Focus: Five Women Photographers: Julia Margaret Cameron, Margaret Bourke-White, Flor Garduno, Sandy Skoglund, Lorna Simpson

From its dynamic title and eerie cover image to its clear-eyed prose, Wolf's study of five photographers and their medium is a model of understated originality. Deftly juggling biography, technique, social history and interpretation, the author, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago and herself a photographer, punctuates her engrossing commentary with stunning examples of Julia Margaret Cameron's (1815-1879) Pre-Raphaelite portraits, Margaret Bourke-White's (1904-1971) muscular news photos, Flor Garduno's (b. 1957) lyrical Latin America, Lorna Simpson's (b. 1960) philosophical constructs, and Sandy Skoglund's (b. 1946) surreal scenarios. As each woman's journey to self-discovery is traced in lively and often moving detail (Cameron freed the chickens before converting a chicken house into a studio; Bourke-White bravely battled Parkinson's disease), the photographs materialize on the pages like triumphant visions. Art appreciation of this calibre should not be missed by interested readers of either sex. Ages 9-up. (Sept.)