Która najbardziej Ci się podoba?
Nowe tytuły, które warto znać.
Wybraliśmy dla Was albumy, który będą najlepszą dekoracją każdego salonu. Duże i pięknie ilustrowane - na pewno zadowolą i Ciebie i Twój stolik kawowy.
Wakacyjne klimaty, majestatyczne widoki, piękni ludzie, odważna architektura i pyszne jedzenie czyli książki będące idealną inspiracją dla Twoich wakacji (również tych spędzanych w domu).
Przegląd wybranych albumów, które polecamy Waszej uwadze w tym miesiącu.
Poznaj albumy, które prezentują kulturę uliczną za pośrednictwem sztuki, mody i fotografii.
Zobaczcie świeże tytuły w naszej ofercie! W tym sztuka polityczna, najlepsi artyści z Afryki i wiele kulinarnych inspiracji...
W Bookoff chcemy żeby prace wszystkich kobiet były doskonale widoczne. Niedawno obchodziliśmy Międzynarodowy Dzień Kobiet - z tej okazji chcielibyśmy pokazać Wam wybrane tytuły od najbardziej kreatywnych artystek.
Grono wybitnych fotografów i ich albumy wydane w mijającym roku.
U nas znajdziesz prezent dla każdego. Udanych zakupów!
Spraw komuś luksusowy prezent w tym roku.
Zobacz nasze propozycje książkowych upominków do 150 zł.
Wybraliśmy dla Was nasze ulubione publikacje mijającego roku.
Mamy dla Was nowe książki pełne koloru na jesienne wieczory: m.in. kolejny tom od legendarnej Annie Leibovitz oraz album Nadine Ijewere, pierwszej czarnoskórej kobiety której fotografia ukazała się na okładce Vogue.
Jeszcze tej jesieni zaplanowana jest premiera kolejnego albumu Tom'a Ford'a. Już teraz możesz kupić swój egzemplarz na przedsprzedaży w Bookoff.
Wyobraźcie sobie, że kupujecie w ciemno pudełko starych fotografii. Otwieracie je i wyskakuje wam świat bez smutku, pełen kolorów i radości z samego istnienia. Nie podzielilibyście się nim z innymi ludźmi?
Najważniejsze albumy fotograficzne minionej epoki. Zobacz prace pionierów fotografii, którą znamy.
Zobacz najnowsze tytuły w naszej ofercie.
Jeśli najlepszy uliczny fotograf jest fotografem niewidzialnym to Vivian Maier opanowała tę sztukę do perfekcji.
Mamy dla Was najnowsze tytuły z zakresu fotografii, designu, architektury wnętrz i nie tylko.
Zobacz najnowsze albumy fotograficzne, w tym: United Arrows, Wim Wenders & Ming Smith.
Kup kolekcjonerski album swojego ulubionego artysty
Żeby fotografować cygańskich nomadów sam zamienił się w jednego z nich. Josef Koudelka powraca z kultowym albumem "Gypsies" w najlepszej z dotychczasowych form.
Wśród naszych nowości znajdziecie m.in. Paryż w obiektywie Henri Cartier-Bresson'a i najważniejsze projekty japońskiej architektury.
Może jeszcze nie wszystko schrzaniliśmy? Może Ziemię da się jeszcze uratować? "Amazonia" to głęboki oddech po naznaczonych śmiercią albumach Salgado i kontynuacja drogi życia, którą zapoczątkował "Genesis".
Przed Wami najbardziej imponujące albumy z fotografią reportażową. Pandemia czy nie - dzięki książkom świat jest na wyciągnięcie ręki.
Wybraliśmy dla Was najbardziej inspirujące zdjęcia na nadchodzącą porę roku.
Całe życie robił portrety kobietom. Teraz kobiety zrobiły portret jemu. W filmie wypowiadają się tylko one. Jedyny męski głos to głos samego Newtona.
Pieter Hugo's images are unflinching and unforgettable. Beginning with "Looking Aside," his series of portraits of marginalized people, Hugo has striven to capture the African continent with empathy and impartiality. Whether confronting the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, documenting electrical waste dumps in Ghana, or photographing in Nigeria's dynamic film industry, Nollywood, Hugo treats his subjects with reverence and awe.
