PAZ DE LA HUERTA: THE BIRDS DIDN'T DIE OVER THE WINTER
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEXANDRA CARR
 

Photographer Alexandra Carr met Paz de la Huerta - the actress and Boardwalk Empire star - in New York in 2007, shortly before Paz became the celebrity she is today, and they soon agreed to collaborate on a photo project. The two began shooting in the fall of 2008, often using Paz’s small West Village apartment as a backdrop - which was mercifully well heated throughout that especially cold New York winter. Published by Damiani Editore, and with an introduction by Francesco Clemente, The Birds Didn’t Die Over the Winter is a gorgeous, linen-bound volume that explores themes of love, loneliness and the difficult transition from youth into relative maturity. As Carr recalls, “it was made during a turbulent time in Paz’s life and her life is a subtext in an otherwise imagined reality. We would discuss a character and direction beforehand and then Paz would play out these roles partly of made up characters and of favorite scenes from films each shoot.” Paz is a charismatic subject throughout the book, at once fearless, sexual and vividly present, moving fluidly between roleplay and apparent candor. Carr explains the title: “[Paz] called one morning in the spring saying she had an idea for what we should call the book. She said she woke up and heard birds outside her window. She couldn’t believe they had survived such an abominable winter. It was a perfect metaphor for the book.”

See images from this event here.

ENRIQUE MARTÍNEZ CELAYA:  WORKING METHODS / MÉTODOS DE TRABAJO

WITH AUTHOR MARY RAKOW, CURATOR HOWARD N. FOX AND THE ARTIST
 

In the first comprehensive study of Martínez Celaya’s multifaceted process, authors Mary Rakow and Matthew Biro illuminate previously unaddressed aspects of the artist’s practice including his materials and his approach towards them, literary influences, tendency to destroy his own work, and the changes that led to pivotal moments in his career. Working Methods is a lovely hardbound monograph that features new photography, archival images, and a number of previously unpublished works. Also included are an interview by Rakow with the artist that reveals his unique practice as well as a biographical chronology, bibliography, and exhibition history. Enrique Martínez Celaya is one of the most intriguing and celebrated artists to emerge from the United States in recent years. Trained as artist and physicist, his practice embraces painting, sculpture, photography, and writing. His projects frequently take the form of multidisciplinary environments that balance images with the immediacy of the material experience, and his ideas as well as his approach are influenced by sources that range from Nordic poetry to quantum physics. His early training as a scientist and his interest in philosophy is evident in his layered work which is cerebral, emotionally direct, and deeply connected to life.

 

Redheaded Peckerwood is a work with a tragic underlying narrative – the story of 19 year old Charles Starkweather and 14 year old Caril Ann Fugate who murdered ten people, including Fugate’s family, during a three day killing spree across Nebraska to the point of their capture in Douglas, Wyoming. The images record places and things central to the story, depict ideas inspired by it, and capture other moments and discoveries along the way.

From a technical perspective, the photographs incorporate and reference the techniques of photojournalism, forensic photography, image appropriation, reenactment and documentary landscape photography. On a conceptual level, they deal with a charged landscape and play with a photographic representation and truth as the work deconstructs a pre-existing narrative. Redheaded Peckerwood also utilizes and plays with a pre-existing archive of material, deliberately mixing fact and fiction, past and present, myth and reality as it presents, expands and re-presents the various facts and theories surrounding this story.

While photographs are the heart of this work, they are the complemented and informed by documents and objects that belonged to the killers and their victims – including a map, poem, confession letter, stuffed animal, hood ornament and various other items, in several cases, these materials are discoveries first made by the artist and presented here for the first time.

In book form, the work is presented as a sort of visual crime dossier, including pieces of paper which are inserted into the book. The many individual pieces included serve as cues and clues within the visual puzzle. In this way, there are connections that are left for the viewer to be made and mysteries that are left to be solved.
 

Christian Patterson's Redheaded Peckerwood has gained near-iconic status amongst the photography books of the past few years. Published by MACK in 2011, it sold out almost immediately, and was included on too many year end best-of lists to count. It is once again available, and we are so pleased that Mr. Patterson will be here signing copies on Thursday in conjunction with his exhibition of the work opening at Rose Gallery in Bergamot Station on the 29th.

MITCH EPSTEIN IN CONVERSATION WITH JAMES WELLING REGARDING "NEW YORK ARBOR"

We're most excited to be hosting two of America's greatest contemporary photographers together here in conjunction with the release of Mitch Epstein's hot-off-the-press "New York Arbor".

"This new work is a series of photographs of the idiosyncratic trees that inhabit New York City. These pictures underscore the importance of trees to urban life and their complex relationship to their human counterparts. Rooted in New York’s sidewalks, parks, and cemeteries, some trees grow wild, some are contortionists adapting to constrictive surroundings, while others are pruned into prize specimens. As urban development closes in on them, surprisingly, New York’s trees continue to thrive".

From 2011 to 2012, Epstein explored New York’s five boroughs in search of remarkable trees, often returning to photograph the same trees through the changing seasons and light. Many of these trees, Epstein learned, were planted in one context—a farm or nursery, for instance—and had survived to be part of another, a city street or public garden; and most will likely outlive us to find their habitat continue to change. The cumulative effect of these photographs is to invert people’s usual view of their city: trees no longer function as background, but instead dominate the human life and architecture around them".

