Events Posted Apr 17, 2024

Upcoming Events at Arcana!

SATURDAY, APRIL 20th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM

ANNIE KELLY + TIM STREET-PORTER:
CITY OF DREAMS: LOS ANGELES INTERIORS
BOOK SIGNING

SATURDAY, APRIL 27th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
JIM GANZER: LIFE LIVED
BOOK SIGNING

Events Posted Apr 15, 2024

Book Signing with Tim Street-Porter and Annie Kelly for "City of Dreams: Los Angeles Interiors" Saturday, April 20th from 4:00 to 6:00 PM at Arcana!

Join us Saturday, April 20th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM for a book signing with Annie Kelly and Tim Street-Porter to celebrate the publication of their latest sumptuous architecture and design survey, City of Dreams: Los Angeles Interiors.

If you cannot attend and would like to order a signed copy to have shipped or to pick up at the shop, please place your order here!

We look forward to seeing you!

"Los Angeles’s Tim Street-Porter has been chronicling this metropolis’s architecture and interiors for over twenty-five years. This stunning collection of inspiring homes begins with a look back, which includes examples of iconic houses inspired by Hollywood film fantasies, Modernist residences by such luminaries as John Lautner, and Frank Gehry’s Deconstructivism-style home. The heart of the book features today’s forward-looking homes, divided into two sections: Living with Art and Design and Los Angeles Modern. Antiquarian Joel Chen artfully blends an eye-catching collection of period furniture and Chinese objets while interior designer Jean-Louis Denoit’s house sparkles with a Tony Duquette gilded mirror and an abalone shell chandelier. Another trend is the renovation of modernist houses with a personal touch. Artist Mary Weatherford’s reworking of her A. Quincy Jones–designed home, in collaboration with designer Oliver Furth, has a striking orange bedroom. Illuminating Los Angeles’s dramatic indoor-outdoor living spaces, this tome is a must-have for architecture and design enthusiasts."

Tim Street-Porter is the renowned Los Angeles-based architecture and design photographer that has produced numerous books, including “L.A. Modern”, “Palm Springs: Modernist Paradise”, “Splash: The Art of the Swimming Pool“, and “Casa Mexico.”

Writer and designer Annie Kelly is the author of the successful “Rooms to Inspire” series, as well as “Living in Paradise”, “Splash: The Art of the Swimming Pool“, and “Casa Mexico.” She writes about lifestyle for such publications as “Belle” and “The Los Angeles Times.”

Events Posted Apr 07, 2024

Book Signing and Discussion with Magdalena Wosinska and Tobin Yelland Saturday, April 13th from 4:00 to 6:00 PM at Arcana!

Join us on this Saturday, April 13th, between 4:00 and 6:00 PM to celebrate the publication of the Magdalena Wosinksa's amazing survey of her skateboarding photographs, Fulfill The Dream. In addition to signing the first copies in the States of this hot-off-the-press import, Ms. Wosinska will be engaging in a discussion with renowned cinematographer and photographer Tobin Yelland comparing their shared yet very different experiences in the heady world of the skate culture of the 1990s and beyond.

If cannot attend and would like to order a signed copy to have shipped or to pick up at the shop, please place your order here!

We look forward to seeing you!

