Steve’s gift picks are glorious: Legendary Los Angeles Restaurants: Celebrating the Famous Places Where Hollywood Ate, Drank, and Played / Santa Monica Press, Andrea Robbins & Max Becher: Black Cowboys / La Fabrica, Saul Leiter: Early Color (Reprint) / Steidl, Clint Woodside: Undercover Cars / Kill Your Idols, Yes Yes Yes Alternative Press: 1966-1977 From Provo to Punk/ A+M Bookstore & Viaindustriae, Kevin Harry: KH Zine, Tony Oursler: Imponderable; The Archives of Tony Oursler / JRP Ringier, Randi Malkin-Steinberger: No Circus / Damiani, The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop / Regan Arts, Marcel Duchamp: Boite en Valise - Museum in a Box/ Walther König. See them all here!

Hand selected for your gift giving convenience, the staff gift picks are in.  The completely fabulous Erin (@erinschneiderprojects) is bowled over by her own amazing picks. They are, in no particular order: Dwan Gallery: Los Angeles to New York, 1959-1971, Donald Judd: Collected Writings, Experience: Culture, Cognition, and the Common Sense, Hilma Af Klint: Painting the Unseen, Blueprint for Counter Education, Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers, Julius Shulman: Modernism Rediscovered (3 Volumes), Richard Misrach & Guillermo Galindo: Border Cantos, Maximilian Stejskal: Folklig Idrott, Takahiro Kurashima: Poemotion 1-3. 

Book of the day and book signing/discussion tomorrow 5-7! > Todd Hido: Intimate Distance: Twenty-five Years of Photographs, A Chronological Album.  Published by Aperture. “Intimate Distance is the first comprehensive monograph charting the career of acclaimed American photographer Todd Hido. Though he has published many smaller monographs of individual bodies of work, this gathers his most iconic images for the first time and brings a fresh perspective to his oeuvre with the inclusion of many unpublished photographs.

Well-known for his photographs of landscapes and suburban housing across the United States, and for his use of luminous color, Hido casts a distinctly cinematic eye across all that he photographs, digging deep into his memory and imagination for inspiration. David Campany introduces the work and looks specifically at Hido's cinematic influences and the kind of spectatorship the work demands. The book is organized chronologically, showing how his series overlap in exciting, new ways. Also featured are short interviews with Hido about the making of each of his monographs. From exterior to interior, surface observations to subconscious investigations, landscapes to nudes, this mid-career survey reveals insight into Hido's practice and illustrates how his unique focus has developed and shifted over time.”

See you at Arcana tomorrow, 5-7.

Please note that sales will be limited to one copy per customer at the event. Details at arcanabooks.com 

Book of the day (and book signing at tomorrow! Friday! 6-8!) > Ari Marcopoulos: Not Yet. Published by Rizzoli. “The definitive monograph of Ari Marcopoulos, the renowned photographer whose explicit and startling visual intimacy bridges art and street photography. For nearly four decades, Ari Marcopoulos has broken conventions with his candid and raw style. His photographs documenting subcultures such as skateboarding, snowboarding, and hip-hop; his tendencies to photograph stark landscapes, portraits of artists, and celebrities; and his extremely quiet and intimate photos of his family and friends have all been hugely influential in helping to establish the visual rawness of youth culture, as well as the ephemeral aesthetic of contemporary photography. Ari Marcopoulos: Not Yet is an unprecedented journey through the artist’s celebrated career, from skateboarding and snowboarding to rural landscapes and cityscapes. This volume includes both iconic and never-before-published photographs from the 1980s to now. Each chapter is edited by a different celebrated artist or family member—all close to Marcopoulos—and it is through these personal reflections on the artist’s work that this monograph takes on a deeper level of intimacy, drawing a more complete portrait of his oeuvre.” Please join us tomorrow at Arcana to celebrate this AND Ari’s new book ROME-MALIBU! @ari_marcopoulos_official

Book of the day > Walking In Place 1: New Orleans by Mike Slack. Published by The Ice Plant and Perimeter Editions. A few signed copies remain from our great event on Saturday night! “Walking in Place 1: New Orleans is the first in a series of standalone books by Los Angeles-based photographer Mike Slack, each taking in a different city, town or geographical locale. In this volume, Slack records various points of reference on a five day meander through The Big Easy, creating an inner travelogue both meditative and playful. Driven by an almost unconscious process of seeing, recording and cumulation, his gaze settles on architectural details, local flora, street ephemera, and the curious neighborhood cats that cross his path. Led by his keen eye for street-side formalism, and a canny sensitivity to the poetics of light and tonality — and their unlikely urban iterations and combinations — Slack has crafted another telling contribution to what has emerged as a genuinely unique photographic language. The book itself assumes the form of an elegant, pocket-sized paperback — a non-linear, non-verbal journal for the perpetual wanderer.” @the.ice.plant @mike__slack

