Lee's Holiday Gift Picks!
Hi-Fi: The History of High-End Audio Design. ” A beyond-cool look at the world of high-end audio design for passionate collectors, obsessive audiophiles, and design fans. At a time when sales of vinyl records have hit a 25-year high, and analog technologies are providing the kind of extraordinary audio experiences that our increasingly digital world has started to remove, Hi-Fi is essential reading. This unique book explores just how, when, and why the world fell in love with the look, feel, and sound of top-of-the-line audio equipment. Hi-Fi traces this fascinating evolution from the 1950s to today (and tomorrow), taking readers right up to the current renaissance of all things analog and the emergence of cutting-edge designs for die-hard audiophiles." Published by Phaidon. $79.95
Michael Jang: Who is Michael Jang. "San Francisco–based photographer Michael Jang spent nearly four decades working as a successful commercial portrait photographer. Unbeknownst to the world, however, he was simultaneously assembling a vast archive of thousands of remarkable images documenting, variously: college days, Hollywood celebrities, would-be weather presenters, San Francisco street scenes, his family, Bay Area punks and adolescent garage bands. Jang revealed nothing of his ever-expanding, eclectic archive for almost 40 years until 2001, when he submitted a number of images for consideration to San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. Jang’s work attracted immediate acclaim, and for the past decade he has continued to unveil his considerable oeuvre in national and international exhibitions and monographs. The photographer’s first major monograph, Who Is Michael Jang? highlights Jang's most important bodies of work. Introduced by his longtime collaborator and SFMOMA curator emerita of photography, Sandra Phillips, this volume offers readers a long-overdue introduction to Jang’s incredible images." Published by Atelier Editions. $ 65.00
Mitch Epstein: Sunshine Hotel "The promise and pathology of America in the photographs of Epstein, more than half of which are previously unpublished America, as a place and an idea, has occupied Mitch Epstein’s art for the past five decades. With the first photographs he made in 1969 at the age of 16, Epstein began confronting the cultural psychology of the United States. Although he started working in an era defined by the Vietnam War, civil rights, rock and roll, and free love, he responded hardily to each radically different era that followed—from Reaganomics to surveillance after 9/11, to the current climate crisis and resurgence of white supremacy. More than a single era or issue, it is the living organism of American culture that engages Epstein; no matter how much the country changes, he describes something mysteriously and persistently American. Conceived of and sequenced by Andrew Roth, Sunshine Hotel assembles 175 photos made between 1969 and 2018—more than half of them previously unpublished. Yet the book is not simply a retrospective. It traces both the evolution of an artist and the development of a country, revealing Epstein’s formal and thematic shifts in tandem with America’s changing zeitgeist and landscape. Sunshine Hotel is a visual immersion that forgoes linearity and a classical layout, as it sets forth Epstein’s evolving understanding of his country’s pathologies and promise. Published by Steidl. $ 75.00
Shtetl in the Sun: Andy Sweet's South Beach 1977–1980. "Forget the jokes about late ‘70s South Beach being the Yiddish-speaking section of “God’s Waiting Room”; yes, upward of 20,000 elderly Jews made up nearly half of its population in those days—all crammed into an area of barely two square miles like a modern-day shtetl. But these New York transplants and Holocaust survivors all still had plenty of living, laughing and loving to do, as strikingly portrayed in Shtetl in the Sun, which features previously unseen photographs documenting South Beach’s once-thriving and now-vanished Jewish community—a project that American photographer Andy Sweet (1953–82) began in 1977 after receiving his MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a driving passion until his tragic death. Sweet’s photos capture this community’s daily rhythms in all their beach-strolling, klezmer-dancing glory. “They were strong, humorous, and beautiful images,” fellow photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who worked closely with Sweet, remarked after his death. The book includes a foreword by award-winning Miami arts journalist Brett Sokol and an introductory essay by National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff." Published by Letter 16 Press. $ 39.95
Do You Compute? Selling Tech from the Atomic Age to the Y2K Bug, 1950-1999 by Ryan Mungia & Steven Heller. Edited by Ryan Mungia & J.C. Gabel , Designed by Ryan Mungia, Cover design by John Zabawa. “Before Alexa and the iPhone, there was the large and unwieldy mainframe computer. In the postwar 1950s, computers were mostly used for aerospace and accounting purposes. To the public at large, they were on a rung that existed somewhere between engineering and science fiction. Magazine ads and marketing brochures were designed to create a fantasy surrounding these machines for prospective clients: Higher profit margins! Creativity unleashed! Total automation! With the invention of the microchip in the 1970s came the PC and video games, which shifted the target of computer advertising from corporations to the individual. By the end of the millennium, the notion of selling tech burst wide open to include robots, cell phones, blogs, online dating services, and much, much more. Do You Compute? is a broad survey featuring the very best of computer advertising in the 20th century. From the Atomic Age to the Y2K bug, this volume presents a connoisseur’s selection of graphic gems culled from museums, university archives, and private collections to illustrate the evolution of the computer from its early days as a hulking piece of machinery to its current state as a handheld device. Accompanied by two essays—one by cultural anthropologist Ryan Mungia and the other by graphic design historian Steven Heller—and including five different decade-long timelines that highlight some of the most influential moments in computer history, this fun yet meaningful volume is a unique look at the computer and how it has shaped our world." Published by Hat & Beard Press with Boyo Press. $ 50.00
