Book of the day > ZZYZX by Gregory Halpern. Published by MACK (@mack_books).” The early settlers dubbed California The Golden State, and The Land of Milk and Honey. Today there are the obvious ironies – sprawl, spaghetti junctions and skid row—but the place is not so easily distilled or visualized, either as a clichéd paradise or as its demise. There’s a strange kind of harmony when it’s all seen together—the sublime, the psychedelic, the self-destructive. Like all places, it’s unpredictable and contradictory, but to greater extremes. Cultures and histories coexist, the beautiful sits next to the ugly, the redemptive next to the despairing, and all under a strange and singular light, as transcendent as it is harsh.

The pictures in this book begin in the desert east of Los Angeles and move west through the city, ending at the Pacific. This general westward movement alludes to a thirst for water, as well as the original expansion of America, which was born in the East and which hungrily drove itself West until reaching the Pacific, thereby fulfilling its “manifest” destiny.

The people, places, and animals in the book did exist before Halpern’s camera, but he has sewn these photographs into a work of fiction or fantasy—a structure, sequence and edit which, like Los Angeles itself, teeters on the brink of collapsing under the weight of its own strangely-shaped mass.”

Book of the day > The Moon 1968–1972. Published by T. Adler Books. “NASA’s Apollo program landed the first humans on the moon in 1969. In the next three years, Apollo sent 10 more men to the moon in five subsequent missions. The first moon landing in particular is a legendarily well-documented event, representing one of those rare moments in which the world was united in awe, witnessing the feat together on their television screens. But each Apollo mission also generated hundreds of photographs, many of which have only recently been released by NASA. A selection of these images--shot by the astronauts themselves with suit-mounted and handheld Hasselblad cameras--are gathered in this beautifully designed, affordable volume.

Many of the photographs, though shot originally for scientific, documentary purposes, have an extraordinary snapshot quality, boasting inadvertently artful compositions and effects: in one, a pair of astronaut’s legs emerges upside down from the bottom of the frame; in another, a striding astronaut appears to glow against the black recesses of space.

Contextualized with background information about the Apollo Missions and the role of photographic documentation in them, the photographs in The Moon 1968–1972 are fascinating documents of the majesty of outer space, but also record the surface of the moon as a landscape of wonder.“

Book(s) of the day > Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné. Published by Yale University Press. “The celebrated American artist Richard Diebenkorn was a singular figure in postwar American art. Early in his career, he created abstract paintings that combined landscape influence, aerial perspective, and a deeply personal calligraphic language. Then, in late 1955, he began working in a representational mode (landscapes, figure studies, and still lifes) and was associated with the Bay Area figurative movement. Diebenkorn later abandoned figurative references in the 1960s and embarked on monumental abstract, geometrical compositions, including his celebrated Ocean Park works.

This four-volume catalogue raisonné is the definitive resource on Diebenkorn’s unique works, including his paintings, works on paper, and three-dimensional objects. The first volume gives an overview of the artist’s career, featuring essays by noted scholars John Elderfield, Ruth E. Fine, Jane Livingston, Steven Nash, and Gerald Nordland, as well as an illustrated chronology, list of exhibitions, bibliography, and selection of studio notes. The second volume spans his student and early abstract works; the third volume features his representational works during the Berkeley period; and the fourth volume covers his later periods, as well as his sketchbooks and other little-known private drawings. Many of the more than five thousand works illustrated in this catalogue are being published for the first time, and with new color photography that showcases his work like never before.”

Book of the day > KH Issue 3. Published by Kevin Harry (@mrkevinharry). “Maybe it's a smile, maybe it's a hairstyle, maybe it's an outfit, maybe it's a tattoo, or maybe it's just a vibe. The portraits in KH capture the essence of each subject. The photo zine was created and edited by photographer Kevin Harry.  The images in the artists' books were taken at festivals and parades around the metropolitan New York City area. Each issue celebrates the diversity of people, with the idea being ‘come as you are.’ “

Book of the day > Design for Space: Soviet and Russian Mission Patches by Alexander Glushko. Published by DOM Publishers. “Covering the period from the beginning of the Cold War to the installation of the International Space Station, this book documents a rare collection: almost 250 mission patches worn by Soviet and Russian cosmonauts since 1963. Alexander Glushko, one of the leading specialists in the history of manned space flight and rocket technology in Russia, presents numerous emblems with individual explanations in their applied context: as patches worn on spacesuits. The collection not only comprises partially forgotten mission patches, but also includes rare photographs of spacecraft crews and space stations. As well as providing additional historical information, the collection also retraces the formation and development of Soviet and Russian symbolism in terms of space travel and brings the history of cosmic heraldry to life.”