"Fulfill the Dream is a documentary photobook by Polish-born, Los Angeles-based photographer Magdalena Wosinska that captures the American skate culture of the 1990s through color and black-and-white snapshots. The scene’s energy, creativity, and rebellious spirit influenced fashion, music, and artistic expression, shaping a generation of American underground youth. The book features Chad Muska, Austyn Gillette, Jim Greco, Harold Hunter, Ed Templeton, Eric Ellington, Ali Boulala, and numerous other influential skaters. Beyond the book’s broader examination of American skate subculture, Wosinska’s project is a deeply personal journey through her teenage years and an exploration of what it means to be a misfit in a world of misfits. Her visual diary captures the duality that has shaped her life: the joy and exhilaration of skateboarding alongside meaningful human connection and the adrenaline-fueled world of drugs, a first love, prejudice, a deep need to find a place of belonging and struggles with mental health. Shortly after immigrating to the U.S. from communist Poland in 1991, Wosinska’s coping mechanism for culture shock was her camera. It became her passport to a world ruled by boys, and a language for fitting in and forming heartfelt friendships in the skate community. Through raw, visceral portraits and self-portraits created in juxtaposition to the male-dominated scene, she captured the now-famous teen spirit of the ‘90s, reflecting the ever-shifting balance between the highs and lows of belonging and the essence of years of making dreams come true as a skate photographer through perseverance, diligence, and hard work. Alongside the teenage angst of the era, the project explores themes of resilience, female empowerment, and the relentless pursuit of goals."

Events Posted Mar 29, 2024

Thom Browne Book Signing Saturday, April 6th

Join us Saturday, April 6th, between 4:00 and 6:00 PM for a book signing to celebrate the publication of the massive new Phaidon monograph Thom Browne. with a glass of champagne and the esteemed designer himself.

If you cannot attend and would like to order a signed copy to have shipped or to pick up at the shop, please place your order here.

We look forward to seeing you!

"With a vast celebrity clientele, Thom Browne is widely recognized for modernizing today’s professional uniform: the suit. As the company’s twentieth anniversary nears, Thom Browne. celebrates the legacy of the house. The book features an introduction and texts by Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu curator in charge of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, and specially commissioned photography by Johnny Dufort presenting more than two hundred looks from past seasons. It concludes with a tableau of show installations that further illustrate the house’s design philosophy and evolution. Published as a hardback enclosed in a clamshell box, the book includes four, six, and eight-page gatefolds along with more than forty translucent vellum pages featuring the brand’s signature four stripes. It also includes a Thom Browne-designed grosgrain ribbon."

Thom Browne is an American fashion designer and the founder/creative director of Thom Browne, a luxury fashion house based in New York. Initially celebrated for his distinctive approach to men’s tailoring in 2003, Browne has since expanded the collections to include womenswear, childrenswear and accessories. He has also become known for his highly conceptual runway presentations which have gained global attention for their thought-provoking themes and dramatic settings. In 2023 he became chairman of the CFDA.

In the News Posted Mar 25, 2024

Denim Tears African Diaspora Goods Library

Renaissance men Tremaine Emory and Theaster Gates have created a show-stopping flagship store with the Denim Tears African Diaspora Goods (176 Spring St, NYC).

We're thrilled that the African Art book collection we’ve been building for 40 years has found its home in this singular space.

“African Diaspora Goods will function as a cultural hub, expanding on Denim Tears’ narrative storytelling on the Black diaspora. The store’s design was a collaborative effort between Denim Tears’ founder, Tremaine Emory, and Theaster Gates.

Inspired by Gates’ decades-long artistic practice of archiving, elevating, and making publicly accessible historic Black images and objects, the store also serves as a community space housing a collection of over one thousand, five hundred publications on the history of the Arts of Africa alongside the label’s seasonal collections. Denim Tears invites visitors to not only shop the brand’s latest wares but also to enrich themselves with this robust selection of books curated by Lee and Whitney Kaplan, owners of the Culver City-based art book store Arcana: Books on the Arts

African Diaspora Goods will double as a comprehensive research library filled with books, exhibition catalogs, and periodicals published in Africa, Europe, The Americas, and Asia, documenting the visual and performative cultures of the Indigenous peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa. Assembled by Arcana over a span of nearly forty years, this unique resource includes material from publishers, booksellers, art dealers, and the libraries of several major collectors and academics. Denim Tears' flagship will house one of the most significant American collections of such documentation within a non-institutional setting, similar to Gates’ Johnson Publishing Company Library at his celebrated Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago This book collection serves as a physical testament to Denim Tears' genuine commitment to storytelling, aligning with their ethos and dedication to using fashion as a vehicle to tell impactful stories about the African diaspora.”

