BOOKSHELF. - Review - book review

IS there any medium that communicates the beauty and vitality of a people as well as still photography? The written word has its power, and movies convey a sense of immediacy. But no other form of expression quite matches the impact of a single moment captured in the frozen frame of a photograph, particularly a black and white photograph. And now, thanks to the success of some recent coffee-table volumes, several photography books full of gorgeous images by and of African-Americans have hit bookshelves. They show Black America at work and play, in good times and bad. Mostly, they show Black life in all of its glory, rendered lovingly and sensitively as only artists who are of the culture can.

Crowns: Portraits of Black Women In Church Hats (Doubleday, $27.50) has photographs by Michael Cunningham and text by Craig Marberry. In words and pictures, Cunningham and Marberry convey the beauty and majesty of a wide range of African-American women, all gussied up in their Sunday-go-to-meeting hats. It is a wonderful tribute to Black women in their crowning glory.

Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographs (Merrill Publishers, $39.95) is a collection of powerful, political and thought-provoking images by 94 African-American photographers who have chronicled the Black experience over the past 50 years, edited by Barbara Head Millstein.

We've Come This Far: A Photographic Journal of the Abyssinian Baptist Church (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $27.50) traces the history and hallmarks of the nearly 200-year-old Harlem institution that is one of the most influential congregations in the United States. The volume includes 90 duo, tone photographs culled from the historical archives of the church, as well as , many from the collection of Robert L. Gore Jr., who has served as the church photographer for the past 10 years.

Other recent releases include: The Other Side of Color' African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby Jr. (Pomegranate, $65,) author and painter David C. Driskell's beautifully rendered pictorial catalogue of the more than 300 African-American paintings, prints, sculptures and drawings in the highly regarded personal collection of actor/producer/philanthropist Bill Cosby and his wife Camille. The collection includes work by such noted artists as Faith Ringgold, Jacob Lawrence, Henry Ossawa Tanner and Elizabeth Catlett.

In Praise of Black Women: Ancient African Queens (The University of Wisconsin Press, $60) is the first in a four-volume series that pays tribute in words and pictures to the women of Africa and throughout the African Diaspora. First published in French in 1988, the series makes its English language debut with volume one, which focuses on the women rulers, warriors and heroines of Africa, written by Simone Schwartz-Bart, translated by Rose-Myriam Rejouis.

And still in print is Special Moments In African-American History 1955-1996: The Photographs of Moneta Sleet Jr. (Johnson Publishing Co., $49.95). This volume is a photographic record of the life and times of a groundbreaking and artistically sensitive photojournalist who was the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.

Soulcatcher and Other Stories (Harcourt, $12), is a collection of 12 short stories that explore the brutality and terror of slavery in America from the perspective of the enslaved Africans themselves, by National Book Award-winning author Charles Johnson.

The Living Blood (Pocket Books, $25.95) is author Tananarive Due's sequel to her popular supernatural thriller My Soul to Keep, about the catastrophic event that befall a woman who unwittingly marries into a secret society of immortals.

In Four Guys and Trouble (Dutton, $23.95), a new novel by Marcus Major (Good Peoples), the ties that bind four college buddies is strained by their attraction to the "kid sister" of a friend who has died.

Never Anything Too Easy (NNSJA Publishing $29.95) is the inspiring personal account of a young Black man's journey to adulthood, a journey encumbered by such pitfalls as the death of his mother, a tortured childhood in the state welfare system and a too-early marriage that ended in divorce, by motivational speaker Nathaniel J. Henry.