Book of the Day > This Book Contains Pictures Of Police Vehicles On Fire
● Purchase ● ... This Book Also Contains Pictures Of Vehicles On Fire And Pictures Of Vehicles In Swimming Pools
Book of the Day
Posted Jul 02, 2020
Book of the Day
Posted Jul 01, 2020
Book of the Day > Rockers: The Making of Reggae’s Most Iconic Film
● Purchase ● Set amongst the reggae scene of late 70s Jamaica, the film Rockers achieved instant cult status among music and cinema fans. Rockers’ director, Ted Bafaloukos, has received many accolades for his work on the film, but the fact that he was also a fine writer and undercover photographer is often overlooked. In 2005, just before his death, Bafaloukos penned this vivid and never-before-published autobiography.
Beyond Bafaloukos’ fascinating story of the “making-of” Rockers, it tells the tale of a Greek immigrant from a family of sailors and his move to New York, eventually rubbing shoulders with the likes of The Velvet Underground, Robert Frank, Jessica Lange and Philippe “Man on Wire” Petit. But there’s a twist to this 1970s’ New York story: Bafaloukos fell in love with reggae when it was still just an underground facet of Jamaican culture in the City. His experiences in New York eventually led him to shoot Rockers, praised for the portrait it paints of Kingston’s late 70s music scene along with its unique style, mentality and fashion.
The director’s intense experiences in Jamaica and New York between ’75 – ’78 provide the substance of the scorching stories within, including; gunshots at his first ever reggae concert in Brooklyn, the director’s bizarre arrest for suspicion of being a CIA operative, paranoia at the Bob Marley compound, musicians-turned actors’ “rude boy” antics, and naturally, sympathetic, highly descriptive recollections of the music that first drew Bafaloukos into Jamaica’s music and culture.
An invaluable collection of photographs taken during the conception, writing and production of the film captures the zeitgeist and breathes life into the book. Production stills and photos taken during the era by Bafaloukos form the visual, cinematic backbone of the tome, faithfully rendering the amazing people, styles, and locations in living, breathing color. Taken all together, the text and images within Rockers will uncover new facets of this all-important era in Reggae music for even the most seasoned reggae aficionados. Beyond reggae circles, this new anthology offers an unparalleled snapshot of a highly fantasized and sought after je-ne sais-quoi: the all-time Jamaican cool.
Book of the Day
Posted Jun 30, 2020
Book of the Day > Masculinities: Liberation through Photography
● Purchase ● Examining increasingly fluid notions of masculinity over the past six decades, this book offers a culturally diverse collection of work from some of the world’s most celebrated photographers.
This photographic exploration draws together the work of approximately fifty artists of different ethnicities, generations, and gender identities to look at how ideas of masculinity have evolved since the 1960s. Each of its six themed chapters features bold and arresting work by artists such as Richard Avedon, John Coplans, Robert Mapplethorpe, Herb Ritts, Collier Schorr, Larry Sultan, Wolfgang Tillmans, and David Wojnarowicz, who are all renowned for their depictions of masculinity and its tropes. Others, including Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Masahisa Fukase, Adi Nes, Hank Willis Thomas, and Akram Zaatari, offer ethnically and culturally diverse perspectives. A number of female artists—Laurie Anderson, Annette Messager, Tracey Moffatt, and Marianne Wex—explore the uncomfortable and invasive nature of the male gaze and younger artists such as Sam Contis, Andrew Moisey, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Elle Pérez, offer a 21st-century perspective of maleness through the lens of identity and global politics. Each chapter in the book opens with an essay by a key thinker in the fields of art, history, culture, and queer studies. Spanning decades and continents, this exploration shows how increasingly difficult it is to define masculinity.
Book of the Day
Posted Jun 28, 2020
Book of the Day > PRIDE: Fifty Years of Parades and Protests from the Photo Archives of the New York Times
Book of the Day > PRIDE: Fifty Years of Parades and Protests from the Photo Archives of the New York Times. Published by Abrams. "PRIDE is a photography book capturing the parades and protests in the gay community, with publication set to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which took place on June 28, 1969. On June 28, 1970, the first gay pride marches took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago commemorating the anniversary of the riots. Similar marches were organized in other cities—acting as both a celebration of gay culture and an activist movement for equal rights under the law.The book will be an inspiring visual history documenting the resilience of a marginalized group and their fight for civil rights. As gay rights in both America and the world have evolved, the scenes capturing the parade have as well—through signs, dress, and expressions of freedom and love, this book also tells the story of the ever-changing culture of a people. It is a book about celebration, oppression, hope, recognition, and, above all, pride in being who you are."
Book of the Day
Posted Jun 27, 2020
Book of the Day > Bruce Mau: MC24
● Purchase ● 24 global, generous, and galvanizing principles to overhaul the way we think and to inspire massive change
Bruce Mau has long applied the power of design to transforming the world. Developed over the past three decades, this remarkable book is organized by 24 values that are at the core of Mau's philosophy. MC24 features essays, observations, project documentation, and design work by Mau and other high-profile architects, designers, artists, scientists, environmentalists, and thinkers of our time. Practical, playful, and critical, it equips readers with a tool kit and empowers them to make an impact and engender change on all scales.