Events Posted Feb 23, 2024

Dawoud Bey - ELEGY Booksigning & Discussion 3/2/24

Please join us this Saturday, March 2nd for a book signing with Dawoud Bey to celebrate his new Aperture publication, Elegy. The afternoon's event is presented in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute, and will include Mr. Bey discussing his work and career with the Getty Research Center's Dr. LeRonn P. Brooks.

If you cannot attend and would like to purchase a signed copy of Elegy - or some earlier titles - to have shipped or to pick up at the shop, please place your order here.

We look forward to seeing you!

"On the occasion of the landmark exhibition and publication Elegy, renowned American artist Dawoud Bey joins Getty curator and scholar Dr. LeRonn P. Brooks in dialogue at Arcana: Books on the Arts in Culver City. The conversation will address ways in which Bey has reimagined photography's capacity for considering and evoking the now invisible history of the Black presence in the American landscape.

Dawoud Bey is a groundbreaking American artist and MacArthur Fellow who examines the Black past and present, mining the histories of Black communities and their people. His photographs and film installations have been the subject of numerous major museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including his recent landscape retrospective Dawoud Bey: Elegy at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Dr. LeRonn P. Brooks is curator of the African American Art History Initiative at the Getty Research Institute as well as curator of African American collections and acquisitions. His interviews and essays on African American art have been featured in Callaloo, The International Review of African American Art, and the Aperture Foundation, as well as in many exhibition catalogues: Dawoud Bey: Elegy (2023), Torkwase Dyson: A Liquid Belonging (2023), and A Long Arc: Photography and the American South Since 1845 (2023), among others."

Events Posted Feb 14, 2024

Save The Date: Dawoud Bey Book Signing 3/2/24!

SATURDAY, MARCH 2nd, 4:00 - 6:00 PM

DAWOUD BEY: ELEGY
MR. BEY IN DISCUSSION WITH DR. LERONN P. BROOKS + BOOK SIGNING

Please join us Saturday, March 2nd for a book signing with Dawoud Bey to celebrate the publication of Elegy.

If you cannot attend and would like to order a signed copy to have shipped or to pick up at the shop, please place your order here.

The signing will be preceded by a discussion regarding the work between Mr. Bey and Leronn P. Brooks from the Getty Research Center.

This event is presented in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute.

Events Posted Feb 13, 2024

Book Signing with Yelena Yemchuk for "Malanka" This Saturday at Arcana!

We are excited to invite you to join us this Saturday (2/17, 4-6) for a book signing with Yelena Yemchuk to celebrate the publication of Malanka!

If you cannot attend and would like to order a signed copy to have shipped or to pick up at the shop, please place your order here.

We look forward to seeing you!

"Ukrainian-born, Brooklyn-based photographer and painter Yelena Yemchuk is most commonly known for her fashion and portrait photographs, which have appeared in Italian and Japanese Vogue, V, the New Yorker and The New York Times. Yemchuk makes images that teeter on the threshold between her Eastern European heritage and her daily life in New York; between fiction and reality; between the grand beauty of 1960s cinema and the social and built environments of post-Soviet realms. As with all of her work, "Malanka" is a personal, feminine, surrealist and magical project. The eponymous tradition is a pre-Christian folklore ritual driving out winter and welcoming spring, an ancient custom reminiscent of Persephone’s return in Greek mythology. It is celebrated on January 14th, the old New Year in the Julian calendar, by ethnic Romanians in western Ukraine. In 2019 and 2020, Yemchuk traveled to Crasna (Krasnoilsk in Ukrainian) to document the night-long festival. Accompanying Yemchuk's striking photographic documentation is a poetic essay by Romanian cultural journalist Ioana Pelehatai."

Events Posted Feb 05, 2024

Publish Your Photography Book with Mary Virginia Swanson!

Please join us this Saturday for a book signing with the iconic Mary Virginia Swanson to celebrate the publication of the newly updated edition of the ever-popular Publish Your Photography Book! Ms. Swanson will be signing and taking your questions in a discussion moderated by Radius Books' Isabella Beroutsos.

