Book of the Day > The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Outer Space. Published in accordance with the exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. “The moon has long furnished humankind with an artistic icon, an image of longing and object of scientific inquiry. Encompassing art, film, literature, architecture, design, natural history and historical objects, and published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first manned landing (July 20, 1969), The Moonsurveys the iconography of the moon, from Romantic landscape paintings to space-age art. It takes the 1969 landing as a thematic fulcrum and a culmination of the deep-rooted cultural conceptions invested in the space race in the 1960s, from David Bowie to Disney.

The book also accounts for the science of the moon throughout the ages, from Galileo to NASA, addressing the many lunar myths that have existed throughout time. Also explored here is moonlight, an important theme in the Romantic nocturnal landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, J.C. Dahl and Carl Julius von Leypold. Another powerful artistic genealogy is associated with science fiction, a genre that has on occasion influenced space programs: Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865), for instance, famously inspired NASA's Apollo programs. Film pioneers such as Georges Méliès and Fritz Lang created cinematic lunar voyages, and in the 1930s, surrealist artists such as Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst explored the moonlit landscape as psychological allegory. Later, during the Cold War, superpowers on both sides of the Iron Curtain worked closely with artists to orchestrate and interpret the space race: Robert Rauschenberg, for example, was one of eight artists invited by NASA to witness Apollo 11, while artists in the Soviet Union played a central role in building the cult of the cosmonaut. The Moon looks at all these lunar themes and myths, in a thrilling and inspirational gathering for anyone who has felt the moon's pull on their imagination.”

Book of the day & book signing today! (4-6 - please join us!) > Dewey Nicks: Polaroids of Women. Published by T. Adler Books. “American photographer Dewey Nicks roared into the 1990s magazine world by filling his shoots with fascinating people and a vibe of boundless energy and nonstop fun. Publications such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, W and Vanity Fair kept Nicks moving seamlessly between celebrity, fashion and advertising assignments, his portfolio amassing a who's who of iconic women, including Cindy Crawford, Natalie Portman, Sofia Coppola, Patricia Arquette, Shalom Harlow and Cher, to name only a few.

Nicks recently found a forgotten box buried deep in his archive with thousands of Polaroids from his 1990s photo sessions. These one-of-a-kind favorites saved from hundreds of shoots, both private and assigned, offer an intimate portrait into Nicks' life, friends and work. The immediacy of Polaroids combined with the natural fading of the physical print after decades in a shoebox makes each of these images singularly unique and tangibly genuine. Nicks was so smitten with this time capsule of images that he immediately shared them with his frequent collaborator, book designer and publisher Tom Adler, and this beautifully produced book was born.” Thanks to Margerum Wine.

Book of the Day >  A Final Companion To Books From The Simpsons. Published by Yellow Pages / Rollo. “French graphic designer Olivier Lebrun follows on his previous publications documenting the books that appear in the popular cartoon television series with this anthology of more than 330 images and titles. All have been captured with a black-and-white animation screenshot and catalogued in alphabetical order. Ostensibly the final instalment of this highly personal project by Lebrun, this new, updated edition reflects countless painstaking hours spent scanning episodes, plus the contributions of a large community of fans and readers who provided tips over the years.”

Book of the Day > Pittori di Cinema. Published by Lazy Dog Press. "In the wake of the Second World War, and above all, from the Sixties on, the Italian film industry began to commission artists to illustrate and promote its films. They were to sum up the entire movie plot in a single image, communicating at a glance all the emotion of a narrative. They were “cinema artists”. This 432-page volume addresses the work of twenty-nine artists, spanning the years between the Forties and the Nineties, with over 500 colour illustrations, including sketches, drafts and previously unpublished works from private collections, as well as works that were rejected or used in other ways. Maurizio Baroni, a passionate expert, author and collector, draws on his own large personal archive – now housed at Bologna Cineteca – to examine forty years of Italian cinema through playbills and posters. The works, divided by artist, are annotated by Andrea Mi and Luca Barcelona, whose critical essay skillfully analyses all aspects linked to illustration and lettering respectively, in relation to their message. The artists are introduced by Alessandra Cesselon, giving an overview of their work from the artistic point of view. The book is aimed at film-lovers and collectors, but also graphic designers and illustrators as well as students and professionals, as a historical record and an inspiration for future generations of communicators."

Book of the Day > Bruce Talamon: Soul, R&B, Funk Photographs 1972-1982. Published by Taschen. “Talamon saw it all during the golden age of soul, R&B, and funk. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, this young African American photographer from Los Angeles found himself backstage with an all-access pass to the heart of the music scene. He caught his first big break landing a position as a staff photographer at SOUL Newspaper in LA in the early 1970s, just as soul, R&B, and funk were becoming part of the mainstream. He captured the rehearsals and sound checks, recording sessions and costume fittings, the quiet reflective moments and life on the road, and, of course, the wild photo shoots and memorable performances. These photographs define an era famed for its glamour, fabulous fashions, and utter devotion to the groove.