This is the ultimate book on rough and tough surfing. Breathtaking landscapes, remote and desolate places, the highest waves, the most spectacular jumps and a story of surfing to the ends of the world. A photographic hommage to surfing in extreme conditions, made by an international surfer and his team.
Patrick Lichfield inhabited a world of beauty, class and style that he documented with conspicuous success for more than 40 years, in the process creating some of the 20th century's most iconic images - such as the Princess of Wales in her fairytale dress bending down to comfort a bridesmaid; the Queen, at ease and unselfconscious, relaxing with her beloved dogs; Mick and Bianca Jagger laughing together after their rock-star wedding.
This is the first book to reproduce the definitive set of 937 rarely seen and classic images by Robert Capa (1913-54), one of the most influential documentary photographers of the twentieth century. Capa, a founding member of Magnum photographic agency, had the mind of a passionate and committed journalist and the eye of an artist. His lifework, consisting of more than 70,000 negatives, constitutes an unparalleled documentation of a crucial 22-year period (1932-54), encompassing some of the most catastrophic and dramatic events of the last century.
The name Phyllis Posnick is synonymous with Vogue and the extraordinary fashion editorials the magazine's audience loves. Posnick is best known for creating photo editorials to illustrate the magazine's Beauty and Health articles, but cast off any ideas you have about close-ups of lips and eyelashes. Instead, picture models bathed in paint or posing next to cuts of fresh meat.
An intimate window into the secret lives of more than seventy - five great artists by one of France's most successful and best-known photographers. During the golden age when Montparnasse was teeming with artists, Robert Doisneau gained remarkable access to the key figures working in Paris from 1937 onwards, and he visited their studios and caught them in various private moments: working, reflecting, and even playing with their children. This book, which includes some previously unpublished photographs, shares Doisneau's intimate view on the work and lives of these artists.
Peter Lindbergh photographed DIOR’s most exceptional muses, Marion Cotillard and Charlize Theron among them, and signed campaigns for Lady Dior and J'Adore with his inimitable style. Throughout his career, the photographer was one of the house’s closest collaborators. This final book was an original cocreation that was close to the artist’s heart—and to ours.
Family Photography Now presents 40 international image-makers who have turned their lens on the complex dynamics of the family, whether their own or other people's. In these pages you will find Swedish stay-at-home dads and Congolese first-time mothers, families with same-sex parents and families with identical twins, blended families and extended families, portraits made via Skype and portraits of imaginary families. Sophisticated art projects appear alongside highly personal images, many never before published in book form.
Erased by bombing during the Korean War, North Korea's trophy capital of Pyongyang was entirely rebuilt from scratch from 1953, in line with the vision of the nation's founder, Kim Il-sung. Designed as an imposing stage set, it is a place of grand axial boulevards linking gargantuan monuments, lined with stately piles of distinctly Korean flavor, to be "national in form and socialist in content."Under the present leader, Kim Jong-un, construction has ramped up apace-"Let us turn the whole country into a socialist fairyland," declares one of his official patriotic slogans.
“In GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen.” —Sebastião Salgado
On a very fortuitous day in 1970, 26-year-old Sebastião Salgado held a camera for the first time. When he looked through the viewfinder, he experienced a revelation: suddenly life made sense. From that day onward—though it took years of hard work before he had the experience to earn his living as a photographer—the camera became his tool for interacting with the world.
On a very fortuitous day in 1970, 26-year-old Sebastião Salgado held a camera for the first time. When he looked through the viewfinder, he experienced a revelation: suddenly life made sense. From that day onward—though it took years of hard work before he had the experience to earn his living as a photographer—the camera became his tool for interacting with the world.
Magnum Streetwise is an unmissable tour through the photographs and practices that have helped define what street photography is and can be. Magnum photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson pioneered ‘modern’ concepts of street photography before the term was even coined – but their influence is far from historic. A rich seam of street photography runs through the heart of Magnum to this day, both in the work of recognized masters of street photography – such as Erwitt, Parr, Gilden and Kalvar – and of those who might not even consider themselves street photographers; a continued influence that has not gone unnoticed among the current generation of budding street photographers and fans.
