Happy Birthday, Herb Ritts! For the second of our Thursday ‘throwbacks’ (featuring out-of-print or overlooked books in the shop), the book of the day is > Herb Ritts: Pictures. Signed! Twelvetrees Press, 1988. Designed by Jack Woody. "Pictures" is the exquisite first collection from 1988 of the highly stylized black and white celebrity portraits and nudes of the late, great Herb Ritts. A most handsome copy of the first printing of this influential book limited to six thousand copies additionally BOLDLY SIGNED AND DATED "Herb Ritts 11/88" in the year of its publication in black ink across the title page. Also available from us in the Deluxe, Limited, Slipcased Edition, Signed & Numbered by Herb Ritts.

Book of the day > Out Of Ark - Yumiko Utsu. Artbeat Publishers. “Interest in Yumiko Utsu is high. Born in Tokyo in 1978, her saturated, fecund photographs are inspired, at turns, by the natural world, food, sex and Manga. This career-spanning exhibition monograph is much awaited. In Utsu’s world, the sumptuousness of glossy food photography collides with unsettling and erotic anthropomorphic deviations. Kittens with octopus eyes, priapic carrots, decomposing tomatoes, and parasite-infested dolls walk the line between desire and disgust. Exhibited in Tokyo and London, ‘Out Of Ark’ is an essential introduction to Utsu’s work that will disturb, amuse, revolt and delight, in equal – or not so equal – measure.”

Book of the day > Metamorpolis by Tim Franco. Pendant Ce Temps. The city of Chongqing, one of the biggest in central China, went through one of the fastest development process in the country. Tim Franco, a French photographer based in Shanghai, followed this crazy development from 2009. Now, he has published a book, resulting from 5 years of photographic work about the city.

As a result of migrating population, Chongqing China suddenly became one of the largest cities in the world with up to 30 million inhabitants. When photographer Tim Franco first visited the city in 2009, Tim Franco said he was totally lost : "Old houses were being destroyed and over passed by new giant bridges and oversized housing complex. It took me a while to start to understand what was going on".

In 2009, as the new leader was going on war with organized crime, Tim was sent on assignments by different international papers. About a year later, as he was witnessing some of the oldest district of the city being destroyed, he decided to document the change of the city from his own point of view : "My goal was to document how the people adapt to such a radical change".

For the past 5 years, Tim traveled extensively to Chongqing exploring its different districts, witnessing the changes and trying to understand how the massive rural population was adapting to its new urban lifestyle. Working with an analog medium format camera, he chose to take a step back from classical portrait and documentary approach, showing the people in their incongruous environment.

As year passed Tim realized that he was also documenting the growing life of a Chinese city : "Chongqing is maybe an extreme with its unique landscapes and tumultuous history but it’s also quite representative of what china is going through as a country. This process is not over, either for Chongqing as a city , or for my ongoing documentary work. But I feel like what I gathered is enough to allow a large audience to discover what maybe the most widely unknown megacity in the world."

As year passed Tim realized that he was also documenting the growing life of a Chinese city : "Chongqing is maybe an extreme with its unique landscapes and tumultuous history but it’s also quite representative of what china is going through as a country. This process is not over, either for Chongqing as a city , or for my ongoing documentary work. But I feel like what I gathered is enough to allow a large audience to discover what maybe the most widely unknown megacity in the world."

Book of the day > The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic. Taschen. "The years between the First and Second World Wars in Germany are famed for their cultural boom. With Berlin as its epicenter, the Weimar Republic was replete with ground-breaking literature, philosophy, and art. At the heart of this intellectual and creative hub were some of the most outstanding and forward-thinking book designs in history.

Book Covers in the Weimar Republic assembles 1,000 of the most striking examples from this golden age of publishing activity and innovation. Based on the remarkable collection of Jürgen Holstein and his rare collectible Blickfang, it combines an unparalleled catalog of dust jackets and bindings with Holstein’s introduction to the leading figures and particular energy of the Weimar publishing age. Expert essays discuss the aesthetic and cultural context of these precious fourteen years, in which a freewheeling spirit would flourish, only to be trampled, burned, or driven out of the country with the rise of National Socialism.

From children’s books to novels in translation, bold designs for political literature to minimalist artist monographs, this is a dazzling line-up of typography, illustration, and graphic design at its most energetic and daring. Part reference compendium, part vintage visual feast for the eyes, this very particular cultural history is at once a testament to an irretrievable period of promise and a celebration of the ambition, inventiveness, and beauty of the book."

Happy Birthday, Andy Warhol! For the first of our "Throwback Thursday" out-of-print or older books in the shop, the book of the day is >

Andy Warhol by Alan Solomon, The ICA Boston catalogue from 1966. This is the black and silver, silkscreen-covered catalogue published in conjunction with the second ever Andy Warhol museum retrospective held at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art in October of 1966. It features an informative essay by seminal Pop Art proponent and curator Alan Solomon (author of "New York, New Art Scene"), the earliest printed details on The Factory's silkscreen techniques, and numerous reproductions on fluorescent pink paper. A most handsome copy of this uncommon item. Yours for a mere $800.00 here.

Book of the day > Raymond Pettibon: Surfers 1985 -2015. David Zwirner.

