Book of the Day Posted May 27, 2022

Book of the Day > Please Send to Real Life: Ray Johnson Photographs

● Purchase ● A widely connected pioneer of Pop and mail art, Ray Johnson was described as ‘New York’s most famous unknown artist.’ Best known for his dense, allusive collages, he stopped exhibiting in 1991, but his output did not diminish. Between 1992 and 1994, using 137 disposable cameras, he created a large body of work that is only now coming to light. Staging his artworks in settings near his home in Locust Valley, Long Island — parking lots, sidewalks, beaches, cemeteries — Johnson made photographs that make the world of everyday ‘real life’ a part of his art. Within a few months, he devised a large new freestanding format for the simplified collages he began calling the ‘movie stars’ of his camera tableaux. When he swam to his death at sea on 13 January 1995, Johnson left behind a vast archive that included over three thousand of the late photographs. What he called his ‘new career as a photographer,’ which makes its debut in print here, marked the close of a romance with the camera that had spanned four decades of relentless invention.

Book of the Day Posted May 25, 2022

Book of the Day > Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound

● Purchase ● The first museum survey of the visionary polymath from Côte d'Ivoire

The Ivorian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré created an unmistakable and entirely unique body of work, first as a writer and linguist, and then in a dazzling series of colorful drawings on a multitude of subjects, from his native Bété culture to the urban milieu of Abidjan to the all-encompassing themes of fraternity, equality and global understanding. All but unknown even in his home country of Côte d’Ivoire, Bouabré found international recognition in 1989 when he participated in the landmark Paris exhibition Magiciens de la terre, and his work has since been the subject of solo and group exhibitions around the world.

Published to accompany the first museum survey of Bouabré’s work in North America, this catalog offers a vivid account of the artist’s long and multifaceted career, including a detailed chronology of his life and reproductions of more than six hundred of his drawings. An essay by curator Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi introduces Bouabré to a new audience, illuminating his significance as both an important African creator and one of the most intriguing artists of the 20th century.

Book of the Day Posted May 24, 2022

Book of the Day > Judith Joy Ross: Photographs 1978–2015

● Purchase ● Judith Joy Ross: Photographs 1978–2015 is an illuminating retrospective that explores the life and career of a revered American photographer, illustrated by two hundred of her images, many never before seen or published.

The work of Judith Joy Ross marks a watershed in the lineage of the photographic portrait. Her pictures—unpretentious, quietly penetrating, startling in their transparency—consistently achieve the capacity to glimpse the past, present, and perhaps even the future of the individuals who stand before her lens. Adolescents swim at a local municipal park, ordinary people are at work and play. From immigrants and refugees, to tech workers and students, military reservists and civilians—all are incisively rendered with equal tenderness in Ross’s black-and-white, large-format portraits.

Published alongside the largest exhibition to feature Ross’s work to date, and drawn from her extensive archive of photographs made over the span of more than thirty-five years, Judith Joy Ross: Photographs 1978–2015 encompasses the best work of this influential photographer.

Book of the Day Posted May 21, 2022

Book of the Day > Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden

● Purchase ● Poetic Practical offers the first examination of Chris Burden's unrealized projects, featuring never-before-seen archival materials and newly commissioned photography of Burden's studio and property. This extensively illustrated book includes 435 images, featuring never-before-seen archival materials and newly commissioned photography of Burden's studio and property. Burden's work, whether realized or unrealized, was fundamentally driven by a speculative approach to artistic production, one that compelled him to interrogate the physical limits of his own body, social mores, institutional capabilities, and scientific forces. Above all, his work repeatedly sought to test the thresholds of presumed impossibility, making his unrealized works the ultimate example of such measures. The sixty-seven artworks included in this publication offer a unique and unprecedented perspective on the life and working process of this formidable artist.

Book of the Day Posted May 19, 2022

Book of the Day > Karlheinz Weinberger: Mediterraneo

● Purchase ● The photographs presented in this volume carry a special status in the extensive oeuvre of Karlheinz Weinberger. To this day, Weinberger is best known for his photographs of the Halbstarke and of Rockers, as well as for his nudes. A different aspect of Weinberger’s work was already highlighted in the previous volume on Sports, showcasing photographs of wrestlers, football players, gymnasts, and body builders. This volume offers just as exciting a discovery, assembling the photographs that he took on several trips to the Mediterranean. A few of them are well known–such as the picture of the Esso man, which has reached cult status–but most have never been published before the release of this book.

Many of the photographs shown were shot in and around Agrigento (Palma di Montechiaro, San Leone). Over the years, Weinberger expanded his travels to include the Lipari Islands and Lampedusa, Lecce and Naples. Twice he visited the other side of the Mediterranean Basin: he went to Tangier in 1963 and 1964.

His interest was not limited to men and their physiques, however. He also documented the traditional life of the South, in the cities and the country-side, at the ports and the beaches, often imbuing these subjects with a filmic quality reminiscent of Visconti’s La Terra Trema (1948) and Pasolini’s Accattone (1961).