Book of the day > Steve McCurry: On Reading. Published by Phaidon (@phaidonsnaps). An homage to the Kertész classic. “Young or old, rich or poor, engaged in the sacred or the secular, people everywhere read. This homage to the beauty and seductiveness of reading brings together a collection of photographs taken by Steve McCurry over his nearly four decades of travel and is introduced by award-winning writer, Paul Theroux. McCurry’s mesmerizing images of the universal human act of reading are an acknowledgement of - and a tribute to - the overwhelming power of the written word.”

Book of the day > Copyright/Archief: Sanne Sannes. Published by Hannibal Publishing . "Sanne Sannes was the ‘agent provocateur’ of the Dutch photography scene in the 1960’s. His grainy, black and white, intimate and erotic portraits of women, who he photographed in intense and ecstatic sessions, went against all the traditional rules of photography. Sannes was not afraid to experiment with photographic techniques and styles; everything was allowed to achieve the required result. Sannes was tragically killed in a car accident just days after he turned 30, but in his short life he created one of the most impressive photographic oeuvres of the 20th century. This monograph is the most complete overview of the work of Sanne Sannes that has been published, having been initiated by Johan ten Berg, Rob Sannes, the brother of Sannes, Gerrit Jan Wolffensperger, the former assistant of Sannes, and Roy Kahmann. With contributions written by Willemijn van der Zwaan and Gerrit Jan Wolffensperger. In collaboration with the Rijksmuseum and the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands."

Book of the day > Steidl–Werk No. 23: Masaho Antonai, “Deformed.” Published by Steidl. “The main idea behind Steidl–Werk No. 23 was to create a paper object never seen before. A joint project between Theseus Chan’s Werk magazine and Steidl, it stems from Chan’s and Steidl’s mutual interest in art and books, the smell of ink, the texture of paper and the desire to subvert technology by creating work with a human imprint. Accordingly, this issue features a young Japanese artist, Masaho Anotani, whose collage-like drawings are made almost entirely by hand. The design was inspired by a tightly taped, neatly formed package sent to the magazine by Anotani containing his printouts—an idea that found its way into the book itself, which comes as an entirely sealed entity. Building on the concept of creating and destructing the final product, a chaotic bricolage of "printed junk" is born.”

Book of the day > History Is Made At Night: Photographs 1976-1979 by Godlis. Introduction by Jim Jarmusch. Published by Matte Editions. “40 years in the making, HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT contains 119 photographs in a fine art duotone monograph edition; including photographs from GODLIS' nights at CBGB's between 1976 and 1979, when Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie, Richard Hell, Talking Heads, and Televsion ruled New York City's Bowery. GODLIS, shot in the style of photographers Brassai and Robert Frank, using his handheld Leica camera and Tri-X film to capture his subjects by the natural light of the Bowery outside as well as inside the club CBGB's. Analog all the way, these photographs will take you back to the grainy heydays of the New York City Punk Scene.” @godlis

Book of the day – and book signing tomorrow (Thursday, 6-8 at Arcana)! > Pamela Littky: The Villa Bonita. Published by Kehrer Verlag. “Like many apartment buildings in Hollywood, the Villa Bonita was built during the film industry’s first heyday bridging the 1920s to the 1930s. Built for the vast crews and casts that Cecil B.DeMille was hiring during his fertile period, the Villa Bonita has housed great Hollywood figures from Errol Flynn to Francis Ford Coppola. In absence of traditionally scaled, walkable neighborhoods, Los Angeles has long created community within the confines of these kinds of apartment complexes. Young and old, employed and between gigs, dreamers and those whose dreams left long ago –everyone arrived at the Villa Bonita for one good reason or another. In a series of photographs that brings us into intimate distance of its subjects, The Villa Bonita surveys all of the inhabitants of this historic apartment tower in the middle of Hollywood, creating a collective portrait of the transient nature of the city. Those residents who have been there for decades reconcile themselves to the increasingly diverse group who all live under the same roof, including those who, like so many people before them, are just passing through.”

If you can't make it tomorrow but would like a signed copy of The Villa Bonita, you can order it here.