Tim Walker’s previous monograph, Story Teller, introduced audiences to this unique photographer’s fantastical, magical worlds, conjured anew with each shoot. But every point must have its counterpoint, day its night, light its dark; creativity is no different. Shoot for the Moon, Walker’s much anticipated follow-up, draws audiences close to reveal fantasy’s other, darker side.
“What is it about a dull yellow metal that drives men to abandon their homes, sell their belongings and cross a continent in order to risk life, limbs and sanity for a dream?” – Sebastião Salgado
Helmut Newton (1920–2004) always showed a healthy disdain for the easy or predictable, so it’s no surprise that the SUMO was an irresistible project. The idea of a book the size of a private exhibition, with spectacular images reproduced to state-of-the-art origination and printing standards, emerged from an open, experimental dialogue between photographer and publisher. With the SUMO weighing in—boxed and shrink-wrapped—at 35.4 kg (just under 80 pounds), Newton created a landmark book that stood head and shoulders above anything previously attempted, both in terms of conceptual extravagance and technical specifications.
Influential director and photographer Floria Sigismondi showcases new images of the biggest names in music and in Hollywood. Floria Sigismondi’s compelling visual narratives have defined the cultural zeitgeist over the course of her 25-year career as a director and photographer. She has worked with Tilda Swinton and Kristen Stewart, and is also behind surreal, careerdefining music videos. She has directed episodes of American Gods, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Daredevil for TV, and her Hollywood film credits include The Runaways, and The Turning (due to release in 2020). Eat the Sun is a star-studded overview of Sigismondi’s photographic and film work.
From the beginning of time, human beings have looked up at the stars and speculated on other worlds. Published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing, Sun and Moon tells the story of that burning human need to comprehend the universe, from Neolithic observatories that mark the solstice to the latest space telescopes. It shows, for the first time, how the development of photography and cartography – the means of documenting other worlds – is linked indelibly to the charting of the heavens, from the first image on a glass plate to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Featuring a vivid selection of contemporary fashion photography, this volume is a visual odyssey through ideas of beauty, danger and seduction. Its exciting exploration of the confluence of art, fashion and fetish in the cult of high heels swooping down fashion show runways and city streets everywhere is an enticing mixture whimsy, allure and luxury. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in fashion or contemporary photography.
In honor of Erwin Olaf’s sixtieth birthday, Erwin Olaf: I Ampresents the first comprehensive survey of his work, bringing together his earliest images in black and white with his now-iconic color work, including selections from his most recent and heretofore unpublished series shot in Shanghai. This chronological presentation traces the evolution of the artist from cheeky provocateur to royal portraitist, as well as the refinement of his unique vision and stylistic panache over the last four decades. Interspersed among the various series is a wry, incisive commentary by Olaf on the contexts of and inspirations for his work.
A major new book on Martin Parr explores the photographer's most enduring subject - people - as never before By turns witty, surprising, and ingenious, Martin Parr's photographs reveal the eccentricities of modern life with affection and insight. This book - published to coincide both with Parr's 2019 exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery and also the date the UK will leave the EU - examines what it means to be human at a time of both change and retrospection. Bringing together new work from the last decade, Only Human explores the concepts of Britishness and national identity through the rituals and habits of everyday life.
After the death of his wife, Andre Kertesz consoled himself by taking up a new camera, the Polaroid SX70. As with earlier equipment, he mastered the camera and produced a provocative body of work that both honored his wife and lifted him out of depression. Here Kertesz dips into his reserves one last time, tapping new people, ideas, and tools to generate a whole new body of work through which he transforms from a broken man into a youthful artist.
The Bitter Years was the title of a seminal exhibition held in 1962 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by Edward Steichen, and 2012 marks its fiftieth anniversary. The show featured 209 images by photographers who worked under the aegis of the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1935-41, as part of Roosevelt's New Deal. The FSA, set up to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression, included an ambitious photography project that launched many photographic careers, most notably those of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange.
Emilie Flöge was only a teenager when she met the painter Gustav Klimt, but their friendship soon evolved into a complex and loving relationship that lasted the rest of their lives. Alfred Weidinger, an acclaimed expert on Klimt and his contemporaries, has compiled an exhaustive collection of photographs relating to the artist and his designer muse. While Klimt took many of these shots, other photographers include Carl Schuster, Victor von Spitzer, Hugo Henneberg, Pauline Kruger Hamilton, Anton Josef Trcka (Antios), and unknown individuals who had access to the couple's private lives.
