A familiar theme, but one that, across the generations, can occasionally unearth something rather powerful.

It is impossible, looking at this picture, to confidently place where everything in the image is in relationship to each other. Dissolving the boundaries between the exterior and interior, Between Worlds offers just such a sensory immersion.As Barbara Rose said of Smith’s major Tate Gallery retrospective in 1975, he was ‘at once in and out of touch with the currents of the mainstream … au courant and aloof at the same time. Well-placed for travel from all over the globe with plenty of sunshine throughout the year, Cyprus has become a favored tourist destination. Although Cyprus is a relatively small island, its position in the East Mediterranean has always given it strategic importance beyond its size. A note from FRAMES: if you have a forthcoming or recently published book of photography, please let us know.

At the heart of Cezanne lies a sense of disquiet: a homelessness haunting the vividness, an anxiety underlying the appeal of colour. Through the play of transparency and the mise en abyme of his images, Harry Gruyaert tells in Between Worlds the illusion of the world. Prof David Alan Mellor investigates and explains the Anglo-American cultural contexts that drove Smith’s art, while Alex Massouras’s two themed essays, ‘Young and British’ and ‘From Motion Pictures to Flight’, explore Smith’s originality from fresh perspectives. If These Apples Should Fall: Cezanne and the Present looks back on Cezanne from a moment – our own – when such judgments may seem to need justifying. These images ask not so much for our emotional response as our participation with a multifaceted narrative that is not contained within any one layer.The green walls the red chair are a compositionally wonderful pairing, the frame within a frame of the glassless window isolates the narrative outside. A simpler image from Gao, Mali, in 1988 simply shows a vacant room, a glassless window, some fabric blowing in what is perhaps a breeze, a vacant red chair, and through the window opening people walking on a dirt street. He is the only artist of his stature who has not been represented by a monograph, which the dazzling presentation of images in Richard Smith: Artworks now fulfils. Other images range from New York City to Israel to Belgium to Paris to Tokyo, Istanbul, Madrid, the Dominican Republic, Tunis. With a historical gazetteer, chronology of major events, index, bibliography and historical and contemporary maps, this book is an invaluable companion to students or visitors to the island.

All visitors, whether to the Greek or Turkish side of the island, discover the immensely rich history, which has resulted in so many civilizations making their mark upon its soil. A Traveller’s History of Cyprus” offers a complete and authoritative history of the island’s past and also touches on the sensitive present-day issues for both sides of the island. A text by David Campany examines the photographer's singular approach and positioning, which is "in the space of the threshold (where) we are balanced, neither in nor out, present but in neither place. Since the 1940s a steady stream of Cuban musicians has also made the migration to the US, sparking changes in North American musical forms: bandleader Machito set New York’s jazz and Latin scene on fire, and master drummer Chano Pozo’s entry into Dizzy Gillespie’s group led to the birth of Latin jazz, to name just two.A good photo is a photo that says a lot of things about the place and the moment it was taken,” says Gruyaert. That he latterly slipped under the radar to some extent is partly explained by his detachment from the mainstream as well as by his frequent switching of studios between England and the USA, although this helped charge his creative batteries. The artwork here reflects both the cultural and musical depth of Cuba as well as the political influence of revolutionary communism. No matter the setting, the country or the era, Gruyaert deploys a luminous alchemy suspended in time.

Hilariously funny, sometimes rather sad, but invariably interesting, this is a superbly diverting book. His very intuitive and physical sense of place immerses the spectator in a world that borrows simultaneously from the cinematic universe and from that of the painter. But the idea of holding multiple levels of now as being simultaneously present is fascinating and maddening and finally deeply rewarding in a way that is impossible to reduce to a single topic or thesis statement.Magnum photographer Harry Gruyaert’s work has always been thrilling in the way it articulates a particular way of seeing.