 

JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD:
50 YEARS OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Foreword by Shepard Fairey
Published by Gingko Press

We're thrilled to welcome esteemed graphic artist, photographer and illustrator John Van Hamersveld to Arcana on June 8th! "In a career spanning fifty years, Van Hamersveld has designed album covers for bands such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, The Beach Boys, Jefferson Airplane, Kiss and Blondie, and graced such magazines as Rolling Stone, Esquire and Billboard with his illustrations - all the while experimenting with new media and techniques. Few individuals have had such a lasting and ongoing impact on graphic design, popular art and culture.

An iconic image has a tremendous ability to influence society, acting as both a symbol for a moment in time and as a harbinger for change. Instantly recognizable, it can become invested with our hopes and dreams, both on a personal and a cultural level.  Creating such work is not mere happenstance, but is thanks to the deliberate choices and groundbreaking talents of a small handful of visionary artists and designers. John Van Hamersveld is one such creator, having produced such timeless images as the Endless Summer movie poster and the Jimi Hendrix Pinnacle poster."

John is a longtime frequenter of our shop that has produced several of the 20th Century's most significant and recognizable posters. We will have a small selection of these available to be signed along with his spectacular new book.

TODD HIDO:
EXCERPTS FROM SILVER MEADOWS
 

Printed Matter's  LA ART BOOK FAIR
January 31st - February 3rd

at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

Celebrate with author Ron Avery the release of a stunning tribute to one of Hollywood's greatest photographers, andone of this season's most sought after titles!

SID AVERY:
THE ART OF THE HOLLYWOOD SNAPSHOT
 

ANTHONY HERNANDEZ + TORBJØRN RØDLAND:
MACK BOOKS IN L.A. AT ARCANA THIS THURSDAY

PLEASE JOIN US FROM 6-8:00 PM THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13th  FOR REFRESHMENTS AND PRE-HOLIDAY CONSUMERISM AS WE WELCOME TWO PHOTOGRAPHIC TITANS AND CELEBRATE THEIR HOT-OFF-THE-PRESSES NEW RELEASES!
 

Anthony Hernandez: Rodeo Drive, 1984

Rodeo Drive, 1984 is Anthony Hernandez' series of forty-one photographic images of shoppers on Beverly Hills’ infamous commercial thoroughfare. His subjects appear to be caught unaware, glancing up as they walk, or daydreaming as they wait to be served in its landscape of tony shops and restaurants.  Hernandez poses as a dispassionate observer, recording the big hair, wide shoulders and cinched waists of the 1980s in sunlit photographs.

He does not simply document the urban experience, but reveals in his images the complexity of social spaces, implying economic disparity and racial divide. Layers of socio-economic tension are exposed on the street in an overt symbol of civic success; as Lewis Baltz observes, “these are the victors...enjoying the spoils of their victory on Rodeo Drive”. Working in the 1970s, Hernandez and his contemporaries (including Lewis Baltz and Terry Wild) were interested in photographing the social landscape of Los Angeles. His work was included in the landmark exhibition The Crowded Vacancy at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon) in 1971, which introduced to the public a new type of American landscape photography - four years prior to New Topographics.

This sumptuous new MACK Books release presents in print for the first time Anthony Hernandez' wry assessment of Reagan-era consumerism.
 

Torbjørn Rødland: Vanilla Partner

Torbjørn Rødland's photography is direct but idiosyncratic; pushing at the boundaries of aesthetic and social norms. His fifth book, Vanilla Partner, continues in this vein, combining images of fetishized isolation in a layout that rejects the linear structure of thematic photography books.

Rødland's practice navigates through the problematic and seemingly unchanging heart of popular photography. Accepting neither the humanist realism of most photographic portraiture nor the postmodern role-play, Vanilla Partner explores the cultural complexities and archaic foundation of contemporary image-making. Reconstructed scenes of ultra-soft BDSM read like twisted metaphors for photography’s ability to freeze or capture. The book title, dripping in innuendo, also poses a question about the ambiguity of the relationship between the artist and his medium. Is Rødland acknowledging the medium’s straight foundation or does he see himself dominated by it? Many of the images also have explicit political references, often linked to the 1980 US Presidential election.

Vanilla Partner brings together works made in Oslo, Tokyo, Beijing and Rødland’s current home, Los Angeles. Only just released, it has already appeared on several "Best of" photography books lists for 2012!

101 ESSENTIAL ROCK RECORDS:
THE GOLDEN AGE OF VINYL FROMTHE BEATLES TO THE SEX PISTOLS

by JEFF GOLD
 

The book shines a light on one hundred and one rock albums - from the well known to the obscure - that changed music forever. From The Beatles' 1963 UK debut Please Please Me through the Sex Pistols' 1977 classic Never Mind The Bollocks, its focus is vinyl’s “Golden Age”; beginning with the explosion of album sales brought on by Beatlemania, and ending in the late seventies with the advent of Sony’s Walkman - and the cassette overtaking the LP as the dominant music format.

Already featured in the pages of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and SPIN, this awesome compendium of rock 'n' roll scholarship is a must-have for any music fan, and the perfect holiday gift. Come celebrate with our longtime friend (and Lee's colleague at Rhino Records oh-so-many years ago) Jeff Gold, contributor Gene Sculatti, guest DJ Zach Cowie (spinning albums featured in the book) and any number of familiar faces this Sunday!