Born in New York in 1929, William Klein is one of the leading photographers of the postwar era, as well as an influential filmmaker, painter, and graphic artist. This astonishing book, selected and designed by Klein himself, offers a visual survey of his long and varied career. It includes his poetic street photography of New York, Moscow, Rome, Tokyo, and Paris; his exciting fashion photography; stills and posters from his bitingly satirical films; and his graphically powerful painted contact sheets. Klein, whose achievement puts him on a level with Robert Frank, Richard Avedon, and Irving Penn, lives in Paris and is revered in Europe. This is the first comprehensive book on his work published in the United States in 20 years.
Over the past few decades, the long tradition of street photography has been wholly transformed by the proliferation of digital cameras, the Internet, and smartphones. A new generation of photographers have embraced this modern technology to capture the world around us in a way that is unstaged, of the moment, and real. Exploring this rich seam of emergent and exciting street photography, the 100 photographs featured in this book-the majority of which are previously unpublished and taken in the last few years-are presented on double-page spreads along with commentary about the work and its creator.
In this remarkable visual survey, internationally acclaimed photographer Sebastiao Salgado documents traditional methods of sustainable coffee farming across the globe, revealing rituals deeply steeped in history and pride.The book spans nearly a decade of research into the hidden world of coffee, highlighting relationships characterised by respect, fair exchange and a shared understanding that ever-improving quality has the power to improve lives. Salgado, a native to one of Brazil's premier coffee-growing regions, is the perfect guide for a reader's journey to principal farming locations in China, Colombia, Guatemala, Ethiopia, India, Brazil, Costa Rica and beyond.
In 2008 Alexander McQueen commissioned photographer Nick Waplington to document the creation of his Fall 2009 collection--all the way from inception to runway showing. Unfortunately, it was to be the last Fall/Winter collection that McQueen would stage before his untimely death. This show, which he titled The Horn of Plenty, found McQueen revisiting his 15-year archive of work and recycling it into a new collection. In effect, it was his personal survey of his work to date.
Couples by model-turned-photographer Ellen von Unwerth is what she calls a “fast” book—loud, fun, splashy. Small-size and thick like a bible, it is a very personal and powerful collection of couples of all kinds.
With the enthusiastic eye of a party guest and the attention of a true voyeur, premier photographer Ellen von Unwerth invites readers behind the scenes of the fashion world. 68 color & 119 duotone illustrations.
Today's most exciting woman behind the camera, Ellen von Unwerth's photographs are published in all the world's great magazines. Known as "the comical model", she started her career on the catwalk.
With the enthusiastic eye of a party guest and the attention of a true voyeur, premier photographer Ellen von Unwerth invites readers behind the scenes of the fashion world. 68 color & 119 duotone illustrations.
Today's most exciting woman behind the camera, Ellen von Unwerth's photographs are published in all the world's great magazines. Known as "the comical model", she started her career on the catwalk.
Anton Corbijn’s most recent publication goes back to his roots featuring his autobiographic series a. somebody; an early series of tombs, Cemetery; and eighty iconic portraits of musicians and bands from his career of 40 years.
This retrospective of Albert Watson's (*1942) best photos from the past four decades reflects a history of an era, capturing cultural aspects such as design, fashion and beauty as well as their protagonists. Through his career that has lasted more than 40 years, the Scottish photographer portrayed various movie stars, musicians or politicians for magazines and made more than 250 covers for Vogue magazine. Although graphically constructed, his pictures still reveal the soul of the person or object portrayed, while seeming like sculptures at the same time. One of his special abilities is to find the defining difference in his motives.
This first full-career monograph, featuring two decades of iconic fashion and celebrity editorial photographs, reveals the enormous influence and impact that Richardson has made on contemporary style, culture, and photography. Since Terry Richardson first rose to prominence in the 1990s, he has shocked and intrigued the world with his singular view and signature style of bold lighting, hypersexualized styling, and striking, off-kilter glamour. From glossy, high-end fashion photographs to raw in-studio portraits, Richardson's work has had an unmistakable impact on contemporary visual culture.
