Book of the day and book signing/discussion/reception tomorrow, 4:00-6:00 – please join us!> The Soviet Photobook 1920-1941. Steidl (@steidlverlag). 

If you can't make it on Sunday but would like a signed book, please order one here.

"The Soviet Union was unique in its formidable and dynamic use of the illustrated book as a means of propaganda. Through the book, the U.S.S.R. articulated its totalitarian ideologies and expressed its absolute power in an unprecedented way—through avant-garde writing and radical artistic design that was in full flower during the 1920s and ’30s. No other country, nation, government or political system promoted itself more by attracting and employing acclaimed members of the avant-garde. Among them were writers like Semion Kirsanov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Ilya Selvinsky, Sergei Tretyakov and Kornely Zelinsky; artistic designers like Gustav Klutsis, Valentina Kulagina, El Lissitzky, Sergei Senkin, Varvara Stepanova, Solomon Telingater and Nikolai Troshin; and photographers including Dmitry Debabov, Vladimir Griuntal, Boris Ignatovich, Alexander Khlebnikov, Yeleazar Langman, Alexander Rodchenko, Georgy Petrusov—not to mention many of the best printers and book binders.  The Soviet Photobook 1920–1941 presents 160 of the most stunning and elaborately produced photobooks from this period and includes more than 400 additional reference illustrations. The book also provides short biographies of the photobook contributors, some of whom are presented here for the first time.”

Erin’s Staff Picks for the Holidays are the books of the day!!! See these and more “2015 Staff Holiday Picks” page at arcanabooks.com.  Erin’s picks are….Harry Smith: The Collections of Harry Smith; String Figures (Catalogue Raisonne Vol. 2), Both Sides of Sunset: Photographing Los Angeles, Christopher Herwig: Soviet Bus Stops, Imponderable: The Archives of Tony Oursler, Alec Soth: Gathered Leaves, Harry Smith: The Collections of Harry Smith; Paper Planes (Catalogue Raisonne Vol. 1), The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music 1965 to Now, Hippie Modernism: The Struggle For Utopia, Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, To Live and Dine in LA. @erinschneiderprojects.

We're so excited for tomorrow (4-6) at Arcana: it’s a double book signing with Ethan Rafal (Shock And Awe) and Ed Templeton! Ed will be here with a handful of his new books: Teenage Smokers 2, the new edition of Wayward Cognitions, the Common Side Effects catalogue, Umbrella, and the beautiful new Adventures in the Nearby Far Away. We will also have copies of the original Teenage Smokers along with a few vintage rarities. Read more about this sensational event here.

In the spirit of our double book signing, we have TWO books of the day > Ed Templeton: Teenage Smokers 2 (Super Labo, Tokyo) and Adventures in the Nearby Far Way (Éditions Bessard, Paris).  Teenage Smokers 2: In 1999, the late, great Alleged Gallery published Ed Templeton's first book of photography, Teenage Smokers. In the intervening sixteen years Ed is a firmly entrenched guiding light of the Southern California art community, and Teenage Smokers has become a sought-after high spot for any photo book collection. Now, hot off the press from Tokyo's Super Labo is Teenage Smokers 2 - featuring a brand new generation of nicotine-inhaling youngsters.  Adventures in the Nearby Far Away is a spectacular presentation of Ed’s Catalina Island photographs, both dreamily beautiful and soberingly unvarnished. An edition of 1000 copies, it’s an accordion book that unfolds to a span of over 27 feet – printed on both sides! - inside an beautiful clamshell box design by Cyrielle Molard.

Book of the day and a DOUBLE book signing (with Ed Templeton for Teenage Smokers 2 and MORE!) on Saturday! Join us and Ed and Ethan for book signings and bourbon and... walnut pie!!! > Ethan Rafal: Shock and Awe.

“A complex autobiographical project examining the relationship between protracted war and homeland decay, Shock and Awe is a meticulously crafted work combining image, text, and found objects compiled over twelve years of traveling the United States that blurs the line between author and subject, and personal versus authoritative histories. Drawing from the traditions of documentary photography and writing set on the American road, the unique, hand-made journal was created with transfer prints, handwriting, and found materials that were bound in the remains of an abandoned vehicle. This trade edition limited to five hundred copies carefully reproduces every inch of every page conveying the look and feel of the original down to its strap closure. Made by middle-class workers in Spain, the paper was sustainably harvested in Finland, and the cloth is from New England.

The artist introduces audiences to this work through his ongoing “Shock and Awe Book Tour” which returns the journal to the people and places depicted, bringing author, subject, and viewer into an exploration of the total meaning of the work. The presentation of Shock and Awe is equal parts story-telling, show-and-tell, and group discussion featuring for its Arcana stop ample homemade cast-iron walnut pie served with bourbon and milk.

Ethan Rafal's multi-media works deal with the individual and collective experience of violence, and the ways in which subsequent representations of violence inform personal and national mythologies. He helps run The Farmstand - an alternative artspace on a farm in Northern California - and collaborates with the Bay Area's Art For a Democratic Society.”

Happy Thanksgiving! Book of the day > Bird Love by Leila Jeffeys. Abrams. “Fine art photographer Leila Jeffreys captures the beauty and diversity of some of our most colorful and elegant feathered friends. From the exotic birds of her native Australia to those of North America, Jeffreys seems to delve into the very souls of these creatures with her stunning and evocative portraits. Jeffreys works with animal rescue and conservation groups to find subjects to photograph. Her love and compassion for her subjects is evident throughout, as she captures their personalities in her delightful portraits; Commander Skyring the Gang-Gang Cockatoo, Dexter the White-Bellied Sea Eagle, Mrs. Plume the Budgerigar, and many others are as whimsical as they are beautiful.”