“Limning a dizzying array of topics with his distinctive combinations of image and text, Raymond Pettibon has created a vocabulary of characters and symbols that reappear consistently if enigmatically across his oeuvre, ranging from baseball players, atomic bombs, and railway trains to the cartoon Gumby. But the most poetic and revealing of Pettibon’s symbols may be the surfer, the solitary longboarder challenging a massive wave. In his surfer works, viewers ride along with a counterculture existentialist hero who perhaps is the artist’s nearest proxy.

This revised and expanded edition of Raymond Pettibon: Surfers 1985–2015, the first printing of which sold out almost immediately upon publication in 2014, features twenty additional works, as well as new color separations and jacket design. Nearly all the works included in this volume depict an ocean roiling with chaotic swells, accompanied by non sequiturs, quotations, and fragments of poetry in the artist’s handwriting. Organized chronologically, the publication traces Pettibon’s prolific output of his surfer series, from early small-scale monochrome India ink drawings to numerous examples from the 1990s when the artist introduced color, culminating with his recent large-scale works, some of which were executed directly on a wall. Rounding out the publication is a poetic meditation by the writer Carlo McCormick, which captures the essence of Pettibon’s surfing works: ‘Riddled with enigma, Raymond Pettibon’s art speaks little about himself the artist, preferring rather to address more central questions on the nature of self, but he tells us this, ‘Some things (sea foam, for instance) cannot be drawn at all, but only surfed,’ or again, ‘All this must be either surfed or painted.'’ “

Book of the day > Architectures de Los Angeles 1880-1940 by Denis Freppel. Gourcuff Gradenigo.

“I recall a scene from an old film with the famous clown Grock, when he sat down to play the piano, and pulled the piano towards him! In that same line of thought, for me a good pair of shoes is as important as a camera and lenses. I've spent hours and hours walking around, looking at places from every angle, waiting for that crucial moment when the light is perfect. I like to photograph buildings both old and new, as well as places that have been abandoned or forgotten, and that merit more than a fleeting glance." Denis Freppel

Born in the Paris suburb of Suresnes in 1938, Denis Freppel is a photojournalist and globetrotter whose travels have taken him through the United States, South-East Asia and Europe. After living in California, he set out to photograph the distinctive architecture of its buildings. He has since spent nearly 30 years exploring the length and breadth of the city of Los Angeles, photographing industrial buildings, public buildings and private homes dating from the 1880s to the 1940s. The fruits of his labors are published in this sumptuously illustrated volume - complete with appendices providing technical details of the buildings pictured - that every architecture buff will want to own.

Book of the day > Torbjørn Rødland: Sasquatch Century. Koenig Books/Mousse Publishing Milan.

“Torbjørn Rødland: Sasquatch Century presents a rich visual flow of Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland’s work, followed by an introduction by curator Milena Hoegsberg, and a commissioned essay by writer and curator Linda Norden.

Guiding readers through the artist's enticing visual language, which straddles the border between the constructed and authentic, it includes a selection of his photographic works from the past 20 years.

The title Sasquatch Century refers to the mythical, hairy, humanoid creature historically viewed as the precursor to Bigfoot. The Sasquatch has been solidified in mythology and pop-culture through a simultaneous belief in and denial of its existence. As such the phenomenon embodies many of the artist’s interests in activating the tension between myth and reality, between the familiar and ungraspable, and the constructed and authentic.

Book of the day > Ernest Haas On Set. Steidl.  “This book considers the film stills of Ernst Haas, one of the most accomplished photographers of the twentieth century, transgressing the borders between still photography and the moving image. Haas worked with a variety of eminent directors—from Vittorio de Sica to John Huston, Gene Kelly and Michael Cimino—and depicted cinema genres from suspense (The Third Man, The Train) to the Western (The Oregon Trail, Little Big Man), and from comedy (Miracle in Milan, Love and Death) to musicals (West Side Story, Hello Dolly!).

Haas inscribed a temporal, filmic dimension into his stills which, viewed in a sequence, generate movement and narrative. So accomplished was his mastery of color, light and motion that Haas was frequently asked to photograph large group actions—from the battle scenes of The Charge of the Light Brigade and the dances of West Side Story, to the ski slopes of Downhill Racer. On Set elucidates a novel perspective on the sets and stars Haas photographed, and reveals a little-known but crucial dimension of his oeuvre.”

Book of the day > A Little History: Nick Cave & cohorts, 1981-2013 by Bleddyn Butcher. “A stunning record of the amazing career of Nick Cave, one of the world's coolest musicians, by one of the world's most celebrated rock photographers . When Bleddyn Butcher first saw The Birthday Party play, back in 1981, he was astonished. And then enthralled. He set about trying to catch their lightning in his Nikon F2AS. That quixotic impulse became a lifelong quest. A little history got made on the way. Collected here for the first time, A Little History is an extraordinary document, tracing Nick Cave's creative career from the apoplectic extravagance of The Birthday Party to the calmer disquiet of 2013's Push The Sky Away via snapshots, spotlit visions, and sumptuous, theatrical portraits. It mixes the candid and uncanny, the spontaneous and the patiently staged, and includes eyeball encounters with Cave's baddest lieutenants, men for the most part who long since burned their own bridges down. Butcher's Nikonic eye defines moment after arresting moment in Cave's glorious, sprawling story: it's a splendid testament to two brilliant careers.”