Book of the day > Judith Stenneken: Illuminate Naturally In Darkness. Self-Published. Text by Robert Montgomery. “A multi-path photobook -- every page is a fold-out page. A visual poem on life's transitory nature. For this project I use metaphors of the journey, the voyager and transitory spaces (for instance hotel rooms and airplanes) to describe transitions as the sole constant in life. The concepts of departure and arrival dissolve as the traveler keeps moving - a gravity to constant change. The voyager's home becomes the hotel room and the airplane. Spaces to pause but never to dwell.

The images in this photo book refuse to be placed in time or space. They represent moods rather than facts. This book works more like a poem that wants to be re-visited over time. And like a good poem it implies multiple ways to read and interpret it, in this case because of the unique physical structure of the book. In comparison to most photobooks, where the story is predefined by the author (due to a singular sequence), Illuminate Naturally… challenges you to explore its multiple beginnings, middles and ends in order to find your own story in it. You essentially become the co-author within the environment that I have established.” 

Book of the day > Bowie Unseen: Portraits of an Artist as a Young Man by Gerald Fearnley. Published by ACC Editions. " In 1967, a 20-year-old David Jones decided to change his name to avoid confusion with the lead singer of the Monkees. He decided on 'Bowie'. By this time, Jones had been playing music for five years, appearing in and out of various bands, singing rock and roll at local youth gatherings, any pub that would have him and even a few weddings. Jones joined the band the Konrads, but then soon left them for the King Bees. After a few more stop and starts, Jones became Bowie and met Derek 'Dek' Fearnley.

David Bowie enlisted Fearnley to help record an album. Reportedly learning by studying the Observer Book of Music, the two young musicians practiced, wrote and hung-out at the home of Fearnley's brother, Gerald. Gerald Fearnley was a working photographer in 1967. "I don't remember how it happened, but I was enlisted to take photographs of David for the cover. I was probably the only person he knew with a studio and a camera."

When David Bowie by David Bowie was released on June 1, 1967 - the same day as The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - little if anything happened. Nothing charted and the band parted ways.

Now - fifty years since the original photo session and release of David Bowie's debut album - the unseen photos of Gerald Fearnley are presented here for the first time. These whimsical, youthful images capture the artist as a young man only a few years before he'd transform himself into Ziggy Stardust and launch a career that would become one of the most successful and influential in the history of modern music.

But at that time, he was just starting out - creating his first persona; David Bowie."

Book of the day > John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonné Volume Four: 1994–2004. Published by Yale University Press @yalebooks. "The fourth volume of the John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonné comprises approximately 370 works that represent the activity of this iconic conceptual artist between 1994 and 2004. Here, John Baldessari continues to interrogate the possibilities of photographic appropriation, further developing his unique strategies for the production of meaning and narrative within the picture frame. Included in this crucial volume is the landmark Goya series, which shows the artist revisiting his characteristic photo-text pieces established early in his career. In the serial trio Overlap, Intersection,and Junction, produced between 2000 and 2002, Baldessari riffs on the notion of pictorial space, with each series building on the preceding one. Along with a full chronology, an essay contributed by the eminent critic Robert Storr closely examines a selection of these works, articulating their place within the evolution of the artist’s career and their much broader historical climate." Edited by Patrick Pardo and Robert Dean; With an essay by Robert Storr.

Book of the day > René Burri: Mouvement. Published by Steidl @steidlverlag  Foreword by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Phillip Keel. "Over the course of a half-century, the photographs of René Burri (1933–2014) have tracked the turning points, triumphs and crises of the twentieth century. Whether it was the 15-year-old Burri's portrait of Winston Churchill or his later portrayals of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon, Anwar as-Sadat or Muammar al-Gaddafi, all have lodged themselves in the collective consciousness. Removed from sensationalism yet no less striking are Burri's images of the theater of war, of people suffering in poverty and calamity. And as if to hold such horrors in check, Burri turned his lens with equal intensity to the spheres of beauty and creativity—to the landscapes of Latin America, to great artists such as Picasso and Maria Callas, and to luminaries of architecture such as Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer. This two-volume collection offers an extensive compilation of images from the eminent photojournalist." #artbook 

Book of the day > Collecting Colour by Narayan Khandekar. Published by Artez Press. "In this book Narayan Khandekar, director of the Straus Center, takes us on a tour of the amazing universe of the Forbes Pigment Collection, which at present is kept in the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at Harvard University. This collection contains over three thousand natural and synthetic colouring agents. Khandekar shows the origins of the pigments and their cultural uses. At the same time, he demonstrates that pigments are essential building blocks of the unique nature of a work of art. Explore the unique collection through the essay and the many images in this book. Printed with high pigment ink."

