU page.

Check out A Year in the Life of Face Hunter by clicking here.

A film made for Thames & Hudson by Douglas Ray and Kate Slotover

Fashion Scandinavia profiles 56 designers – both established and up-and-coming – from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Danish stylist and writer Dorothea Gundtoft, curator of the exhibition and author says ‘the book and exhibition… herald a new movement in fashion – the arrival of Scandinavian designers onto the world scene.’ Speaking at Copenhagen Fashion Week, Dorothea explains, ‘Danish fashion seems to be more about print in general, and it’s more crazy than Swedish design, which is very minimal… but when I look at it all together, I wish it could all be called Scandinavian fashion, because I think together everyone is stronger.’

Reviewing the book, Dazed Digital said, ‘While there’s a lot to be said for the enduring appeal of minimalism, Fashion Scandinavia shows a whole new irreverent fashion sensibility emerging from our Nordic neighbors.’ Echoing this statement, one online commenter said, ‘the most exciting style of the time is coming from Scandiland.’

The exhibition itself was designed to resemble the book. Graphic designer Therese Vandling said, ‘it was a great experience (and challenge) to translate the book’s graphic look into a large-scale exhibition space. I worked closely with Hunting & Narud, the exhibition designers. It was very important to me that there was continuity throughout the graphics… and that this was all in keeping with the graphic identity of the book.’

We asked some of the designers featured in the Fashion Scandinavia how they felt about being included in such an important book. ‘I am very honoured to be featured in such a beautiful book, together with Scandinavia’s most exciting designers,’ responded Norwegian designer Beate Godager; ‘I think what Dorothea has done – showing both established and new designers in the same book – is very important to get an impression of what is happening on the Scandinavian fashion scene. I am glad she, and Thames & Hudson, took the chance to not just show the established designers’. Danish designer Jean-Phillip Dyeremose said ‘I’m proud to be a part of a book that includes what Scandinavian designers are all about, and to work with such a great author as Dorothea – thank you!’

For a snapshot of the range of styles and talents covered by Fashion Scandinavia check out some of these featured designers: Carin Wester, Ann-Sofie Back, Altewai Saome, Anne Sofie Madsen, Designers Remix, 5preview, Bruuns Bazaar, Kalda, Camilla Staerk, EYGLÓ, Haaning & Htoon and V Ave Shoe Repair.

Here is a video from the exhibition:

Fashion Scandinavia 2013, #LFW13, Somerset House from Swedeninuk on Vimeo.

Fashion Scandinavia is available from the Thames & Hudson website.

‘In this fast changing publishing world, authors and publishers alike face on-going challenges when it comes to marketing their books. With diminishing attention spans as a consequence of the constant flood of information and the addictive nature of social media, getting noticed is becoming more difficult.

The music industry’s response to internet piracy and the erosion of the concept of the multi-track album has been to increase both the quality and the number of live appearances. Ticket sales and merchandising is an effective way of making up lost revenue.

In the book world, the author’s talk remains a highly effective way of stimulating sales. I have presented many of these in bookshops and at literary festivals, for both my adults and children’s titles. These talks engender greater interest in the subject matter, and the personal satisfaction gained from interacting with an interested audience is immense. The associated book signing sessions are a great opportunity to meet readers, and they serve as a reminder that the physicality of the printed book overshadows the fickle nature of the e-book.

But lately I have become frustrated by the limitations of the simple slide show. In an attempt to meet the challenge of today’s short attention spans, I have doubled the number of slides in each presentation, so that no single image is allowed to dwell on the screen for very long. The rationale is not quantity over quality, but rather to enrich the audience’s visual experience with a fast-paced show more in line with contemporary viewing habits.

I have introduced movement into the images in a number of ways. A picture of a gold miner operating a pneumatic drill at the rock face suddenly vibrates and comes alive with sound, creating the illusion that it is a moving image.

The ‘Ken Burns’ effect, by which the camera pans and zooms around still images, is an effective way to add impact to a presentation, but it has to be done with sensitivity. Too much zooming in and out is tedious. I subtly use this technique to draw the viewer into some of the pictures.

I have also added videos, so in some instances I can show moving footage of me taking a photograph while I talk to the audience about the creative process.

But the most unusual aspect of the new presentation has been the creation of what can only be described as ‘photographic sculpture’. Each image treated in this way appears to have depth and for nine seconds the audience feels as if they are moving around a three dimensional scene. This complex technique involves pre-visualising a single image in a 3D space, breaking it into core elements and then using animation techniques to recreate it as a moving image. It is a laboriously time-consuming process of interpretation, so the number of images which appear in this way is expanding slowly.

Watch the trailer for my talks here:

I am now travelling around the UK, presenting in theatres and arts centres in a show called Living Africa.  It covers the work on both my T&H books about Africa: Living Africa and Trading Places, The Merchants of Nairobi. The tour has been organised by The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and it commemorates the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the explorer David Livingstone.

In addition to the RGS talks, I will be speaking at Glasgow’s Strathclyde University and will be presenting the Photovoice charity lecture at London’s Kings Place. I will also be returning to The Edinburgh Book Festival in the summer with a special presentation for children.’

The list of venues Steve will appear at this Spring are:

Wednesday February 20 at 7.45pm – Living Africa – THEATR BRYCHEINIOG, BRECON
Thursday February 21 at 7.45pm – Living Africa – THE BREWHOUSE THEATRE, TAUNTON
Wednesday February 27 at 7.30pm – Living Africa – THEATRE BY THE LAKE, KESWICK
Thursday February 28 – Living Africa – Glasgow STRATHCLYDE UNIVERSITY
Wednesday March 6 at 8pm – Living Africa – CIVIC AT CENTRAL HALL, DARLINGTON
Friday March 8 at 7.30pm – Living Africa – KINGS LYNN FESTIVAL AT THE ARTS CENTRE
Thursday March 21 at 8pm – Living Africa – TURNER SIMS, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
Monday April 29 – Africa – KINGS PLACE LONDON – PHOTOVOICE LECTURE

Pauline, what was it like working on The Great Builders? Were there any particular challenges you had to overcome? How was it different to working on other titles?

