Book of the Day Posted Jan 18, 2019

Book of the Day > Martin Weber: A Map of Latin American Dreams

Book of the Day > Martin Weber: A Map of Latin American Dreams. Published by RM/Ediciones Lariviere. "A Map of Latin American Dreams explores the desires and hopes of individuals throughout Latin America. The project consists of many trips, beginning in 1992 and continuing through 2013, to Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil, and Colombia. I photographed families, groups, and individuals who are represented and acknowledged via collaborative portraits, including texts that anchor their history and personal stories. Their voices are expressed on a hand held blackboard with chalk writing responding to the request, “Can you write down a wish or a dream that you have?” I asked those assembled before my camera to be personal and specific in their own words. The project looks to amplify the voices of the under-represented, to give them dimension through personal stories. The photographs and texts reflect upon the history of past decades in each country, and how individual lives have been directly touched and altered by local, national and regional traumatic events and policies. The people of these territories are subject to the ideologies, political conflicts, and economic practices that engulf them, shaping their daily experience and expectations for the future. There is hope despite despair, there are dreams as yet unrealized, and mourning for those lives lost or disappeared. I hope to create a bridge of understanding, bringing viewers to recognize the continuing need for social justice and reconciliation."

Book of the Day Posted Jan 17, 2019

Book of the Day > Design for Children

Book of the Day > Design for Children. Published by Phaidon Press. "Design for Children, a must-have book for all style-conscious and design-savvy readers, documents the evolution of design for babies, toddlers, and beyond. The book spotlights more than 450 beautiful, creative, stylish, and clever examples of designs created exclusively for kids - from toys, furniture, and tableware, to textiles, lights, and vehicles. Contemporary superstars and twentieth-century masters, including Philippe Starck, Nendo, Marc Newson, Piero Lissoni, Kengo Kuma, and Marcel Wanders, are showcased."

Book of the Day Posted Jan 16, 2019

Book of the Day > Vivian Maier: The Color Work

Book of the Day > Vivian Maier: The Color Work. Published by Harper Collins. "The first definitive monograph of color photographs by American street photographer Vivian Maier. Photographer Vivian Maier’s allure endures even though many details of her life continue to remain a mystery. Her story—the secretive nanny-photographer who became a pioneer photographer—has only been pieced together from the thousands of images she made and the handful of facts that have surfaced about her life. Vivian Maier: The Color Work is the largest and most highly curated published collection of Maier’s full-color photographs to date. With a foreword by world-renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz and text by curator Colin Westerbeck, this definitive volume sheds light on the nature of Maier’s color images, examining them within the context of her black-and-white work as well as the images of street photographers with whom she clearly had kinship, like Eugene Atget and Lee Friedlander. With more than 150 color photographs, most of which have never been published in book form, this collection of images deepens our understanding of Maier, as its immediacy demonstrates how keen she was to record and present her interpretation of the world around her."

Book of the Day Posted Jan 13, 2019

Book of the Day > Keiichi Tanaami: Early Pop Collages, Fragrance of Kogiku

Book of the Day > Keiichi Tanaami: Early Pop Collages, Fragrance of Kogiku. Published by Walther Konig. "This collection of collages by Tokyo pop artist Keiichi Tanaami (born 1936) presents a thrilling 1960s barrage of weaponry, superheroes and movie stars. Tanaami was on the edges of Tokyo's postwar avant-garde, and a 1968 encounter with Andy Warhol spurred him to explore mediums ranging from posters and album covers to prints and animations. The variety, skill and number of these works surprise all the more since collage has not been widely known as Tanaami's favored medium—and indeed these collages, undated but believed to have been made in the late '60s and early '70s, were never intended to be exhibited (unlike Tanaami's better-known illustrations and animations). Text by Tanaami accompanies the more than 200 collages in this bewildering collection."

Book of the Day Posted Jan 12, 2019

Book of the Day > Hart Leshkina: Out of You

Book of the Day > Hart Leshkina: Out of You. Published by Total Visual Shop. "Hart Leshkina's new monograph Out of You explores themes of self-representation and construction of identity, subjectivity and memory. The book depicts an identity in constant flux at the time of transition between childhood and adolescence, rendering the moment when self discovery intersects with a new awareness of being observed by others. The chronology of the photographs is disrupted, each image an isolated moment, as that in the mind of an individual recalling fragmented childhood memories. Even though these photographs have been created over a short period of time, the girl transforms before our eyes, appearing to be a young child on one page, then a teen on the next. What's revealed to the viewer is something internal to themselves that maps onto their own personal psyche and memories."

None Posted Jan 11, 2019

Book of the Day > Mamma Andersson: Memory Banks

Book of the Day > Mamma Andersson: Memory Banks. Published by Damiani.

"Painters often draw from existing visual materials, such as photographs and reproductions of past works of art, to inspire and construct their work. Swedish artist Mamma Andersson (born 1962)—known for her dreamlike, faintly narrative compositions inspired by Nordic painting, folk art and cinema—is no exception.

But Andersson takes this process a step or two further, importing images of stacks of books and stray photographs, clipped from various sources, directly into her painted compositions. With careful observation, Andersson's dreamy landscapes and interiors slowly come to reveal common imagery and accumulated biblio-ephemera filtered through, and sharing space with, the artist's muted palette, melancholic scenery and textural paint. Mamma Andersson: Memory Banks focuses on this aspect of Andersson's painting practice, exploring how her use of appropriation and collage charges her paintings with an eerie, uncanny sense of familiarity."

