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An Uncommon Archive is a thought-provoking selection of images from the projects, books, and saved references found in the hard drives, stored files, and archives of T. Adler Books. This lovely new volume draws its content from the seemingly disparate worlds of surfing, fashion and style, fishing, music, fine art, rock climbing, world travel, and adventure. The photographs, paintings, ephemera, illustrations, and contact sheets are arranged in pairs and sequences suggesting subtle connections and parallels between them.
Iconic historical images, works by well-known contemporary artists and photographers, and beautiful outdoor photographs blend and share page space with found paintings, vernacular snapshots, and NASA imagery; works by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Jacques Henri Lartigue share space with those of Craig R. Stecyk III, Ed Templeton, Tim Barber, Dewey Nicks, and Thomas Campbell; ocean views from above and below the surface by Wayne Levin and Corey Arnold are scattered throughout the volume alongside paintings by Maynard Dixon and Robert Overby, nineteenth-century Cyanotypes, and a hand-painted sign by Stephen Powers. Iconic surfing photographs by Don James, Ron Church, Steve Wilkings, Leo Hetzel, Jeff Hornbaker, Art Brewer, Jim Russi, Jeff Divine, and Jim Driver are interspersed wit classic climbing images from Glen Denny, Mike Graham, Allen Steck, Johannes Mair, and Jeff Johnson. But it is the editor's imaginative sequencing and pairing of these photographs that provides the unique pleasure of this book. A fresh, blue-sky and water-drenched elegance carries the volume along, resulting in a melding of tone and composition, gestures and cultures, associations and connections that reinforce the individual images.
To read more about about the esteemed Mr. Adler and An Uncommon Archive, please view this most excellent article published in this past week's New York Times.
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