Book of the day > Double Vision: The Photography of George Rodriguez. Published by Hat & Beard. The first ever career retrospective of Los Angeles photographer George Rodriguez. "Since the 1950s, Rodriguez has quietly documented multiple social worlds—in California and beyond—that have never before been displayed together, a rare mix of Hollywood and Chicano L.A., film premieres and farmworker strikes, album covers and street scenes, celebrity portraits and civil rights marches. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Rodriguez, raised in South Los Angeles, led something of a double life as a photographer. He worked for film studios, record labels, and magazines like Tiger Beat, processing film for Hollywood photographers and shooting countless photographs of the era's biggest music and film stars, while also photographing the social movements and protests that were exploding on the streets of Los Angeles and throughout the country: the East Los Angeles Walkouts, the Chicano Moratorium, the United Farm Workers movement, the Sunset Strip riots, among others. Double Vision explores both of these worlds alongside the many other urban scenes Rodriguez has shot over the years, from L.A. gang graffiti and boxing to early hip-hop. A student of Sid Avery and a contemporary of Dennis Hopper, Rodriguez is one of the great visual documentarians of Los Angeles and of the cultural complexities of Mexican-American life. Assembled by Rodriguez himself, in conjunction with scholar and writer Josh Kun, this book will be an invaluable addition to the way we understand identity, popular culture, and civil rights in American life, and a visual biography of one of the country's most important, yet unsung, visual historians."

Book of the day (and MAJOR staff pick) > Allen Ruppersberg: Intellectual Property 1968–2018. Published by Walker Art Center. "Allen Ruppersberg: Intellectual Property 1968–2018 accompanies a major retrospective exhibition on one of conceptual art's most inventive and acclaimed practitioners. Emerging in late-1960s Los Angeles, Ruppersberg was among that city's first generation of conceptual artists to espouse a working method that privileges ideas and process over conventional aesthetic objects. Deploying posters, books, postcards and even a café and hotel, his projects have consistently had at their center a focus on the American vernacular—its music, popular imagery and ephemera—mining the nuances of culture through its unsung conventions. From his earliest works, the artist has also welcomed the involvement of the viewer as participant, inviting an immersive experience of his work through language, visual density, accumulated elements and ideas. This fully illustrated catalog is the most comprehensive publication to date on Ruppersberg's work, featuring a wealth of scholarly content and critical writing connecting Ruppersberg's work to the larger contemporary art field. Produced by the Walker's award-winning design studio and in close collaboration with the artist, the book presents a holistic view of Ruppersberg's wide-ranging, 50-year practice."

Book of the day > The Photographer In The Garden. Published by Aperture and the George Eastman Museum. "This book explores our unique relationship with nature through the garden. From famous locations, such as Versailles, to the simplest home vegetable gardens, from worlds imagined by artists to vintage family snapshots, The Photographer in the Garden traces the garden's rich history in photography and delights readers with spectacular photographs. The book explores gardens from many angles: the symbolism of plants and flowers, how humans cultivate the landscapes that surround them, the change of the seasons, and the gardener at work. An informative essay from curator Jamie M. Allen and picture-commentaries by Sarah Anne McNear broaden our understanding of photography and how it has been used to record the glory of the garden. The book features photographers from all eras, including Anna Atkins, Karl Blossfeldt, Eugène Atget, Edward Steichen, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Collier Schorr, to name a few. This sublime book brings together some of the most stunning photography in the history of the medium."

Book of the day > My Ramones: Photographs by Danny Fields. Published by Reel Art Press @reelartpress. "Danny Fields first saw the Ramones play at CBGBs in New York in 1974, and instantly offered to manage them, also setting them up with a record deal. Originally published in a rare limited edition, My Ramones features more than 200 photographs from Danny’s personal collection of one of the most loved and well-known bands from the last four decades. Danny managed the band from the ground up, accompanying them across Europe and America, while also photographing them at work with fans and during more informal moments. Taken between 1975 and 1977, Field’s photographs offer a rare insight into the lives of the band on tour, backstage and recording their first album. The images are further brought alive by his accompanying commentary and memories and recollections from Michael Stipe, Seymour Stein and David Johansen. This is a unique and special volume of a mythical time."

