"From a childhood in London's East End to half a century in New Zealand photographing wine-makers, artists, children and kuia, Marti Friedlander has lived a rich life, one defined by the art of looking. In Self-portrait, Marti tells her story for the first time. As forthright and revealing in words as in her photographs, she tells of growing up in London orphanages, being Jewish, working in a Kensington photography studio, marrying a New Zealander and moving across the world to a challenging new country. Here she began to photograph the ordinary and the extraordinary, protests and politicians, balloons and beaches, capturing on film the transformation of New Zealand life over more than fifty years. This book is a rich meditation on one women's photographic journey through the twentieth century."--Publisher's information.

"Vitali Vitaliev is the Ukranian-born author, poet and journalist whose life has been spent exploring the curious, the unusual and the plain dotty manifestations of human life around the world." "In this honest memoir, Vitaliev describes how on many occasions in his life, words have provided him with the means of survival: the words of great writers from Mikhail Bulgakov to George Orwell; the words of writer friends such as Peter Ustinov and Joseph Heller; the words of his mother, of his children. He references his own writing too, with memories of creative assignments all over the globe, recalling the voices of people he as met and the impressions they made on him." --Book Jacket.