ANTHONY HERNANDEZ + TORBJØRN RØDLAND:
MACK BOOKS IN L.A. AT ARCANA THIS THURSDAY

PLEASE JOIN US FROM 6-8:00 PM THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13th  FOR REFRESHMENTS AND PRE-HOLIDAY CONSUMERISM AS WE WELCOME TWO PHOTOGRAPHIC TITANS AND CELEBRATE THEIR HOT-OFF-THE-PRESSES NEW RELEASES!
 

Anthony Hernandez: Rodeo Drive, 1984

Rodeo Drive, 1984 is Anthony Hernandez' series of forty-one photographic images of shoppers on Beverly Hills’ infamous commercial thoroughfare. His subjects appear to be caught unaware, glancing up as they walk, or daydreaming as they wait to be served in its landscape of tony shops and restaurants.  Hernandez poses as a dispassionate observer, recording the big hair, wide shoulders and cinched waists of the 1980s in sunlit photographs.

He does not simply document the urban experience, but reveals in his images the complexity of social spaces, implying economic disparity and racial divide. Layers of socio-economic tension are exposed on the street in an overt symbol of civic success; as Lewis Baltz observes, “these are the victors...enjoying the spoils of their victory on Rodeo Drive”. Working in the 1970s, Hernandez and his contemporaries (including Lewis Baltz and Terry Wild) were interested in photographing the social landscape of Los Angeles. His work was included in the landmark exhibition The Crowded Vacancy at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon) in 1971, which introduced to the public a new type of American landscape photography - four years prior to New Topographics.

This sumptuous new MACK Books release presents in print for the first time Anthony Hernandez' wry assessment of Reagan-era consumerism.
 

Torbjørn Rødland: Vanilla Partner

Torbjørn Rødland's photography is direct but idiosyncratic; pushing at the boundaries of aesthetic and social norms. His fifth book, Vanilla Partner, continues in this vein, combining images of fetishized isolation in a layout that rejects the linear structure of thematic photography books.

Rødland's practice navigates through the problematic and seemingly unchanging heart of popular photography. Accepting neither the humanist realism of most photographic portraiture nor the postmodern role-play, Vanilla Partner explores the cultural complexities and archaic foundation of contemporary image-making. Reconstructed scenes of ultra-soft BDSM read like twisted metaphors for photography’s ability to freeze or capture. The book title, dripping in innuendo, also poses a question about the ambiguity of the relationship between the artist and his medium. Is Rødland acknowledging the medium’s straight foundation or does he see himself dominated by it? Many of the images also have explicit political references, often linked to the 1980 US Presidential election.

Vanilla Partner brings together works made in Oslo, Tokyo, Beijing and Rødland’s current home, Los Angeles. Only just released, it has already appeared on several "Best of" photography books lists for 2012!

101 ESSENTIAL ROCK RECORDS:
THE GOLDEN AGE OF VINYL FROMTHE BEATLES TO THE SEX PISTOLS

by JEFF GOLD
 

The book shines a light on one hundred and one rock albums - from the well known to the obscure - that changed music forever. From The Beatles' 1963 UK debut Please Please Me through the Sex Pistols' 1977 classic Never Mind The Bollocks, its focus is vinyl’s “Golden Age”; beginning with the explosion of album sales brought on by Beatlemania, and ending in the late seventies with the advent of Sony’s Walkman - and the cassette overtaking the LP as the dominant music format.

Already featured in the pages of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and SPIN, this awesome compendium of rock 'n' roll scholarship is a must-have for any music fan, and the perfect holiday gift. Come celebrate with our longtime friend (and Lee's colleague at Rhino Records oh-so-many years ago) Jeff Gold, contributor Gene Sculatti, guest DJ Zach Cowie (spinning albums featured in the book) and any number of familiar faces this Sunday!

STEVE SCHAPIRO: THEN AND NOW

Please join us on Sunday, December 2nd between 5:00 and 7:00 PM for a book signing with observer, aesthete, chronicler, and fine photographer Scott Schuman for his latest book, THE SARTORIALIST: CLOSER.

Schuman's blog thesartorialist.com remains one of the most-read in the fashion world and continues to grow in popularity as Scott travels further and more widely. His second book, THE SARTORIALIST: CLOSER emcompasses the diverse style and visual attitude of people as far afield as Japan, Korea, London, Milan, New York, Paris, and beyond.

In it Mr.Schuman looks deeper and with great breadth at human style, and the way it is expressed across the world. Always reacting to an inspirational moment, the images in his new book continue to reflect Scott's unique sensibility and vision.
 

RICHARD MISRACH:
Petrochemical America
 

Petrochemical America features Richard Misrach’s haunting photographic record of Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor, accompanied by landscape architect Kate Orff’s Ecological Atlas - a series of “throughlines”; speculative drawings developed through research and mapping of data from the region. Their joint effort depicts and unpacks the complex cultural, physical, and economic ecologies along one hundred and fifty miles of the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, an area of intense chemical production that first garnered public attention as "Cancer Alley" when unusual occurrences of cancer were discovered in the region. This collaboration has resulted in an unprecedented, multilayered document presenting a unique narrative of visual information. Petrochemical America offers in-depth analysis of the causes of decades of environmental abuse along the largest river system in North America. Even more critically, the project offers an extensively researched guidebook to the way in which the petrochemical industry has permeated every facet of contemporary life. What is revealed over the course of the book is that this area - although complicated by its own regional histories and particularities - may well be an apt metaphor for the global impact of petrochemicals on the human landscape as a whole.