Adding our voice to the chorus of sadness. 

Book of the day > Viviane Sassen - Roxane II. Published by Oodee @oodeebooks. "In Roxane II, Viviane Sassen and her muse Roxane continue writing their shared visual journal. The dynamic gallery of poses and moods touches notes at times sensual, at times tender. Images are equally about the performances in front of and behind the camera: Sassen’s presence is perceived through her shadow and made tangible by scraps of paper that bear the imprint of her breasts. This is a mutual portrait, an exchange in which the artist’s and model’s individualities blur, leaving traces on each other. As Maria Barnas writes in the poem introducing the images: 'When I take a glance at our selves I hold my breath and see us expand in colours and clouds bursting from a mouth. Are they yours or mine?'" #oodeebooks #vivianesassen

Book of the day > Looking for Lenin. Photographs by Niels Ackermann. Published by FUEL. Edited by Damon Murray, Stephen Sorrell. Text by Sébastien Gobert, Myroslava Hartmond. "The eerie beauty of Ukraine’s Lenin statues, toppled in the name of decommunization. In the process of decommunization, Ukraine has toppled all its Lenin monuments. The authors have hunted down and photographed these banned Soviet statues, revealing their inglorious fate. As Russia celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Ukraine struggles to achieve complete decommunization. Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of this process is the phenomenon of Leninopad (Lenin-fall)—the toppling of Lenin statues. In 2015 the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation banning these monuments as symbols of the obsolete Soviet regime. From an original population of 5500 in 1991, today not a single Lenin statue remains standing in Ukraine. Photographer Niels Ackermann and journalist Sébastien Gobert, both based in Kyiv, have scoured the country in search of the remains of these toppled figures. They found them in the most unlikely of places: Lenin inhabits gardens, scrap yards and store rooms. He has fallen on hard times—cut into pieces; daubed with paint in the colors of the Ukrainian flag; transformed into a Cossack or Darth Vader—but despite these attempts to reduce their status, the statues retain a sinister quality, resisting all efforts to separate them from their history. These compelling images are combined with witness testimonies to form a unique insight, revealing how Ukrainians perceive their country, and how they are grappling with the legacy of their Soviet past to conceive a new vision of the future." #artbook

Book of the day > Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day. Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. “America’s representative at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Bradford has radically renewed abstract art. Mark Bradford’s exhibition for the US Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, titled Tomorrow Is Another Day, is born out of the artist’s longtime commitment to the inherently social nature of the material world. For Bradford, abstraction is not opposed to content; it embodies it. Finding materials for his paintings in the hair salon, Home Depot and the streets of Los Angeles, Bradford renews the traditions of abstract painting, demonstrating that freedom from socially prescribed representation is profoundly meaningful in the hands of a black artist. Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day is not only a catalog for Bradford’s pavilion project; it is a different kind of book, a substantial publication that blends the biographical with the historical and political. Essays from outside the art world—by Anita Hill, Peter James Hudson, W.E.B. Du Bois and Zadie Smith—narrate a series of interwoven stories about Reconstruction, civil rights and the vulnerable body in urban space, fleshed out with vivid archival photographs and documents. The book also includes significant new texts from curator Katy Siegel and art historian Sarah Lewis, as well as a revealing interview with Bradford, offering a new understanding of the work of one of today’s most influential contemporary artists.” 

Book of the day > Hortus Sanitatis: The Gucci Book by Derek Ridgers. Gold foiled hardcover with gold edged pages. Comes with Gucci poison red cotton pouch. Exclusive to us on the West Coast! Limited edition; first come, first served; one per person, please! "Hortus Sanitatis (Latin for ‘The Garden of Health’). Shot by Derek Ridgers, the book combines colour fashion photography of the Gucci pre-fall 2017 collection with illustrations of tigers and snakes and black and white photographs of library shelves and an apothecary. It takes its name from the first natural history encyclopedia, which was published in Mainz, Germany, in 1485. Shot in Rome in historical spaces that have remained untouched for centuries, the photographs offer a window into lost worlds. The locations are: Antica Spezieria di Santa Maria della Scala, an old apothecary, Biblioteca Angelica, a beautiful library filled with rare, ancient manuscripts, and Antica Libreria Cascianelli, a sprawling archive of books and pieces of art." @idea.ltd @gucci @derekridgers