Book of the Day Posted Jan 10, 2019

Book of the Day > Melodie McDaniel: Riding Through Compton

Book of the Day > Melodie McDaniel: Riding Through Compton. Published by Minor Matters. "According to the US Census Bureau, one-third of the population of Compton, California are under the age of 18—one-fourth of its population live at or below the poverty line. Despite the latter statistic, Compton has been home to significant athletes, musicians, scientists, writers, and pioneering public officials including Douglas Dollarhide, the first black man elected mayor of any metropolitan city in California, and Doris A. Davis, the first female black mayor of any American metropolitan city. Over decades young people have found a way to overcome the socioeconomic odds against them when their life begins in this city. For the last thirty years, under the leadership of Mayisha Akbar, the streets of Compton have been the stomping grounds of a youth riding and equestrian program. Designed to provide the kids of Compton with meaningful year-round after-school activities, members not only learn to ride, but care for their horses—developing responsibility, discipline, and self-esteem. Riding Through Compton pairs three years of documentary photographs and formal portraits by Melodie McDaniel interviews by Amelia Fleetwood conducted with participants, guardians, and volunteers involved with the Compton Junior Posse. Riding Through Compton honors the dedication and development of the young people involved with this program, and gracefully illustrates the enduring positive bond between these individuals and the horses they care for and ride."

Book of the Day Posted Jan 09, 2019

Book of the Day > Alina Szapacznikow: Human Landscapes

Book of the Day > Alina Szapocznikow: Human Landscapes. Published by Walther Konig in conjunction with an exhibit at The Hepworth Wakefield. "Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973) created an extensive and expressive oeuvre, in which she was intensively concerned with the human body, right up to her untimely death. In her sculptures, photographs and drawings she divided female bodies in particular into fragments such as lips, breasts, stomachs and limbs, to put them back together again in new ways and to integrate them as traces in her work. Her own body often found its way into the work in the form of casts. Having previously worked with classical materials such as bronze, she began to experiment with new materials such as polyester after arriving in Paris and mixing with the circle of Nouveaux Réalistes artists. With this she revolutionised the expressive possibilities of sculpture. This catalogue traces this artistic development by means of work from between 1954 and 1973, from early figurative sculptures to the ‘awkward objects’ which are strongly influenced by surrealism and pop art."

Book of the Day Posted Jan 06, 2019

Book of the Day > Jean-Vincent Simonet: In Bloom

Book of the Day > Jean-Vincent Simonet: In Bloom. Published by Self Publish Be Happy. "French artist Jean-Vincent Simonet’s practice pushes the poetics of chaos to the very limits, characterised by a penchant for sheer entropy and excess. In Bloom materialised after Simonet first visited Japan in September 2016. Nights spent in Tokyo and Osaka were an intoxicating assault on the senses for him, with sexual encounters, drug-fuelled parties and times spent scaling the city after dark merging into one unfolding mass of visual information before his eyes. The cities were like serpentine, living entities that appeared to metamorphose in the night time. For Simonet, Japan has always had an aquatic, almost mythical status. His images – of which all are original analogue photographs – are transformed through experimental manipulations; metaphors for the slow process of feeling ingested by these fluid, mutating organisms. Printing his images onto plastic paper and sculptural resin so the ink never quite dries, Simonet uses water and chemicals, long exposure and torchlight to transform the surface of his prints, abstracting and blurring them as if the scenes are melting away. Part travel diary and part love letter to the cities of Tokyo and Osaka, In Bloom is a searing, hyper-visual journey into the heart of Japanese underground culture and an ode to the overwhelming experience of seeing a place with the eyes of a stranger for the first time. The book reads as a frenetic dream sequence, as if the countless nights he spent in the belly of the city have folded into a single never-ending one."

Book of the Day Posted Jan 02, 2019

Book of the Day > Yoshihiro Makino: The Open Hand: Le Corbusier's Chandigarh

Book of the Day > Yoshihiro Makino: The Open Hand: Le Corbusier's Chandigarh. Published by August Editions. "The modernist architect Le Corbusier’s Capitol Complex at Chandigarh, India, remains one of the major touchstones of 20th-century architecture. Commissioned by the government of India after gaining independence, the complex of brutalist concrete structures has become a pilgrimage site for architecture lovers and scholars for the past six decades. These structures have been photographed many times, but the Japanese photographer Yoshihiro Makino takes a different approach. Instead of documenting the buildings in typical fashion, the photographs become meditations on the intentions of the project, and of Le Corbusier’s architectural philosophy. Composed of two accordion-folded books in a cloth slipcase, Makino and revered art director Tamotu Yagi create a double-sided visual experience revealing on the front side of the accordion books an explosion of saturated color exteriors and interiors, then on the backsides details and rarely seen rooms in lush black & white. The combination is both refreshing and mesmerizing. Taking its name from Le Corbusier’s monument for the city—The Open Hand, which symbolizes a new cooperation of the newly formed government—this publication is a visual metaphor for the unfolding experience of the Chandigarh."