● Purchase ● Maude Arsenault’s Entangled encapsulates a pivotal moment for her work, representing a shift in perspective and personal responsibility. “After years dedicated to creating glorified images of women,” she says of her success in fashion photography, “I came to question my role and influence in the transmission of models of femininity.” Albeit informed by a progressive, non-binary upbringing, this introspection is ultimately necessary now – in the context of motherhood as she raises three children including a young woman. 

When speaking about Entangled, Arsenault invokes the French word carcan – meaning “ploy,” or “ambush,” or “ideological trap” – to explain the underlying motivation for making the spare and evocative pictures in this debut monograph. By which she means that becoming an adult and a parent have given her distance and perspective on the cultural demands made on the bodies and societal roles of young women, and particularly on life choices which have been constricted or even foreordained. Arsenault calls the work “a poem, an ode, a shout out,” and one senses that the quiet power of the book lies in contradictions still unresolved even as the author gains in experience and independence. “I feel often trapped in the person I have been trying to be my entire life,” she says in a touching and revealing statement, one that perfectly echoes the finely calibrated tensions and the tentative triumphs evoked in these pages. “Now I stand, shaky but alive, looking away at my world as a female with the best possible hope.”

● Purchase ● Anywhere, California is another close look by Rudy VanderLans into the cultural landscape of his favorite subject, the Golden State. Whether it’s the garage where Apple started in Los Altos, or the former location where the Manson Family lived in Chatsworth, or an anonymous abandoned storefront in Calexico, VanderLans finds beauty in the unlikeliest of locations. Yet he rarely divulges the why or what of his photographs. Instead he stresses that things aren’t always what they appear to be, leaving much to the imagination of the reader.

● Purchase ● A dynamic aerial exploration of our changing planet, published on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day 

● PURCHASE ● Cats & Plants is the debut book from Chicago-based artist Stephen Eichhorn. The 152-page book includes more than 200 rich color images of the artist’s curious cat collages, and features felines balancing plants (and sometimes shells or minerals) on their furry heads. There are Calicos and cactuses, Siamese and succulents, and so much more.