‘I really enjoy working on books where I get to work directly from the text and have the opportunity to be closely involved with the picture edit. The Great Builders was one of those projects. One challenge I faced when researching and selecting images for The Great Builders was to find a good selection of images that would fit with the archival/manuscript look the designers were aiming for. I wanted to get a portrait of each of the featured ‘builders’ that put them in context (for example, Buckminster Fuller is pictured with some of his models of geodesic domes). I then based my picture edit on using as much imagery as possible that was contemporary to each of the architects and engineers featured in the book. It needed to emphasize the construction processes whilst representing the beauty of the final creations.

A more practical challenge was managing the (pictorial) expectations of the commissioning editor, editor, designer and 36 contributing authors! It’s important to me that the whole team is happy with the final selection.’

What do you enjoy about working for Thames & Hudson?

‘The variety of books you can work on – one minute you’re working on a historical title about the Mediterranean, the next you’re chasing pictures from street artists in Japan. The variety also means that you go on unexpected learning curves on subjects you never thought you’d come into contact with. I now know more than I ever thought I would about the harem habits of the eighteenth-century Sultans of Istanbul…’

Why do you think you won the award?

‘I think it was because of the great variety of imagery I incorporated into The Great Builders, as well as my use of lesser-known sources. One of my key aims when working on this book was to try to avoid the ubiquitous imagery of these famous buildings: do the book-buying public really need to see what Sydney Opera House or St Paul’s Cathedral looks like (again)? For this book, it’s far more interesting to see a photo of the Opera House’s iconic shell structures being fitted with their concrete paneling, and to see Wren’s original pre-1666 drawing of what St Paul’s dome could have looked like. Also, Sheila Corr, the picture editor at History Today who judged the competition, told me that The Great Builders was the book that everyone walking past her desk would try to steal, so that helped her make her decision!’

What does the award mean to you?

‘Having been a picture researcher for over 10 years, it’s immensely satisfying to get recognition for my efforts from an institution like History Today.’

Is there any advice you would give to aspiring picture researchers?

‘A tenacious approach and the ability to think around problems are two key skills to develop. At one point during one of my recent research trails for another book, I was trying to track down a copyright holder of a recently deceased photographer via the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, the photographer’s widow (who’d left Paris for an extended holiday), an author who seemed to disappear with alarming regularity, and through the Facebook profiles of four of the photographer’s children and stepchildren. In the end, it was Facebook that came up trumps! Finally, approach Google Images with caution and recognise it for what it is – a useful starting point for a research trail (and quite often totally inaccurate!).’

Any other comments?

‘The Great Builders is one of those projects where looking back at each image in the finished book triggers a (mostly satisfying) ‘research memory’ in my head; of corresponding with archives, trips to libraries, sitting at my desk quietly thanking technology for extensively digitized online archives.’

Follow the link to find out more about The Great Builders.

Louise, what was it like working on Gay Life Stories? Were there any particular challenges you had to overcome?

‘Firstly I feel I ought to mention that I actually took the project over from Katie Morgan before she left T&H. She had not long started it, but she will recognize some of the images, so it seems only fair to point that out.

Gay Life Stories was a very interesting book to work on given the time span it covered, from ancient Egypt to more recent times. Also challenging was the diversity of the people featured – although some more famous characters are included, there are other less well-known figures that required a lot more in-depth research.’

What do you enjoy about working for Thames & Hudson?

‘As a freelancer I work for a lot of different clients, but T&H is one of the only clients that gives me the text to work from, rather than a picture list generated by the editor or author. Working from the text is a far more creative process for a picture researcher and allows them to draw on their skills and experience in a much more productive way. I think the difference is obvious in the finished book.’

How did you feel about the award? What does it mean to you?

‘Increasingly, as people’s budgets are tightened, many publishers are opting to do away with picture researchers, assuming designers or editors can easily tap keywords into picture library websites instead. Fortunately, there are still publishers who realise that this is a false economy. The existence of an award for picture research shows there is still recognition of the importance of this role in the creative development of many books. As such, to be recognized for being an integral part of the creative team is a huge honour.’

Is there any advice you would give to aspiring picture researchers?

‘My only advice to aspiring picture researchers would be to dig deep – chances are there’s a better picture out there than the one the author found on Corbis/Getty!’

Follow the link to find out more about Gay Life Stories.

Click here to see the full list of winners from this year’s awards ceremony.

‘In connection with our book The Shard: The Official Guidebook, I went to the very top to take part in a photo shoot. Here is a photo of me in my safety gear, taking photos of some of the landmark London buildings visible from roughly a third of a kilometre above the ground.

The great thing about the very top of the building is that the deck is not fully enclosed, so there is an immediate engagement with the elements.

The views extend from Heathrow and Windsor Castle and the Great Park to the west, to Wembley Stadium and the Chilterns to the north, to the Dartford Crossing (via the Olympic Park) to the east and to the North Downs to the south: approximately 40 miles in any one direction.

Helicopters were flying at the same height as us, and planes coming in to City Airport were only a little higher.’

While The Shard: The Official Guidebook will set out the history of the building and its significance in London’s Southwark area, central to the book is a series of twelve double-page panoramic photographs that have been annotated to identify London’s key buildings, monuments and landmarks, making the book an informative souvenir for both visitors to The Shard and to the general reader.

The View from The Shard will be open to visitors from 1 February, and the book will be available in all good bookshops on 14 January.