Save the date: July 25^th (4-6) for a book signing with Tom Adler and special guests C. R. Stecyk III and Jeff Divine!

Book of the day > An Uncommon Archive: Collected Images from Projects, Books and Saved References by Tom Adler. T. Adler Books.

“This unusual volume is a selection of images from the projects, books and saved references found in the hard drives, stored files and archives of T. Adler Books. The collection draws from the seemingly disparate worlds of surfing, fashion and style, fishing, music, fine art, rock climbing, travel and adventure. The photographs, paintings, ephemera, illustrations and contact sheets are arranged in pairs and sequences suggesting subtle connections and parallels. Iconic historical images, works by well-known contemporary artists and photographers, and beautiful outdoor photographs blend and share page space with found paintings, incidental vacation snapshots and NASA imagery; works by classic photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Jacques Henri Lartigue share space with contemporary photographers Craig Stecyk, Ed Templeton, Tim Barber, Dewey Nicks and Thomas Campbell; a portrait of JFK seated in a sailboat eating an ice cream cone is paired with a 1905 photograph of the launch of the steamer Frank J. Hecker; formal portraits of John Muir and Duke Kahanamoku and open ocean photos (above and below the surface) by Wayne Levin and Corey Arnold are scattered throughout the volume, alongside paintings by Maynard Dixon and Robert Overby, nineteenth-century Cyanotypes by Anna Atkins and a handpainted sign by Stephen Powers. Iconic surfing photographs by Don James, Ron Church, Steve Wilkings, Leo Hetzel, Jeff Hornbaker, Art Brewer, Jim Russi, Jeff Divine and Jim Driver are mixed with dramatic climbing images from Glen Denny, Mike Graham, Allen Steck, Johannes Mair and Jeff Johnson. But it is the editor's imaginative sequencing and pairing of these photographs that provides the unique pleasure of this book. A fresh, blue-sky and water-drenched elegance carries the volume along, resulting in a melding of tone and composition, gestures and cultures, associations and connections that reinforce the individual images.”

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Happy birthday week to the Dalai Lama! Book of the day > Infinite Light: A Photographic Meditation on Tibet by Marissa Roth with a Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Marquand Books. "A visual poem of seventy-two color photographs of her impressions of Tibet, arranged in a continuous sequence reflecting the colors of Tibetan prayer flags. The photographs were shot with some of the last available Kodachrome film, producing deep saturated color. Limited to an edition of 400, each slipcased book is signed and numbered by the artist. Says Roth, ‘This project is my love letter to Tibet. It is the reflection of my inner and outer journeys to this land and a very personal impressionistic view of what it feels like to be in Tibet. It is also a social and political statement and another cry for awareness about what is being irrevocably lost.’”

 

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Book of the day + book signing tonight, 6-8! > Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka: Blackwelder. Gagosian/Rizzoli with Karma, NY. “A fully illustrated look into the world of artists Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka, published in conjunction with the artists’ debut exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong. Both Kusaka’s porcelain vessels and Wood’s drawn and painted interiors are depicted within this new book in vibrant color plates and photographs. Wood and Kusaka draw from each other’s work as painter and potter to probe the tensions between representation and expression, precision and chance, and  influences from art history and life.  
An insightful new text by art critic Chris Wiley accompanies color images of Wood and Kusaka at their shared studio on Blackwelder Street in Los Angeles, where they work alongside one another to create works that draw from personal memory and their shared existence as a married couple. 

Have a great 4th of July -- we're open until 3:00 on 7/4/15.

Book of the day > Mark Steinmetz: The Players. Nazraeli Press.  “This long-awaited publication presents 73 of Mark Steinmetz’s photographs of adolescent and teenaged baseball players, on the field and in the dugout, focused on the game and lost in their own worlds. Made between 1986 and 1990, the photographs are classic Steinmetz: tenderness, humor, and humanism are all present here, as is Steinmetz’s exquisite use of natural light and attention to poetic detail.