Book of the day > California Captured: Mid-Century Modern Architecture, Marvin Rand. Published by Phaidon. "The style and mythology of Mid-Century Modern California architecture as seen through the expert lens of Marvin Rand. Los Angeles photographer Marvin Rand created iconic images of some of the most celebrated architectural creations of his time, photographing buildings by the likes of Modernist masters Craig Ellwood, Louis Kahn, and Frank Lloyd Wright to capture the essence of their work - and, in doing so, played a critical role in shaping the Mid-Century California style now worshiped the world over. The discovery of Rand's archive has brought a treasure trove to life, and California Captured showcases it - and the period - as never before." @phaidonsnaps

Book of the day > Resurrection City, 1968 by Jill Freedman. Published by Damiani. "Published in 1970, Jill Freedman’s Old News: Resurrection City documented the culmination of the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and carried out under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy in the wake of Dr King’s assassination. Three thousand people set up camp for six weeks in a makeshift town that was dubbed Resurrection City, and participated in daily protests. Freedman lived in the encampment for its entire six weeks, photographing the residents, their daily lives, their protests and their eventual eviction. This new 50th-anniversary edition of the book reprints most of the pictures from the original publication, with improved printing and a more vivid design. Alongside Freedman’s hard-hitting original text, two introductory essays are included, by John Edwin Mason, historian of African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia, and by Aaron Bryant, Curator of Photography at the National Museum of African American History and Culture."           

Book of the day > Gusmano Cesaretti: VARRIO. Published by Little Big Man Books. “VARRIO by Gusmano Cesaretti, Italian born artist  Cesaretti self-taught in photography was one of the first to document the East Los Angeles community in the early 1970s. He created a prolific body of work which introduces viewers to an alternative lifestyle in particular the Graffiti and Lowrider scene. It was through his fascination and curiosity that led Cesaretti to meet members of the East LA's ‘Klique’ Car Club. Developing a mutual respect and friendship that built over the years as he continued to photograph not only the Lowrider scene but an entire community and their lives. This work is an enduring witness to the past. Cesaretti's approach to photography is personal, while using his camera as a tool to create contact, closeness and intimacy. It is an investigation of the emotional states that control us, inspire us, and keep us moving. The images capture life’s complexities: people, places and the relationships between them. 

Book of the day > Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings. Published by Abrams. “For more than 40 years, Sally Mann has made experimental, elegiac, and hauntingly beautiful photographs that explore the overarching themes of existence: memory, desire, death, the bonds of family, and nature’s magisterial indifference to human endeavor. What unites this broad body of work—portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and other studies—is that it is all 'bred of a place,' the American South. Mann, who is a native of Lexington, Virginia, uses her deep love of her homeland and her knowledge of its historically fraught heritage to ask powerful, provocative questions—about history, identity, race, and religion—that reverberate across geographic and national boundaries. Organized into five sections—Family, The Land, Last Measure, Abide with Me, and What Remains—and including many works not previously exhibited or published, Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings is a sweeping overview of Mann’s artistic achievements."

Book of the day > We Wanted A Revolution. Black Radical Women, 1965–85: New Perspectives. Published by Duke University Press. "The Brooklyn Museum published two volumes related to its groundbreaking exhibition, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, which focused on radical approaches to feminist thinking developed by women artists and activists of color. The first volume, a Sourcebook, was published in 2017 and focused on re-presenting key voices of the period by gathering a remarkable array of historical documents. Available in 2018, the second volume, New Perspectives, includes original essays and perspectives by Aruna D’Souza, Uri McMillan, Kellie Jones, and Lisa Jones that place the exhibition's works in both historical and contemporary contexts. New Perspectives also includes two new poems by Alice Walker. The book is generously illustrated with major objects from the exhibition, installation views, and other photographs. A checklist of the exhibition as well as an extensive bibliography complete the volume. Together with the Sourcebook, New Perspectives shares this important body of art by women of color, presents their voices, provides important commentary on that time and its unresolved issues, and offers extended documentation of the exhibition."