If you cannot attend and would like to order a signed copy of Publish Your Photography Book to have shipped or to pick up at the shop, please place your order here.

We look forward to seeing you!

The first book to demystify the process of producing and publishing a book of photographs, Publish Your Photography Book was first released in 2011 and subsequently sold out two editions. This highly anticipated third edition guides photo-based artists through the steps involved in publishing a book of their work. Industry insiders Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson survey the current landscape of photography-book publishing and point out the many avenues to pursue and pitfalls to avoid. This updated, expert guide covers: a history of the photobook; an overview of the publishing industry; the process of bringing your project to book form (with both traditional publishing and self-publishing options); how to market a photography book (including a dialogue with collectors on the limited edition and artist-made books); case studies with published photographers; and valuable resources on production materials, publishing and marketing timelines.

Filled with educational wisdom, the book features interviews and contributions from artists, agents, editors, designers, printers, publishers, distributors, booksellers, curators and librarians who share their experiences and provide advice about each step on the path to publication and placement. A removable workbook helps readers address book preparation, draft submission guidelines, production timelines and marketing plans. With over 50 years of combined industry experience and insights, the authors also provide both historical context and contemporary expertise about the international photobook scene, including awards, fairs and grants.

The contributors include: Regina Maria Anzenberger, Bob Aufuldish, Julia Borissova, Barbara Bosworth, Frish Brandt, Sonel Breslav, Joan Brookbank, Jane Brown, Jason Burstein, David Campany, Alejandro Cartagena, Bruno Ceschel, Nelson Chan, Lewis Chaplin, Clément Cheroux, David Chickey, Joshua Chuang, Mary DelMonico, Sarah Espenon, Jon Evans, Chloe Ferres, Tricia Gabriel, Susan kae Grant, Kris Graves, Hans Gremmen, Nathalie Herschdorfer, Todd Hido, Deborah Hollis, Tiffany Jones, Christina Labey, Joan Liftin, Michael Lundgren, Lesley A. Martin, Christopher McCall, Lisa McCarty, Clifton Meador, Dan Milnor, Arezoo Moseni, Colleen Mullins, Azu Nwagbogu, Martin Parr, Cecile Poimboeuf-Koizumi, Alan Rapp, Rixon Reed, Ruth R. Rogers, Laura Russell, Markus Schaden, Mike Slack, Søren Solkær, David Solo, Gerhard Steidl, Alan Thomas, Ian van Coller, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Amy Wilkins, Deborah Willis, Denise Wolff, Nancy E. Wolff, Carl Wooley, Sophie Wright and Philip Zimmermann

Events Posted Jan 27, 2024

WINOGRAND COLOR!

DISCUSSION AND BOOK SIGNING
WITH EDITOR MICHAEL ALMEREYDA AND GEOFF DYER
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3rd, 4:00 - 6:00 PM

Please join us for a discussion about the fabulous new Twin Palms book WINOGRAND COLOR with the book's editor Michael Almereyda and Geoff Dyer!

The discussion will begin at 4:15 followed by a book signing with Mr. Almereyda.

If you can't make it, you can order a copy of WINOGRAND COLOR signed by Michael Almereyda here.

Garry Winogrand is known primarily for his spontaneous and energetic street photography in black-and-white. What is lesser known is that Winogrand also shot more than 45,000 color slides between the early 1950s and late 1960s. These photographs were often taken between assignments, when the photographer, working on his own, developed and refined an approach to his medium that was increasingly open, independent, and radical. He routinely photographed with two cameras strapped around his neck, one loaded with color film, the other with black and white. "Winogrand Color" presents one hundred and fifty photographs selected from the archives at the Center for Creative Photography by the American film director, Michael Almereyda and former Museum of Modern Art curator, Susan Kismaric. It is the first monograph dedicated to the artist's rarely seen color work. We look forward to seeing you!