Richard Misrach has a long-standing personal connection with New Orleans and the surrounding region. Destroy This Memory, his previous Aperture monograph, is a record of the graffiti left on houses and cars in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that won the award for Best Photobook of the Year 2011 at PhotoEspaña. Another standout success was his 2007 large-format On the Beach, a sublime visual meditation on the relationship between humankind and the environment, which is as spectacular as it is unsettling. Aperture has also published Violent Legacies and Golden Gate, which has been re-released in 2012 on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the iconic bridge.

 

AMERICA 101: Photographs by Arthur Grace

An award-winning photojournalist and social documentarian, Arthur Grace has traveled globally and to every region of America on assignment for major news organizations as well as for his own personal projects since the early 1970s. In America 101, Grace draws one hundred and one pictures from his rich personal archive of the United States to assemble a visual crash course on what defines and represents us as Americans.

Organized into thematic chapters, Grace’s book subjectively and insightfully plumbs America’s cultural DNA. Fusing the style and the physical proximity of a photojournalist with the conceptual distance and healthy skepticism of an artist, his pictures speak to a set of themes that resonate deeply with the American experience over the past half century, revealing the simultaneously familiar and curious rituals of American life.

As High Museum of Art Curator of Photography Brett Abbott states in his cogent introductory essay, Grace’s study “represents the yin and yang of America... In Grace’s America, the ordinary meets the absurd, veneration and irreverence comingle in unexpected and delightfully humorous ways, a lighthearted joie de vivre soothes a violent vein, and the sanctity of the individual competes with our continual drive toward collective direction. Indeed, what is perhaps so prescient about Grace’s condensation of the past is how much it resembles the basic structure of our present.”

ANNE MENKE: SEE THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL

book signing and exhibition

TUESDAY OCTOBER 30th
5:00 - 7:00 PM
 

ANNE MENKE has traveled the world on assignment for the likes of Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Conde Nast Traveler - usually in search of the perfect environment to shoot a fashion spread. But she has discovered that these environments themselves are the origins of much of the fashion we see on the runways today and has compiled an incredible record of people and places with that in mind. Texts by colleague luminaries Tommy Hilfiger, Julia Chaplin and Andrew Niccol, in addition to the author's own introduction explain where fashion meets culture in ethnic populations in Latin America, Europe, Asia and North America, in this unique, sensitive, and insightful work that itself is the perfect intersection of art and fashion photography. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy (or two) of See the World Beautiful, please write or call us in advance.

THE EAKINS PRESS, RAM AND ARCANA: BOOKS ON THE ARTS INVITE YOU TO JOIN US FOR

MAGICIANS & CHARLATANS +
A CELEBRATION OF THE EAKINS PRESS FOUNDATION
WITH JED PERL AND PETER KAYAFAS

BOOK LAUNCH + DISCUSSION
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21st   6-8:00 PM

Please join Jed Perl - the art critic at The New Republic who poet John Ashbery has called “an almost solitary, essential voice” - as he discusses the state of the art world and the future of fine publishing this coming Sunday with Peter Kayafas, director of the Eakins Press Foundation. Perl’s new book, Magicians & Charlatans, is the latest publication of the Eakins Press, which since 1966 has been producing legendary art and photography books; including Lee Friedlander’s The American Monument, Walker Evans' Message from the Interior, and Lincoln Kirstein’s Elie Nadelman. In Magicians and Charlatans, Perl writes with great urgency about the art scene of the past decade, exploring new museums and galleries and offering highly controversial critiques of the painter Gerhard Richter, art dealer Leo Castelli, and the Museum of Modern Art. Perl and Kayafas will discuss the ever growing need for independent voices - both in the art world and the publishing world. Mr. Perl will be signing copies of his new work, and Arcana: Books on the Arts will present a special exhibition of rare and out-of-print Eakins Press books and rarities; many of which will be available for sale. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy of Magicians and Charlatans, please write or call us in advance to reserve one .

ELISABETH SUNDAY AND HER NEW BOOK GRACE
PUBLISHED BY NAZRAELI PRESS


"For twenty-six years, Elisabeth Sunday has found her muse in Africa: a place of origins, devastating beauty, great troubles and unyielding expressions of life. She has traveled alone and lived among various original peoples who amidst a changing world, have clung tenaciously to traditional ways of life. From the hunter-gatherers dwelling in the primeval forests of the Congo Basin, to the nomadic tribes inhabiting the vast stretches of the Sahara Desert, Sunday's photographs reveal an interplay of invisible forces that connect her subjects with the world of nature. Utilizing a flexible mirror of her own design, Sunday photographs reflections that blend and dissolve the boundaries between her figures and their environment. Sunday's images express an intimacy with a corresponding strength derived from that relationship. She writes: 'Mirror photography is much more than photographing a reflection, it produces a visual alchemy that combines the physical world with that of the great mystery….and captures some element that remains hidden in straight photography.' "

MS. SUNDAY'S WORK FROM THIS SERIES WILL BE ON DISPLAY AT THE FABULOUS PETER FETTERMAN GALLERY FROM SEPTEMBER 22ND - DECEMBER 6TH | PETERFETTERMAN.COM