Book of the day > Rinko Kawauchi: Halo. Published by Aperture @aperturefnd . "In recent years, Rinko Kawauchi’s exploration of the cadences of the everyday has begun to swing farther afield from her earlier photographs focusing on tender details of day-to-day living. In her series and resulting book Ametsuchi (2013), she concentrated mainly on the volcanic landscape of Japan’s Mount Aso, using a historic site of Shinto rituals as an anchor for a larger exploration of spirituality. In Halo, Kawauchi expands this inquiry, this time grounding the project with photographs of the southern coastal region of Izumo, in Shimane Prefecture, interweaving them with images from New Year celebrations in Hebei province, China—a five-hundred-year-old tradition in which molten iron is hurled in lieu of fireworks—and her ongoing fascination with the murmuration of birds along the coast of Brighton, England. Cycles of time, implicit and subliminal patterns of nature and human ritual, are mesmerizingly knit together in these pages. 

Contemporary Japanese photography has not often been concerned with the natural landscape; the seemingly ever-expanding cityscape of Tokyo was more of a preoccupation up until 2011, a moment when the presumed order of things—natural, civic, and otherwise—was upended by the combined disasters of tsunami, earthquake, and human miscalculation. Kawauchi’s most recent work is not a commentary on natural disaster and unnatural aftermath. It is, however, an acknowledgment of larger forces at play."

Book of the day > The Moderns: Midcentury American Graphic Design by Steven Heller, and Greg D'Onofrio. Published by Abrams. "In The Moderns, we meet the men and women who invented and shaped Midcentury Modern graphic design in America. The book is made up of generously illustrated profiles, many based on interviews, of more than 60 designers whose magazine, book, and record covers; advertisements and package designs; posters; and other projects created the visual aesthetics of postwar modernity. Some were émigrés from Europe; others were homegrown—all were intoxicated by elemental typography, primary colors, photography, and geometric or biomorphic forms. Some are well-known, others are honored in this volume for the first time, and together they comprised a movement that changed our design world." @abramsbooks

Book of the day > Thomas Houseago: What Went Down (2nd edition, 2017). Published by Modern Art Oxford / Lund Humphries. "Thomas Houseago is one of the most unique and distinctive contemporary sculptors working today. This is the first ever monograph on his work and spans fifteen years of his career from 1995 to 2010. Houseago came to prominence with his monumental, figurative sculptures that are charged with remarkable energy and vitality. Houseago’s sculptures possess a daring urgency, a tactility and brute physicality that expose the process of their own making. The visible touch and imprint of the artist is nakedly evident. With texts by leading experts in the field, and featuring an interview with the artist, Thomas Houseago: What Went Down combines insightful analysis of the sculptor’s oeuvre and is fully illustrated."

Book of the day > Tokyo Compression by Michael Wolf. Published by Peperoni Books. "Michael Wolf is known for his large-format architectural photos of Chicago and primarily of Hong Kong, where he has been living for more than 15 years. His latest pictures have also been created in a big city: Tokyo. But this time Tokyo’s architecture is not the topic. Michael Wolf’s “Tokyo Compression” focuses on the craziness of Tokyo’s underground system. For his shots he has chosen a location which relentlessly provides his camera with new pictures minute per minute. Every day thousands and thousands of people enter this subsurface hell for two or more hours, constrained between glass, steel and other people who roll to their place of work and back home beneath the city. In Michael Wolf’s pictures we look into countless human faces, all trying to sustain this evident madness in their own way."

Book of the day > Studio 54. Edited by Ian Schrager, Foreword by Bob Colacello. Published by Rizzoli. "There has never been—and will never be—another nightclub to rival the sheer glamour, energy, and wild creativity that was Studio 54. Now, in the first official book on the legendary club, co-owner Ian Schrager presents a spectacular volume brimming with star-studded photographs and personal stories from the greatest party of all time. From the moment it opened in 1977, Studio 54 celebrated spectacle and promised a never-ending parade of anything goes. Although it existed for only three years, it served as a catalyst that brought together some of the most famous and creative people in the world. It quickly became known for its celebrity guest list and uniquely chic clientele. From the cutting-edge lighting displays to its elaborate sets, it was the beginning of nightclub as performance art. Now, Studio 54 explores this cultural zeitgeist and gives us Schrager’s personal firsthand account of what it was like to create and run the most famous nightclub of our age. With hundreds of photographs, many of which have never been seen before, of the celebrities and beautiful people and engaging stories and quotes from such cultural luminaries as Liza Minelli, David Geffen, Brooke Shields, Pat Cleveland, and Diane von Furstenberg, this exciting volume depicts the wild energy and glittering creativity of the era. One of the most important cultural landmarks of the twentieth century, Studio 54 continues to inspire with its legendary glamour. This exhilarating volume is a must-have for style and fashion aficionados today."