Book of the day and book signing tomorrow! Come to Arcana tomorrow (Saturday, 11/21) for an exciting photography bonanza with Charlotte Cotton (4:00-6:00) and Maestro Alec Soth (5:00-7:00). Can’t make it but want a signed book? Order on our website before noon .

Book of the day > Gathered Leaves by Alec Soth. MACK.

“Alec Soth’s reputation as one of the leading lights of contemporary photographic practice is largely predicated on the books he has published. This unusual catalogue accompanies a touring exhibition which uses the four major bodies of work which Soth has published as books since 2004 as the structural basis for both a mid-career retrospective and an investigation of Soth’s prescient understanding of the various and distinct applications of photography as a tool for storytelling across diverse media. The title of the exhibition comes from Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself [1855] and references both the pages of his books gathered for consideration and the notion that his work is also a story about Soth himself.

Soth's meteoric rise to international acclaim began with his first book, Sleeping by the Mississippi, published by Steidl in 2004. The book has sold through numerous print runs and has long been out-of-print. It embodies not only a moment in which a new and original voice emerged with an unusual ability to transpose subtle and highly personal stories of local American life, but also marked a significant early event in the photo-book publishing boom we are currently experiencing. The success of his two subsequent volumes, Niagara [2006] and Broken Manual [2010], combined with the hugely influential exploration of self-publishing under his Little Brown Mushroom imprint, have all reinforced Soth’s position as a master of the book form. The recent success of Songbook [2015] has seen a return to the mainstream of book publishing.

This catalogue is a special object, bringing together an essay by Aaron Schuman spread across 29 large format postcards, with mini facsimile versions of Soth’s 4 books [3 of which are now out-of-print], all housed together in a luxurious printed and embossed clamshell box.”

Book of the day > Work Horse by Charlotte Dumas. The Ice Plant. “In November 2014 Charlotte Dumas began photographing the eight native horse breeds of Japan. Once necessary for farming and transportation, most of these indigenous breeds have lost their practical purpose and have declined in number. Mostly confined to small islands, the horses have never been able to migrate, and their future existence is now uncertain. In some cases, these near-mythical animals have become symbolic of their place, like the Yonaguni horse, which — together with the world’s largest moth and the marlin — is depicted on the manhole covers of this remote island. Each breed seems to unlock a history of its location and a story about the people who share its territory. This limited artist book, documenting Dumas’ project to date, portrays horses from the islands of Yonaguni, Miyakojima, Nagano and Hokkaido.  Since 2002, Charlotte Dumas has worked exclusively on photographic projects exploring the ways in which we use, define and relate to animals. Her work has been published in several previous volumes, including Retrieved (2011), Repose (2010), Paradis (2009), Heart Shaped Hole (2008), Reverie (2006), and Day is Done (2005). Represented by Julie Saul Gallery and Galerie Paul Andriesse, she lives and works in Amsterdam and New York.”

Book of the day > Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia. Walker Art Center. “Hippie Modernism examines the art, architecture and design of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. The catalogue surveys the radical experiments that challenged societal norms while proposing new kinds of technological, ecological and political utopia. It includes the counter-design proposals of Victor Papanek and the anti-design polemics of Global Tools; the radical architectural visions of Archigram, Superstudio, Haus-Rucker-Co and ONYX; the installations of Ken Isaacs, Joan Hills, Mark Boyle, Hélio Oiticica and Neville D'Almeida; the experimental films of Jordan Belson, Bruce Conner and John Whitney; posters and prints by Emory Douglas, Corita Kent and Victor Moscoso; documentation of performances by the Diggers and the Cockettes; publications such as Oz and The Whole Earth Catalog; books by Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller; and much more.
While the turbulent social history of the 1960s is well known, its cultural production remains comparatively under-examined. In this substantial volume, scholars explore a range of practices such as radical architectural and anti-design movements emerging in Europe and North America; the print revolution in the graphic design of books, posters and magazines; and new forms of cultural practice that merged street theater and radical politics. Through a profusion of illustrations, interviews with figures including: Gerd Stern of USCO; Ken Isaacs; Gunther Zamp Kelp of Haus-Rucker-Co; Ron Williams and Woody Rainey of ONYX; Franco Raggi of Global Tools; Tony Martin; Clark Richert and Richard Kallweit of Drop City; as well as new scholarly writings, this book explores the conjunction of the countercultural ethos and the modernist desire to fuse art and life.”

Book of the day > The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now. University of Chicago Press. "On the South Side of Chicago in the 1960s, African American artists and musicians grappled with new language and forms inspired by the black nationalist turn in the Civil Rights movement. The Freedom Principle, which accompanies an exhibition on the topic at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, traces their history and shows how it continues to inform contemporary artists around the world.

The book coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a still-flourishing organization of Chicago musicians who challenge jazz’s boundaries. Combining archival materials such as brochures, photographs, sheet music, and record covers with contemporary art work that respond to the 1960s Black Arts Movement, The Freedom Principle explores this tradition of cultural expression from, as one AACM group used to put it, the “ancient to the future.” Essays by curators Naomi Beckwith and Dieter Roelstraete, AACM member and historian George Lewis, art historian Rebecca Zorach, and gallerist John Corbett accompany beautiful reproductions of work by artists such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Cauleen Smith, Rashid Johnson, Nick Cave, and many more. A roundtable conversation features Beckwith, Roelstraete, curator Hamza Walker, current AACM member and cellist Tomeka Reid, and scholar and curator Romi Crawford, with additional comments from poet and scholar Fred Moten. A chronology and curated playlist of AACM-related recordings are also included. The resulting book offers a rich sense of a global movement, with crucial roots in Chicago, driven by a commitment to experimentation, improvisation, collective action, and the pursuit of freedom."