This is the new and revised edition of Arnold Odermatts acclaimed book, first published in 2003. With thoroughness and meticulous attention to detail, Swiss police officer Arnold Odermatt photographed automobile accidents on the streets of the Swiss Canton Nidwalden, documenting accident scenes and property damage during his 40-year career. In his photos the drivers have gone and the victims have been removed. All thats left are the wrecked cars that tell the stories of excessive speed, drunk driving, right-of-way errors and plain foolishness. The de-formed steel takes on a malleable quality.
Sartorial strength: Helmut Newton in the leading fashion magazinesHelmut Newton, master of late 20th-century fashion photography, always considered the printed page the most important factor to his work. It was, he explained, in the framework of an editorial or advertising commission, that he found his inspiration, and produced his best shots.Joining the prestigious roster of TASCHEN s Helmut Newton titles, including Sex & Landscapes, World without Men, and the much coveted Helmut Newton SUMO, this fresh edition of Pages from the Glossies gathers the most eminent and interesting examples of Helmut Newton s work for magazines across Europe and the United States.
In the city there are ways to escape the grid and walk along lines unseen. The city parks of New York offer this escape, eliciting both alienation and intoxication. They allow citizens and nature both a space for growth, a second city away from eyes on the street. Adam Pape’s photographs utilize the city parks in Washington Heights and Inwood as the backdrop for a narrative that unfolds in between day and night. Like a church or temple, parks are transformative. Here, young people have a public stage where they can try on different roles in the dark. Other citizens wander, fish, smoke, and pass time while animals lurk in the urban fringes, a reminder of nature’s promises and perils.
My Kingdom by Catalan photographer Txema Salvans offers a sharp-witted insight into contemporary Spanish society, and a wry comment on the climate of power in the artist’s home country. Salvans splices together blackand-white photographs of ordinary citizens enjoying the Mediterranean coast, with citations from the political rhetoric of former King of Spain, Juan Carlos I (1975–2015). Drenched in authority and affect, his speech conveys a King playing the role of a good-natured sovereign, the tender ruler of a democratic monarchy.
Liberty Theater by Rosalind Fox Solomon brings together her photographs made in the Southern United States from the 1970s to 1990s, never before published together as a group. Solomon’s images depict a complex terrain of social and emotional issues inherited over generations: a world of class and gender divisions, implied and overt racism, competing notions of liberty, and lurking violence.
In the winter of 2015, Ben Lerner wrote a short story, The Polish Rider, incorporating fictionalized elements of the life and work of the artist, Anna Ostoya, who had recently lost two of her canvases in the back of an Uber. As the narrator of the story helps the artist search for the missing canvases, he fantasizes about “recuperating the lost paintings through prose,” about how the verbal might take the place of the visual. After the story was published in The New Yorker, Ostoya painted the painting Lerner had invented based on her earlier work, transforming the fiction without changing any of the words. Ostoya went on to produce a series of compositions that respond to the story she’d helped inspire.
WINNER 2018 Aperture/Paris Photo, Photography Catalogue of the Year
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg’s The Land in Between presents the complex bond between landscape and human civilization, exploring the construction of power though the built environment and its inevitable impermanence. By looking back at areas of past historical or political importance her images highlight how conflict, destruction, time and decay transforms the landscape. Many of Schulz-Dornburg’s projects derive from a relatively confined geographic location, encompassing ancient civilizations alongside areas of modern strategic importance.
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg’s The Land in Between presents the complex bond between landscape and human civilization, exploring the construction of power though the built environment and its inevitable impermanence. By looking back at areas of past historical or political importance her images highlight how conflict, destruction, time and decay transforms the landscape. Many of Schulz-Dornburg’s projects derive from a relatively confined geographic location, encompassing ancient civilizations alongside areas of modern strategic importance.
Leibovitz addresses young photographers and readers interested in what photographers do, but any reader interested in contemporary history will be fascinated by her account of one of the richest bodies of work in the photographic canon. The subjects include photojournalism, studio work, photographing dancers and athletes, working with writers, and making the transition from shooting with film to working with digital cameras. Originally published in 2008, this revised and updated edition brings Leibovitz’s bestselling book back into print.
Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005–2016 is the photographer’s follow-up to her two landmark compilations, Annie Leibovitz: Photographs, 1970–1990 and A Photographer’s Life, 1990– 2005. For this new collection, Leibovitz has selected the best and most representative portraits from her recent work. The pictures document contemporary culture with an artist’s eye, wit, and an uncanny ability to personalize even the most recognizable and distinguished figures.
This gorgeously produced book features intimate, never-before-published portraits of a young and undiscovered Kate Moss, taken in the early 1990s by her then-boyfriend, Italian photographer Mario Sorrenti. Seen by Calvin Klein, the photographs gave life to the famous Obsession campaign, which launched Moss to international superstardom. Sumptuously reproduced in tritone and presented in a cloth-covered clamshell box, Kate is a stunning photographic portfolio of one of contemporary culture’s most iconic figures.
Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures: 40 Years of Photography by Bonnie McCurry, published by Laurence King in October 2018, is the biggest and most comprehensive volume on Steve McCurry to date.
In 2011 Vanessa Winship was the recipient of the Henri Cartier Bresson Award which funds an artist to pursue a new photographic project. For over a year Winship travelled across the United States, from California to Virginia, New Mexico to Montana, in pursuit of the fabled ‘American dream’.
And Time Folds accompanies a retrospective exhibition of the British photographer Vanessa Winship at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. At once intimate and epic, Winship’s black-and-white photographs explore notions of borders, land, memory, desire and history. This volume comprises photographs from seven series, including projects made during a decade living in the region of the Balkans, Turkey and the Caucasus; as well as work made in Georgia, America and the U.K.
In the follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut monograph Sleeping by the Mississippi, Alec Soth turned his eye to another iconic body of water, Niagara Falls. As with his photographs of the Mississippi, Soth’s pictures of Niagara are less about natural wonder than human desire. “I went to Niagara for the same reason as the honeymooners and suicide jumpers,” says Soth, “the relentless thunder of the Falls just calls for big passion.”
TTP is a series of photographs made by Hayahisa Tomiyasu from the window of his former student apartment in the German city of Leipzig. From his south-facing view we see a 'tischtennisplatte' or ping pong table used for a plethora of purposes, except from table tennis. Tomiyasu spent five years documenting the table and thanks to his sustained curiosity we observe the idiosyncrasies of human behaviour and social habits, as seasons change, scenes mutate and people come and go.
CONTEMPORARY FOOD STAGING AND PHOTOGRAPHY
We eat with our eyes. People love to stage and take photos of their food. Driven by Instagram and the advertising industry, stylists, gourmandizers, and photographers continually invent new ways of presenting food as both delectable and radical. Visual Feast presents work nonpareil from this growing scene.
We eat with our eyes. People love to stage and take photos of their food. Driven by Instagram and the advertising industry, stylists, gourmandizers, and photographers continually invent new ways of presenting food as both delectable and radical. Visual Feast presents work nonpareil from this growing scene.
Consistently proclaimed as one of the most important photobooks in the history of the medium, Ravens by Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase was first published in 1984 and the two subsequent editions have both been short runs and have sold out immediately. This bilingual facsimile of the first edition contains a new text by founder of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, Tomo Kosuga.
At a moment when the world is facing the world’s largest refugee and migration crisis since the Second World War, Incoming by Irish artist and Deutsche Börse Photography Prize winner Richard Mosse deals with the major humanitarian and political plight of our time, the displacement of millions due to war, persecution and climate change.
Discover the present and future condition of holiday resorts through the eyes of photographers who have documented the hot summer days. If you wish to escape the sweltering heat of these months, dive in the sea of photography and swim with the bookish tide, check out our books’ selection.
Michael Mack is the founder of London-based independent art and photography publishing house – Mack Book. Mack works with established and emerging artists, writers and curators, and cultural institutions. In 2012, he established the First Book Award, in collaboration with the National Media Museum, Bradford and the Wilson Centre for Photography, London.
The widely considered hallmark of every great civilisation that went down in history is ingenious and staggering architecture. Great architecture — magnificent temples, palaces and other residencies – symbolised the power of society and their sovereigns, the established hierarchy in the state, but also the unique discoveries of technology.