Book of the Day
Posted Jun 26, 2020
Book of the Day > Eileen Gray, Designer and Architect
● Purchase ● A smartly designed and beautifully illustrated look at the life and work of an elusive and influential designer and architect
Eileen Gray (1878–1976) was a versatile designer and architect who navigated numerous literary and artistic circles over the course of her life. This handsome volume designed by the amazing Irma Boom chronicles Gray’s career as a designer, architect, painter, and photographer. The book’s essays, featuring copious new research, offer in-depth analysis of more than 50 individual designs and architectural projects, accompanied by both period and new photographs.
Born in Ireland and educated in London, Gray proceeded to Paris where she opened a textile studio, studied the Japanese craft of lacquer that would become a primary technique in her design work, and owned and directed the influential gallery and store known as “Jean Désert.” Gray struggled for acceptance as a largely self-taught woman in male-dominated professions. Although she is now best known for her furniture, lighting, and carpets, she dedicated herself to many architectural and interior projects that were both personal and socially driven, including the Villa E 1027, the iconic modern house designed with Jean Badovici, as well as economical and demountable projects, such as the Camping Tent.
Book of the Day
Posted Jun 25, 2020
Book of the Day > Home Computers: 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation
● Purchase ● A celebration of the early years of the digital revolution, when computing power was deployed in a beige box on your desk.
Today, people carry powerful computers in our pockets and call them “phones.” A generation ago, people were amazed that the processing power of a mainframe computer could be contained in a beige box on a desk. This book is a celebration of those early home computers, with specially commissioned new photographs of 100 vintage computers and a generous selection of print advertising, product packaging, and instruction manuals. Readers can recapture the glory days of fondly remembered (or happily forgotten) machines including the Commodore 64, TRS-80, Apple Lisa, and Mattel Aquarius—traces of the techno-utopianism of the not-so-distant past.
Home Computers showcases mass-market success stories, rarities, prototypes, one-offs, and never-before-seen specimens. The heart of the book is a series of artful photographs that capture idiosyncratic details of switches and plugs, early user-interface designs, logos, and labels. After a general scene-setting retrospective, the book proceeds computer by computer, with images of each device accompanied by a short history of the machine, its inventors, its innovations, and its influence. Readers who inhabit today's always-on, networked, inescapably connected world will be charmed by this visit to an era when the digital revolution could be powered down every evening.
Book of the Day
Posted Jun 23, 2020
Book of the Day > Death Magick Abundance
● Purchase ● More than any party, parade, team, or disaster, New Orleans is the people. The ones who persevere, survive, strengthen, and transform the city in all its unceasing vibrancy. For nearly a decade, photographer Akasha Rabut has documented this thriving culture. In Death Magick Abundance, her first book, she reveals the city’s spirit through the pink smoke of the Caramel Curves, the first all-female black motorcycle club; alongside the Southern Riderz, urban cowboys on horseback in the streets; and many others who represent the next generation of New Orleans. Seeking to interpret and preserve a sacred cultural heritage while redefining itself against a constantly shifting landscape, Death Magick Abundance is a conduit for the love and unending beauty of New Orleans and its people to flow to the rest of the world.
Book of the Day
Posted Jun 20, 2020
Book of the Day > Teju Cole: Fernweh
● Purchase ● The picturesque vistas and apparent stability of Switzerland have made it an elusive subject for contemporary photography. Over a five-year period (2014 – 2019), Cole found a distinctly new way to look at a country that has been the quintessence of tourist experience for almost two centuries. Fernweh muses on the German word for a longing to be elsewhere. Cole’s meditative and scrupulously composed work, made with colour film, is evocative of the hidden history of the Alpine nation as well as of its highly curated terrain. Returning to Switzerland year after year, Cole shares the patience and mild palette of luminaries of contemporary European photography — but the constructivist tension in these images is all his own. With photographs shot in every corner of the country — from Vaud to Graubünden to Lugano — Fernweh creates a vision of Switzerland that, though largely devoid of human presence, is rich in human traces; none more so than Cole’s own distinct way of seeing.
Book of the Day
Posted Jun 19, 2020
Happy Juneteenth!
Here are some celebratory books to get your party started. Book(s) of the day > Meals, Music, and Muses: Recipes from My African American Kitchen by Alexander Smalls published by Flatiron Books (@asmalls77, @ flatiron_books); Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African-American Cooking by Toni Tipton-Martin (@tonitiptonmartin, @clarksonpotter), Edna Lewis: At the Table with an American Original (UNC Press), Princess Pamela's Soul Food Cookbook: A Mouth-Watering Treasury of Afro-American Recipes (@rizzolibooks), The Unqualified Hostess: I do it my way so you can too! (@whoopigoldberg, @rizzolibooks), Trap Kitchen (@therealtrapkitchen).