Including close to 300 photographs from 1972 to 1982, the extensive Talamon archives are presented in full detail for the first time. Whether you’re a diehard soul fan or a thrilled newcomer to the aesthetic magic of the 1970s, the collection exudes the infectious spirit of an exuberant age. Featuring icons such as Earth, Wind & Fire; Marvin Gaye; Diana Ross; Parliament-Funkadelic; Al Green; Gil Scott-Heron; James Brown; Barry White; Rick James; Aretha Franklin; the Jackson Five; Donna Summer; and Chaka Khan and many others; there are also several stops at the legendary Soul Trainstudios. Talamon documented a visual period in black music that lasted way past the midnight hour and will never come again.”

Book of the Day > Janet Delaney: Public Matters. Published by Mack Books. "Capturing the spirit of protest and parade, Public Matters brings together photographs made by Janet Delaney in Reagan-era San Francisco. At this turbulent time in the mid eighties, Delaney was living in the primarily Latino neighbourhood of the Mission District. She would spend the weekends photographing public gatherings, from the annual Cinco de Mayo parade, to the Peace, Jobs and Justice marches, which rallied against the U.S. invasion of Nicaragua. If political governance was regressing, the West Coast city was a place where, as Delaney remembers, ‘progressive ideas would always be upheld.’ Celebrating multiculturalism and collective struggles for social justice, Public Matters surfaces at a juncture when the message of building bridges is needed now more than ever.

In the vintage glow of her sun-drenched images, Delaney leads us in and out of crowds – among demonstrators, fair-goers, cross-dressers, union organisers, beauty pageants, dancers, salesmen, mothers, kids, and market punters – searching for as many intimate moments as she found collective voices. Fearlessly upbeat, her photographs nevertheless intimate a time when, as Delaney recollects, people ‘were reeling from the shift to a conservative government. The demands of the 1960s were addressed in the 70s: the end of the Vietnam war, women’s rights, environmental issues, gay rights, to name a few. Then when Reagan was elected all this came to a halt.’ And as soon as the streets were filled with placards – ‘babies are for loving, not for bombing’; ‘Hatred can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that’ – Delaney was there, in the middle of the maelstrom, making pictures of public matters."

Book of the Day > Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive. Published by Chronicle Books. "Photographer Alex Prager is an essential cultural figure: one of the truly original image makers of our time. Working fluidly between photography and film, she creates elaborate scenes that reference a wide range of influences, including Hollywood and experimental cinema, popular culture and street photography. These delicately staged compositions are famliar yet strange, utterly compelling, and unerringly memorable. Silver Lake Drive presents more than 120 images from her career to date: the early Polyester and Big Valley series; Prager's first collaborations with actor Bryce Dallas Howard; the tour-de-force of Face in the Crowd-- shot on a Hollywood sound stage with over 150 performers; and her 2016 commission for the Paris Opera, La Grande Sortie. Featuring an introduction by Michael Govan, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; essays by Clare Grafik of the Photographers' Gallery and Michael Mansfield of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art; and an in-depth interview with the artist by Nathalie Herschdorfer of the Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle, this deluxe hardcover volume is a must-have for those who follow Prager's career and an ideal inititation for new audiences everywhere." 

Book of the Day > Artists and Their Books / Books and Their Artists. Published by Getty Publications. “This stunning volume illuminates the current moment of artists’ engagement with books, revealing them as an essential medium in contemporary art. Ever innovative and predictably diverse in their physical formats, artists’ books occupy a creative space between the familiar four-cornered object and challenging works of art that effectively question every preconception of what a book can be. Many artists specialize in producing self-contained art projects in the form of books, like Ken Campbell and Susan King, or they establish small presses, like Simon Cutts and Erica Van Horn’s Coracle Press or Harry and Sandra Reese’s Turkey Press. Countless others who are primarily known as sculptors, painters, or performance artists carry on a parallel practice in artists’ books, including Anselm Kiefer, Annette Messager, Ed Ruscha, and Richard Tuttle. Artists and Their Books / Books and Their Artistsincludes over one hundred important examples selected from the Getty Research Institute’s Special Collections of more than six thousand editions and unique artists’ books.

This volume also presents precursors to the artist’s book, such as Joris Hoefnagel’s sixteenth-century calligraphy masterpiece; single-sheet episodes from Albrecht Dürer’s Life of Mary, designed to be either broadsides or a book; early illustrated scientific works; and avant-garde publications. Twentieth-century works reveal the impact of artists’ books on Pop Art, Fluxus, Conceptualism, feminist art, and postmodernism. The selection of books by an international range of artists who have chosen to work with texts and images on paper provokes new inquiry into the nature of art and books in contemporary culture.”

This volume accompanies an exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute at the Getty Center June 26 to October 28, 2018.

Book of the Day > Lars Tunbjörk. Published by Max Ström. “Initially inspired by Swedish masters such as Christer Strömholm, as well as Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, Lars Tunbjörk (1956-2015) was one of the great and truly original European photographers. Tunbjörk's international breakthrough came in 1993 with the photobook Country beside Itself. Celebrated by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger as "an acute observer of modern life," Tunbjörk's color images amplified the mundane and the absurd in a quietly surreal fashion using the hard light of flash photography, which became his signature style and influenced a subsequent generation of photographers. His best-known photobook series include Office (2001), which depicts office workers in bizarre chance positions, and Home (2003), in which everyday items such as flowers or armchairs are made to reveal a quiet absurdity in Swedish suburbia. With more than 250 images, this volume constitutes the most substantial overview of his work.”