Book of the day > Karolin Klüppel: Kingdom of Girls. Published by Hatje Cantz. “The pictures in German photographer Karolin Klüppel’s (born 1985) new monograph, Kingdom of Girls, are distinguished by their contemplative aesthetic. The girls’ faces reveal the lifeworld and culture of the Khasi, an indigenous people in the Indian state of Meghalaya with a matrilineal social system: the youngest daughter is given preference in the order of succession. When she marries, her husband moves into her family’s home, and the children receive the mother’s name. Only the birth of a daughter guarantees the continuity of the clan. Between 2013 and 2015, the photographer spent a total of ten months in the Khasi village of Mawlynnong, where she captured these magical images.”

Book of the day > Love & Hate & Other Mysteries : Found Altered Snapshots from the Collection of Thierry Struvay. Published by August Editions. “A photograph is forever. Or is it? Culled from the vast vernacular photographic collection of Thierry Struvay, Love & Hate & Other Mysteries presents a funny, often poignant and truthful glimpse into the human condition. The unassuming and elegantly designed hardcover publication explodes once opened with 100 found black-and- white and color photographs that have been manually altered by scissors or pen or physically attacked in a fit of rage. Some deletions, such as a missing face in the shape of a heart or oval, were clearly intended for a locket. Others, however, contain angrily scratched-out heads and bodies or are simply torn in half. A third group feature manipulations more mysterious in nature: strange cut-outs that hint at a mix of emotions and motives. Together with a poetic introductory text by Glenn O'Brien, the photographs suggest a wide range of human drama, from affection to anger and much in between.”

Book of the day > Ecologies of Power: Countermapping the Logistical Landscapes and Military Geographies of the U.S. Department of Defense. Published by The MIT Press. “This book is not about war, nor is it a history of war. Avoiding the shock and awe of wartime images, it explores the contemporary spatial configurations of power camouflaged in the infrastructures, environments, and scales of military operations. Instead of wartime highs, this book starts with drawdown lows, when demobilization and decommissioning morph into realignment and prepositioning. It is in this transitional milieu that the full material magnitudes and geographic entanglements of contemporary militarism are laid bare. Through this perpetual cycle of build up and breakdown, the U.S. Department of Defense -- the single largest developer, landowner, equipment contractor, and energy consumer in the world -- has engineered a planetary assemblage of "operational environments" in which militarized, demilitarized, and non-militarized landscapes are increasingly inextricable.

In a series of critical cartographic essays, Pierre Bélanger and Alexander Arroyo trace this footprint far beyond the battlefield, countermapping the geographies of U.S. militarism across five of the most important and embattled operational environments: the ocean, the atmosphere, the highway, the city, and the desert. From the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia to the defense-contractor archipelago around Washington, D.C.; from the A01 Highway circling Afghanistan's high-altitude steppe to surveillance satellites pinging the planet from low-earth orbit; and from the vast cold chain conveying military perishables worldwide to the global constellation of military dumps, sinks, and scrapyards, the book unearths the logistical infrastructures and residual landscapes that render strategy spatial, militarism material, and power operational. In so doing, Bélanger and Arroyo reveal unseen ecologies of power at work in the making and unmaking of environments -- operational, built, and otherwise -- to come.”

Book of the day > See Red Women’s Workshop: Feminist Posters 1974-1990. Published by Four Corners Books. "A feminist silkscreen poster collective founded in London in 1974 by three former art students, the See Red Women’s Workshop grew out of a shared desire to combat sexist images of women and to create positive and challenging alternatives. Women from different backgrounds came together to make posters and calendars that tackled issues of sexuality, identity and oppression. With humor and bold, colorful graphics, See Red expressed the personal experiences of women as well as their role in wider struggles for change.
Written by See Red members, detailing the group’s history up until the closure of the workshop in 1990, and with a foreword by celebrated feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham, See Red Women’s Workshop features all of the collective’s original screenprints and posters. Confronting negative stereotypes, questioning the role of women in society, and promoting women’s self-determination, the power and energy of these images reflect an important and dynamic era of women’s liberation—with continued relevance for today.”

Book of the day > The Uses of Photography: Art, Politics, and the Reinvention of a Medium. Published by University of California Press and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. “The Uses of Photography examines a network of artists who were active in Southern California between the late 1960s and early 1980s and whose experiments with photography opened the medium to a profusion of new strategies and subjects. These artists introduced urgent social issues and themes of everyday life into the seemingly neutral territory of conceptual art, through photographic works that took on hybrid forms, from books and postcards to video and text-and-image installations. Tracing a crucial history of photoconceptual practice, The Uses of Photography focuses on an artistic community that formed in and around the young University of California San Diego, founded in 1960, and its visual arts department, founded in 1967. Artists such as Eleanor Antin, Allan Kaprow, Fred Lonidier, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, and Carrie Mae Weems employed photography and its expanded forms as a means to dismantle modernist autonomy, to contest notions of photographic truth, and to engage in political critique. The work of these artists shaped emergent accounts of postmodernism in the visual arts and their influence is felt throughout the global contemporary art world today.”