Billy Al Bengston: Paintings and Watercolors. "This is the first monograph on the Californian pop artist in more than thirty years, with a representative selection of works from 1957 to 2014. Billy Al Bengston is the very personification of the cheerful, carefree attitude towards life in California—in both his work and his personal life. After studying at the California College of Arts and Crafts and the Otis Art Institute, he exhibited at the legendary Ferus Gallery in 1957 and was the central figure among a group of artists that included Frank Gehry, Edward Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, and Ken Price. BAB, as he apostrophizes himself, inserts car and motorcycle parts as motifs into his otherwise abstract paintings. He uses lacquer and spray paint instead of oil and aluminum panels with dented surfaces instead of the traditional canvas. Art and lifestyle combine to create the individual “Bengston iconography” of California Cool." Published by Edition Cantz. $ 65.00
A Colorful Life; Gere Kavanaugh, Designer. "The designer Gere Kavanaugh is an irrepressible force of nature who epitomized the craft and folk vibe of the '60s and '70s California design scene and remains a larger-than-life personality today. Raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Kavanaugh became in 1952 only the third woman to earn a degree in Cranbrook Academy of Art's design program. After successful stints as one of GM's so-called Damsels of Design and as director of interiors for Victor Gruen's architecture and planning firm, she opened Gere Kavanaugh/Designs. There, Kavanaugh put her unique stamp on textiles, furniture, toys, graphics, store and restaurant interiors, holiday decor, housewares, and public art---even designing and curating exhibitions. But perhaps her most enduring project has been the joyful, open-ended, ongoing experiment of her own lifestyle and homes, a dream of color and handcraft. Kavanaugh was awarded the AIGA Medal in 2016, recognizing her "prodigious and polymathic approach to design. Published by Princeton Architectural Press." $ 40.00
Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains. “Why do bad guys live in good houses? From Atlantis in The Spy Who Loved Me to Nathan Bateman's ultra-modern abode in Ex Machina, big-screen villains often live in architectural splendor. From a design standpoint, the villain’s lair, as popularized in many of our favorite movies, is a stunning, sophisticated, envy-inducing expression of the warped drives and desires of its occupant. Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains, celebrates and considers several iconic villains’ lairs from recent film history. From futuristic fantasies to deathtrap-laden hives, from dwellings in space to those under the sea, pop culture and architecture join forces in these outlandish, primarily modern homes and in Lair, which features buildings from fifteen films.” Published by Tra Publishing. $ 75.00
Corine Vermeulen: Your Town Tomorrow. "Your Town Tomorrow (2007 - 2017) acknowledges a resilient community in the midst of challenging transitions. Although documentary in format, it is also a very personal series as it chronicles my life and work in Detroit, the communities where I have lived, and my friends and neighbors. Detroit has been the site of complicated change since I moved here thirteen years ago. Real estate developers and corporate investors have altered the character of the city. The national media claims Detroit is a “new” city of great economic opportunity, but it hardly recognizes the people who have lived here throughout the changes. A city’s residents define its identity; the people of Detroit are essential to its culture and vitality." Self Published. $ 55.00
New York Club Kids by Waltpaper. "The embodiment of Generation X, the Club Kids were the last subculture of the analog world. New York: Club Kids is a high-impact visual diary of New York City in the 1990s, seen through the eyes of Walt Cassidy, known as Waltpaper, a central figure within the Club Kids. The Club Kids—named thus by New York Magazine in 1988—were an artistic, fashion-conscious youth movement that crossed over into the public consciousness through appearances on daytime talk shows, magazine editorials, fashion campaigns and music videos, planting the seeds for popular cultural trends such as reality television, self-branding, “influencers” and the gender revolution. Known for their outrageous looks, legendary parties and sometimes illicit antics, the Club Kids were the embodiment of Generation X and would prove to be the last definitive subculture group of the analog world. The ’90s have come to be known as the last discernible and cohesive decade, cherished by those who experienced it and romanticized by those who missed it. The first comprehensive visual document of ’90s nightlife and street culture, New York: Club Kids grants special access to an underground world, providing exclusive insight into the lifestyle of this celebrated and notorious clique. Featuring rare and previously unseen photographs along with magazine editorials and ephemera, the book culls from the personal archives of various photographers and artists—some celebrated, and many others whose recognition is long overdue. Published by Damiani. $ 55.00