'The kids in Steinmetz’s photographs are ages 6 to 13, with a few older boys. Steinmetz must remember how awkward and uncoordinated bodies that age can be. His empathy is evident throughout the series. Most of these kids are too young to have the grace, skill or concentration required and are too green to experience the sheer pleasure of knowing they are good, maybe really good, ballplayers in an unforgiving sport. These kids run into each other in pursuit of a fly ball. Hope drives their swings more than their awareness of the art of hitting...Steinmetz concentrates less on the players in the field than those outside the base lines who are waiting to play, or cooling off. He observes the managers as well as the spectators who love the game or one of the players, or who just have a free afternoon. He sees “high fives” as well as the “what were you thinking” moments.  His photographs have all the skill and grace lacking in the players.” — from the Introduction by Anne Tucker.'

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Book of the day > Munari’s Books. Princeton Architectural Press. “One of the greatest graphic designers of the twentieth century—called by Picasso ‘the Leonardo of our time’--Italian artist and designer Bruno Munari considered the book the best medium to communicate his visual ideas, showcase his art, and convey his creative spirit. Primarily produced in large quantities for the general public, his more-than-sixty publications—from design manuals and manifestos to visionary tactile children's books—displayed all the beauty and technical ingenuity of works of art.
Munari's Books, the first English-language monograph to focus on his remarkable achievements in publishing, examines in detail his seventy-year legacy in print, from his pioneering work as a graphic designer and collaborations with major publishers to his experimental visual projects and innovative contributions to the fields of painting, sculpture, design, photography, and teaching. Featuring critical essays and a wealth of color illustrations, this long-overdue monograph is a visually rich introduction to Munari's remarkably multifaceted career.”

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Book of the day > Making Africa - A Continent of Contemporary Design. Vitra Design Museum.

“Making Africa takes a fresh look at African design. For the first time, we have a book that focuses on creative accomplishments on the continent, without being obsessed with the usual tropes of recycling, humanitarian design or traditional crafts. Instead, Making Africa shows a new generation of designers who use their work as a tool for economic, political and social change and therefore also to create a new future for the continent. Their creative output defies all definitions of genres – crossing over classical fields such as furniture design, product design and typography to encompass digital media, art, photography, architecture and film. A large section of the catalogue is dedicated to documenting work by over 120 protagonists of Africa’s new creative epoch – including Cyrus Kabiru, Cheick Diallo, Mário Macilau, Francis Kéré, David Adjaye, Kunlé Adeyemi, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Robin Rhode, Alaforu Sikoki, Selly Raby Kan and many more. The historical and theoretical background is explored in essays and discussions with Okwui Enwezor, Koyo Kouoh, Edgar Pieterse and Amelie Klein, among others. These are complemented by statements from around 70 other experts from Africa, who met at interviews and think tanks in cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos, Dakar, Nairobi and Cairo. This is a book about the future of Africa and about a new, more open way of understanding design – which means it is also a book about what design can achieve in the 21st century.”

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Book of the day > Richard Misrach: The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings. Aperture. “Since the publication of Richard Misrach's bestselling and critically acclaimed publication On the Beach, he has continued to photograph at the same location, building a body of work that has been exhibited as On the Beach 2.0—a reference to the technological and optical developments that have made the intensely detailed, exquisitely rendered depictions possible. The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings focuses less on the abstraction of water, sand and mote-sized figures, instead honing in on the gestures and expressions of bathers adrift in the ocean. Misrach has rarely ventured into portraiture; this work is his first to focus exclusively on the human figure. Each photograph features one or more individuals crisply rendered from a distance, as they seem to levitate among turquoise waves, isolated from everything save the shifting patterns of the ocean. There is ambiguity and a sense of the uncanny in the figures suspended in the water: are they approaching the shore or moving away from it? Each image is presented both as full frame and as a series of enlarged details that enable the viewer to linger on each individual's surrender of their body to the sea.”