Book of the day > Albert Elm: What Sort of Life Is This. Published by the Ice Plant. “What does the world look like? What feelings does it stimulate? Why do we photograph it so urgently? Since 2009, Danish photographer Albert Elm (born 1990) has pursued his curiosity about human activity with a restless energy and intrepid wanderlust, crossing far-flung time zones, boarding the Trans-Siberian Railway, traveling alone in Dubai, China, India, or just walking through his neighborhood in Copenhagen. What Sort of Life Is This remixes Elm’s distant and local journeys into a bewildering panoply of narrative fragments and surreal compositions that feels both global and personal, fractured yet strangely complete. Referencing numerous styles and genres (all shot on 35mm film), the work explodes with the spontaneous color and complexity of life — tender, violent, lonely, joyful, bizarre. Equalizing the exotic and the banal, the book treats every picture as if it were made in the same mystifying place: the world itself.” @the.ice.plant @albert_elm

Book of the day > Anne Collier: Women with Cameras (Anonymous). Published by Karma, New York / Studio Voltaire. " Dating from the 1970s to the early 2000s, these artifacts of the pre-digital age were collected by Collier over a number of years from flea markets, thrift stores and online market places. Each of these photographs has, at some point in the recent past, been discarded by its original owner. The concept of "abandonment," of photographic images and the personal histories that they represent, is central to Women with Cameras (Anonymous), which amplifies photography’s relationship with memory, melancholia and loss. The sequence of the images in Collier's book follows the format of her 35mm slide projection work Women with Cameras (Anonymous) (2016), that was recently shown to great acclaim in Tokyo, Japan, and Basel, Switzerland."

Book of the day > Makoto Kagoshima Ceramics. Published by Chariots On Fire. Thanks to @chariotsonfire  for sharing this beautiful book with us - these phone pictures don't do it justice. "Makoto Kagoshima, based in the southern island of Japan, illustrates whimsical and heart-warming motifs on clay making each ceramic a unique, one-of-a-kind work of art. As an avid gardener, motifs such as pansies and roses appear throughout his designs with occasional appearances of butterflies and other fantastical creatures. 'Makoto Kagoshima Ceramics' is a catalog of 130 vibrant ceramics by Makoto Kagoshima commissioned by Chariots on Fire. This book contains the largest documentation of Makoto Kagoshima's one-of-a-kind ceramics work to date." 

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Book of the day > Judith Stenneken: Illuminate Naturally In Darkness. Self-Published. Text by Robert Montgomery. “A multi-path photobook -- every page is a fold-out page. A visual poem on life's transitory nature. For this project I use metaphors of the journey, the voyager and transitory spaces (for instance hotel rooms and airplanes) to describe transitions as the sole constant in life. The concepts of departure and arrival dissolve as the traveler keeps moving - a gravity to constant change. The voyager's home becomes the hotel room and the airplane. Spaces to pause but never to dwell.

The images in this photo book refuse to be placed in time or space. They represent moods rather than facts. This book works more like a poem that wants to be re-visited over time. And like a good poem it implies multiple ways to read and interpret it, in this case because of the unique physical structure of the book. In comparison to most photobooks, where the story is predefined by the author (due to a singular sequence), Illuminate Naturally… challenges you to explore its multiple beginnings, middles and ends in order to find your own story in it. You essentially become the co-author within the environment that I have established.” 

Book of the day > Bowie Unseen: Portraits of an Artist as a Young Man by Gerald Fearnley. Published by ACC Editions. " In 1967, a 20-year-old David Jones decided to change his name to avoid confusion with the lead singer of the Monkees. He decided on 'Bowie'. By this time, Jones had been playing music for five years, appearing in and out of various bands, singing rock and roll at local youth gatherings, any pub that would have him and even a few weddings. Jones joined the band the Konrads, but then soon left them for the King Bees. After a few more stop and starts, Jones became Bowie and met Derek 'Dek' Fearnley.

David Bowie enlisted Fearnley to help record an album. Reportedly learning by studying the Observer Book of Music, the two young musicians practiced, wrote and hung-out at the home of Fearnley's brother, Gerald. Gerald Fearnley was a working photographer in 1967. "I don't remember how it happened, but I was enlisted to take photographs of David for the cover. I was probably the only person he knew with a studio and a camera."

When David Bowie by David Bowie was released on June 1, 1967 - the same day as The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - little if anything happened. Nothing charted and the band parted ways.

Now - fifty years since the original photo session and release of David Bowie's debut album - the unseen photos of Gerald Fearnley are presented here for the first time. These whimsical, youthful images capture the artist as a young man only a few years before he'd transform himself into Ziggy Stardust and launch a career that would become one of the most successful and influential in the history of modern music.

But at that time, he was just starting out - creating his first persona; David Bowie."