Book of the Day Posted May 18, 2022

Book of the Day > Sandro Miller: Crowns -- My Hair, My Soul, My Freedom

● Purchase ● A photographic panorama of the creativity and variety of Black women's hairstyles

In Crowns: My Hair, My Soul, My Freedom American photographer Sandro Miller (born 1958) celebrates the social endurance, cultural heritage and self-expression of Black women through their hairstyles. In this series of portraits, each subject is posed in front of either a strikingly black or vibrant geometric background that serves to highlight the models’ skin tones and accentuates their ultra-stylized hair, whether a halo of bright gold curls or crimson locks swept into an elegant bun. Each image is based on the relevant model’s “hair story” and pays homage to her personal fashion sense, documenting the many unspoken ways in which Black women assert their autonomy through their physical appearance. In this project, Miller seeks to recognize and honor Black women’s creativity and beauty while celebrating their social endurance and cultural memory at the same time.

Book of the Day Posted May 17, 2022

Book of the Day > Barry McGee: Fuzz Gathering

● Purchase ● This zine by Barry McGee gathers a number of his own photographs, collages, and drawings to create a unique visual language composed of geometrical patterns and recurring symbols. It was published on the occasion of his exhibition towards the end of 2021 at the Perrotin Gallery in Paris. Born and educated in San Francisco, McGee produces works that are candid and insightful observations of modern society, but always with an emphasis on contributing to marginalised communities. He is associated with the Mission School, which emerged in the early 1990s and is primarily influenced by urban realism, graffiti, and American folk art, with a focus on social activism.

Book of the Day Posted May 14, 2022

Book of the Day > Johnston Marklee: A+U 614 2021:11

● Purchase ● This issue of a+u features the work of Johnston Marklee and Associates. Founded in 1998 and rooted in the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, their office has continuously sought dialogue with modern and contemporary art not only through clientele and project programs but also in design approach. A series of iconic houses quickly established the firm’s international acclaim, but in the past decade their projects have expanded greatly in scale and diversified in building type. The intense investigative nature that characterizes every project is often veiled behind playfulness and simplicity. What began as an “Architecture of Approximation” in the first decade of their practice eventuated in a body of work consisting of “Extremes and In-betweens,” as described in 2 essays written by Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee. Twenty-six key projects, ranging from houses and exhibitions to museums and institutions, are presented here alongside 8 thematic collages to convey the full range of Johnston Marklee’s works. Interspersed is a series of 12 commentaries by collaborators and colleagues, bringing the work of Johnston Marklee “to life with their interpretations.”

Book of the Day Posted May 13, 2022

Book of the Day > Mimi Plumb: The Golden City

● Purchase ● Mimi Plumb used to live on the edges of the city where the rents were cheap. Nearby, on the summit of the hill, were folded layers of radiolarian chert, the fossilized remains of microscopic creatures called radiolaria. A large crevice in the hillside was a reminder of the ever-present threat of an earthquake.

Warm Water Cove, along the bay, was a spectacle of tires and abandoned cars. One day Plumb photographed the chimney of the power station above the fiery destruction of the 25th Street Pier. She watched planes flying over the city dump of cardboard hillsides.

“Downtown buildings on the far-off horizon reminded me of Oz. My cat, Pearl, kept watch on the rooftop of my flat.” - Mimi Plumb

Plumb’s life was marked by nights out dancing at the Crystal Pistol in the Mission, or listening to a punk polka band at the Oasis. Neil, the clarinet player, wore faux leather naugahosen, with spikes protruding from his head. Sometimes they played pool at Palace Billiards. At the Exotic/Erotic Ball, a bird man and a nurse hid in the corners. A steely-eyed silver man in his tuxedo stared back at Plumb from behind his mask, the camera flash shining a light on him.

Plumb’s days were spent visiting abandoned schools and derelict gas stations, a billboard claiming ‘dangerously close to homemade.’

To Plumb the magical clanging of the San Francisco cable cars was a world away, and the idealism of the 1960s seemed long gone. The Golden City of San Francisco, fraying at its edges, showed the growing chasm between the rich and poor.

Book of the Day Posted May 12, 2022

Book of the Day > Susan Meiselas: Carnival Strippers – Revisited

● Purchase ● A new and expanded edition of Meiselas’ 1976 classic, perhaps one of the most important photobooks of the postwar era

From 1972 to 1975, Susan Meiselas spent her summers photographing women who performed striptease for small-town carnivals in New England, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. As she followed the shows from town to town, she captured the dancers on stage and off, their public performances as well as their private lives, creating a portrait both documentary and empathetic: “The recognition of this world is not the invention of it. I wanted to present an account of the girl show that portrayed what I saw and revealed how the people involved felt about what they were doing.” Meiselas also taped candid interviews with the dancers, their boyfriends, the show managers and paying customers, which form a crucial part of the book.

Meiselas’ frank description of these women brought a hidden world to public attention, and explored the complex role the carnival played in their lives: mobility, money and liberation, but also undeniable objectification and exploitation. Produced during the early years of the women’s movement, Carnival Strippers reflects the struggle for identity and self-esteem that characterized a complex era of change.

Carnival Strippers Revisited and Making Of come together in a slipcase. Making Of includes color images from Carnival Strippers that have never been printed and/or published before, along with ephemera material collected by Meiselas at the time she developed the project.