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Book of the day > Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth. Prestel. This generously illustrated volume features Mark Bradford's newest work which deals with the body and the performance of identity. Mark Bradford's layered, multi-textured paintings have earned him wide critical acclaim. His latest body of work comprises a new group of paintings and a video, each of which cycles around the idea of the body in crisis. Bradford witnessed the LA riots (1992) from his studio and has translated the fury, fear, outrage, pandemonium, and lasting wounds into artworks. This volume reproduces in full new paintings in which Bradford carved into the layered surface of the work creating depressions and arteries that structure these otherwise abstract compositions. Bradford's new video references the history of black standup comedy taking on Eddie Murphy's controversial concert film "Delirious" (1983). In the video Bradford takes on Murphy's searing comments on sexuality, reinterpreting this important cultural moment while considering the modalities of gender and its performance. Accompanying texts include Bradford's trenchant performance script and a scholarly text by Butler explores Bradford's critique of pervasive cultural racism and homophobia in society as a whole.

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Book of the day > TO LIVE AND DINE IN L.A: Menus and the Making of the Modern City by Josh Kun. Angel City Press. “In its fourth book collaboration with the Los Angeles Public Library and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, Angel City Press releases To Live and Dine in L.A.: Menus and the Making of the Modern City by Josh Kun. With more than 200 menus--some dating back to the nineteenth century--culled from thousands in the Menu Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, To Live and Dine in L.A. is a visual feast of a book.
In his detailed history, author Josh Kun riffs on what the food of a foodie city says about place and time; how some people eat big while others go hungry, and what that says about the past and now. Kun turns to chefs and cultural observers for their take on modern: Chef Roy Choi sits down long enough to say why he writes "some weird-ass menus." Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jonathan Gold looks at food as theater, and museum curator Staci Steinberger considers the design of classic menus like Lawry's. Restaurateur Bricia Lopez follows a Oaxacan menu into the heart of Koreatown.
The city's leading chefs remix vintage menus with a 21st-century spin: Joachim Splichal, Nancy Silverton, Susan Feniger, Ricardo Diaz, Jazz Singsanong, Cynthia Hawkins, Micah Wexler, Ramiro Arvizu and Jaime Martin del Campo cook up the past with new flavors. And, of course, the menus delight: Tick Tock Tea Room, Brown Derby, Trumps, Slapsy Maxie's, Don the Beachcomber, and scores more.
Kun tackles the timely and critically important topic of food justice, and shows how vintage menus teach us about more than just what's tasty, and serve as guides to the politics, economics, and sociology of eating. America is a dining-out nation, and our research indicates that L.A. has long been one of its top dining-out towns. The Library's collection is a living repository of meals past, an archive of urban eating that tells us about the changing historical role of food in the city, which is to say it tells us about just about everything that food touches: economics, culture, taste, race, politics, architecture, class, design, industry, gender, to name just some of the themes that recur on menu pages."

Book of the day > World Of Speed: Daring Men in Home-Made Racing Machines by Johannes Huwe. seltmann+söhne. “In his group of works World of Speed Johannes Huwe, in his own inimitable style, captures images of the unique world of speed freaks in the Great Salt Lake Desert, in northern Utah. The salt lake El Mirage can be found 16 miles north of Highway 18, where all roads end. This is a deserted and surreal place in the Mojave Desert, with daytime temperatures of 45 degrees. Although seething with rattlesnakes it was still the perfect location for films like Terminator 2 and Lethal Weapon. 'Land Speed Racer' is the name given to those daring men in their home-made racing machines. This kind of racing is the last motor sports bastion still in the hands of amateurs. The participants of the races are diverse, ranging from simple car mechanics to millionaires who arrive in the desert with their truck and a whole team. Capturing the event presents a particular challenge to photographer and equipment. Heat and dust take their toll on both.”