Book of the day > Make Art Not War: Political Protest Posters from the Twentieth Century. Published by Washington Mews Books. “Two of the most recognizable images of twentieth-century art are Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” and the rather modest mass-produced poster by an unassuming illustrator, Lorraine Schneider “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.”  From Picasso’s masterpiece to a humble piece of poster art, artists have used their talents to express dissent and to protest against injustice and immorality. 

As the face of many political movements, posters are essential for fueling recruitment, spreading propaganda, and sustaining morale.  Disseminated by governments, political parties, labor unions and other organizations, political posters transcend time and span the entire spectrum of political affiliations and philosophies. 

Drawing on the celebrated collection in the Tamiment Library’s Poster and Broadside Collection at New York University, Ralph Young has compiled an extraordinarily visceral collection of posters that represent the progressive protest movements of the twentieth Century:  labor, civil rights, the Vietnam War, LGBT rights, feminism and other minority rights.   

Make Art Not War can be enjoyed on aesthetic grounds alone, and also offers fascinating and revealing insights into twentieth century cultural, social and political history.”

Join us tomorrow for our launch event and one-day installation celebrating > Tony Manzella – True Image. Published by Verb Editions. Please join us tomorrow (Saturday,  February 4th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM) as we welcome our longtime friend Tony Manzella to celebrate his hot-off-the-web-press True Image - a thirty-two page tabloid format collection of color photographs. Designed by David Blankenship for Because, and published by Verb Editions, True Image is a striking representation of our unseen surroundings that excavates local landscapes.
 For the event Los Angeles-based audio / video artist Tom Hall will create an installation featuring a unique generative algorithm that translates True Image’s complete image set into a hardware synthesis ambient soundtrack. @tonymanzilla @tomhallsonics

Book of the day > All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party. Published by Minor Matters. In 1966 Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, two law students at Laney College in Oakland, California, launched The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Officially active for less than twenty years (1966–1982), the Panthers indelibly pierced the public consciousness, and for many its legacy remains controversial—witness the virulent responses to Beyonce Knowles’ 2016 Super Bowl performance that included an homage to the Panthers through dancers in berets and black leather outfits. That visual—gun-toting, well-dressed black men with berets and gun-toting, well-dressed women with Afros—is what most of mainstream America, if they know anything at all, think of with regard to the Black Panther Party.

This book, All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party, evolved from correspondence and conversation with a select list of contemporary black artists who answered the call and submitted work that was from their perspective related to the Party. They include emerging and internationally acclaimed practitioners from around the nation, women and men spanning thirty to seventy years of age.

At a time when the United States feels anything but, this book demonstrates art’s ability to cut through rhetoric, and communicate varying perspectives. The goal of this volume is not so much to add to the study of the Black Panther Party’s history—though it clearly highlights the persistence of its sophisticated visual communication—but to look to its present influence among a variety of significant cultural contributors, and to acknowledge what could still be achieved to the benefit of American society as outlined in their Ten Point program fifty years ago. @minormattersbooks

On behalf of our friends at Magnum Photos > Los Angeles: Bookmaking Masterclass with Michael Christopher Brown and Ramon Pez.  A two-day master class on developing and publishing photo books. Michael Christopher Brown’s amazing book LIBYAN SUGAR is a favorite of ours here at Arcana – this is a great opportunity. “Magnum Photos is excited to announce a bookmaking master class in Los Angeles, taking place on Friday 24 & Saturday 25 February 2017. The event is a two-day workshop exploring the process of developing and publishing photo books – starting from the very first stages of editing a project into a book from concept, design and printing – as well as looking at the ins and outs of self publishing versus working with an established publisher.  Led by Magnum photographer Michael Christopher Brown and renowned art director Ramon Pez, the workshop will include invaluable inspiration and practical advice for early and mid-career photographers – photographers that are thinking about transitioning their projects into book format or those that are seeking feedback on their work in general and are interested in learning more about the bookmaking process. The first day will consist of inspirational lectures from both speakers, as they outline how they created Michael Christopher Brown’s award-winning book, Libyan Sugar, together. The second half of that day will see the group split in two for lengthy group critiques in which participants will be able to receive constructive advice on their projects. This will continue into the second day and the entire group will also have the opportunity to attend LA’s Art Book Fair together on the first evening. The workshop is strictly limited to 24 participants, to create a social yet intensive atmosphere in which everyone will get to know each other and share experiences. Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Please visit https://www.magnumphotos.com/events/ for application details. @michaelchristopherbrown @magnumphotos

Book of the day is back for 2017. Book of the day > This is a Calendar with Images of Jumping Cats: By Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek. Published by Verlag fur Moderne Kunst. " During his travels in recent years, photographer Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek made a remarkable discovery: It is astonishing how swiftly otherwise unspectacular house cats take off into the air if they think no one is watching them. His images document the sheer acrobatic talent of flying cats in the form of an eternal calendar. " Please note: the word "calendar" is used loosely by the publishers - each page has a month, but the days are not indicated. @verlag_fuer_moderne_kunst