Book of the day > Ed Panar: Animals That Saw Me, Volume Two. Published by The Ice Plant. We still have a few signed copies available from our gangbuster event on Saturday… act now! “Animals That Saw Me: Volume Two pairs a new collection of photographs from the observational wanderings of Ed Panar with an original essay on “being seen” by speculative realist philosopher Timothy Morton. Extending the project Panar began in 2011 with Animals That Saw Me: Volume One, this 'sequel' draws from recent work and newly discovered gems from his vast back catalogue to depict a series of brief, shared encounters with various (non-human) species — mammal, reptile, bird, insect — as they seem to behold the (human) photographer. Edited for the viewer’s maximum delight, the pictures embody a whimsical concept with surprisingly complex ramifications under the surface. Why do we distinguish between “us” and “them,” and what exists in the space between these distinctions? What does it mean to make “eye contact” with another species? What does the presence of a camera add to this phenomenon? Channeling the thoughtful humor, wonder and peculiar engagement with the world that made Panar's first volume an instant hit, this volume revisits and digs deeper into the question: ‘Why do we assume that it’s only us who does the looking?’” 

Book of the day and book launch party tomorrow (Saturday, 5-7! Click here (or scroll down) for the full juicy details!) > Game Changers: The Unsung Heroines of Sports History by Molly Schiot. 

“Based on the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroines, a celebration of the pioneering, forgotten female athletes of the twentieth century that features rarely seen photos and new interviews with past and present game changers including Abby Wambach and Cari Champion.

Two years ago, filmmaker Molly Schiot began the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroines, posting a photo each day of a female athlete who had changed the face of sports around the globe in the pre-Title IX age. These women paved the way for Serena Williams, Carli Lloyd, and Lindsey Vonn, yet few today know who they are. Slowly but surely, the account gained a following, and the result is Game Changers, a beautifully illustrated collection of these trailblazers’ rarely-before-seen photos and stories.

Featuring icons Althea Gibson and Wyomia Tyus, complete unknowns Trudy Beck and Conchita Cintron, policymaker Margaret Dunkle, sportswriter Lisa Olson, and many more, Game Changers gives these “founding mothers” the attention and recognition they deserve, and features critical conversations between past and present gamechangers—including former US Women’s National Soccer Team captain Abby Wambach and SportsCenter anchor Cari Champion—about what it means to be a woman on and off the field. Inspiring, empowering, and unforgettable, Game Changers is the perfect gift for anyone who has a love of the game.”

For tomorrow’s event, thanks are due to @fiveleavesla and @fiveleavesny , @pizzanista , @healthade, and … And thanks to all of the Game Changers who will be here tomorrow, including @pingpongkimi  who will be showing of her pro table tennis moves! #theunsungheroines #gamechangers

Book of the day > minä perhonen textile 1995-2005. Published by Bunka Publishing Bureau. “minä perhonen (which means 'I am a butterfly' in Finnish) is an internationally acclaimed fashion brand led by Akira Minagawa. They produce their original fabrics cooperating with both Japanese and international fabric makers, as well as ardently working on developing new materials or techniques. Their effort has evolved into a series of exceptionally beautiful and elegant textile designs, all of which are reproduced with clear photos in this big volume. All the 250 designs are categorized into Textiles, Stitches, and Prints. This creative sourcebook is indispensable for all textile designers and anyone who loves fashion.” @mina_perhonen

Book of the day > My Lagos by Robin Hammond (@hammond_robin ). Published by Editions Bessard (@editionsbessard ). Limited to an edition of 600 copies, Robin Hammond’s series of portraits of Lagosians embrace the diversity of Africa’s most populous city. Each book’s dust jacket is a Nollywood poster bought in Lagos – each has been folded by hand. From the photographer: “Each book is unique in this way, and the reader gets to take home his or her own piece of Lagos. Intimacy and exclusion, love and hate, laughter and insult regularly rub shoulders on Lagos’s streets. It’s a complex place. I was trying to grasp, through my camera, life in this massive metropolitan area of more than 20 million people. Located in West Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, Lagos is as much an experience as a place. The local experience and the foreign experience are certainly not the same. But that difference is not the only meaningful one. The city’s residents experience it differently: the businessman and the fisherman, the prostitute and the entrepreneur, the housewife and the bricklayer. There are more than 20 million Lagosians, and, one could say, just as many Lagoses. It is a fascinating city, but one where life can be hard. One survey placed it as the fourth worst place in the world to call home, and another ranked it as one of the world’s most unequal cities. But many of the people I met also expressed how they saw Lagos as a place where dreams come true, where hard work pays off and where, with a few good connections and smarts, one can rise from the streets and into the mansions of the city’s big men. My new book, published by Editions Bessard, is called ‘My Lagos,’ but only partly because it is my view of the city. It comes mostly from the interviews I conducted with the subjects of my portraits. I asked them to describe what Lagos meant to them, and they would answer, ‘My Lagos is. …’ Their quotations in the book and their portraits connect us, in a small way, to a people most readers will never meet, and through them we experience a piece of a place most will never visit.”