Book of the Day Posted Jun 22, 2022

Book of the Day > Wendy Red Star: Delegation

● Purchase ● Delegation is the first comprehensive monograph by Apsáalooke/Crow artist Wendy Red Star, whose photography recasts historical narratives with wit, candor, and a feminist, Indigenous perspective. Red Star centers Native American life and material culture through imaginative self-portraiture, vivid collages, archival interventions, and site-specific installations. Whether referencing nineteenth-century Crow leaders or 1980s pulp fiction, museum collections or family pictures, she constantly questions the role of the photographer in shaping Indigenous representation. Including a dynamic array of Red Star’s lens-based works from 2006 to the present, and a range of essays, stories, and poems, Delegation is a spirited testament to an influential artist’s singular vision.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 17, 2022

Book of the Day > Dr. Woo: Everything is Permanent

● Purchase ● Everthing is Permanent features a visual compilation of the evolution of Woo’s intricate single-needle designs and most beloved pieces. A special introduction is given by Zoe Kravitz and Paul Mittleman, and art direction is led by Brian Roettinger of Perron-Roettinger. “The book means a lot to me- it’s a collection of a lot of different drawings and tattoos that represent my creative path to where I am now,” said Dr. Woo. “It’s just a small glimpse into the last decade or so, but hopefully we can build in different volumes and add more stories and more ideas to inspire others who look through them”
Book of the Day Posted Jun 15, 2022

Book of the Day > Gordon Parks: Pittsburgh Grease Plant, 1944/46

● Purchase ● Class, race and labor in a Pittsburgh plant: a rarely seen series by Gordon Parks
 
By 1944, Gordon Parks had established himself as a photographer who freely navigated the fields of press and commercial photography, with an unparalleled humanist perspective. That year, Roy Stryker—the former Farm Security Administration official who was now heading the public relations department for the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)—commissioned Parks to travel to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to document the Penola, Inc. Grease Plant.
 
Employing his signature style, Parks spent two years chronicling the plant’s industry—critical to Pittsburgh’s history and character—by photographing its workers. The resulting photographs, dramatically staged and lit and striking in their composition, showed the range of activities engaged in by Black and white workers, divided as they were by roles, race and class. The images were used as marketing materials and made available to local and national newspapers, as well as corporate magazines and newsletters. However, they served as much more than documentation of industry, enduring as an exploration of labor and its social and economic ramifications in World War II America by one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
 
Featuring more than 100 photographs, many previously unpublished, this is the first book to focus exclusively on Parks’ photographs for the Standard Oil Company, illuminating an important chapter in his career prior to his landmark career as a staff photographer for Life.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 10, 2022

Book of the Day > Rose Tarlow: Three Houses

● Purchase ● Inspired by memories of her beloved California childhood home Windrift, lost in a fire in 1970, renowned interior designer Rose Tarlow showcases her three current family homes in this sumptuous volume, not only preserving treasured memories for her own family but also providing a masterclass in interior design for enthusiasts and professionals alike. Often referred to as “the decorator’s decorator,” Tarlow’s distinctive style has won her numerous international accolades, and her own houses are the embodiment of her thriving design philosophy, exuding the charming eccentricity and uncompromising quality that truly make a house a home. Featuring her Santa Barbara getaway, her spectacular LA mansion, and her magical Provençal retreat, Rose Tarlow: Three Houses presents her own personal archive, a treasure trove of precious memories and design inspiration for future generations, never to be lost again.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 09, 2022

Book of the Day > Nick Cave: Forothermore

● Purchase ● With a wealth of images and commentary, this is the essential career survey of Cave's socially responsive art
 
The definitive volume on the ever-evolving and shape-shifting work of the Chicago-based artist, Nick Cave: Forothermore highlights the way Cave’s practice has shifted and continues to shift in response to our history and current moment of cultural crisis. Including several new, never-before-seen works, the book shows an artist at the height of his power.
 
Addressing topics ranging from art history to social justice, Nick Cave: Forothermore includes essays from Naomi Beckwith, Romi Crawford, Antwaun Sargent, Malik Gaines, Krista Thompson and Meida Teresa McNeal. Punctuating these contributions are interviews with the artist exploring his life, work and teaching practice, as well as a roundtable discussion between Cave and dancer Damita Jo Freeman, musician Nona Hendryx and publisher Linda Johnson Rice on Cave's art and influences, as well as pivotal cultural phenomena from Soul Train to Ebony magazine. Nick Cave: Forothermore reveals the way art, music, fashion and performance can help us envision a more just future.
Miscellany Posted Jun 09, 2022

Closing Early Thursday 6/16!

We will be closing at 5:00 PM on Thursday, June 16th for a private event at the store. 

Thanks for your understanding!

 

 

Book of the Day Posted Jun 07, 2022

Book of the Day > The Cobrasnake: Y2Ks Archive

● Purchase ● A love letter to a time before Instagram and the legendary party scenes of the 2000s that brought together the new millennium’s rising stars of pop culture.
 
Under the moniker the Cobrasnake, the photographer Mark Hunter captured the party scenes of Los Angeles and New York during the hipster-glam heyday of the 2000s—and in doing so defined the look of a generation. Armed with just a Polaroid and a primitive website, Cobrasnake captured pioneers of youth culture from Kanye West and Steve Aoki to Jeremy Scott, Katy Perry, and Virgil Abloh—icons of the indie pop world in the making. Intimately connected with the people around him and keyed-in to the edgier fringes of the fashion, music, and art worlds, Hunter photographed influencers before they were influencers, in the wild and at play from the streets of LA to NYC and beyond. Collected here for the first time are more than three hundred of Cobrasnake’s favorite images alongside ephemera, from concert tickets and backstage passes to outtakes and unseen photographs from his many adventures. These photographs are records of the last generation of partiers to predate the livestreaming of culture afforded by today’s social media—capturing the energy and vibrancy of a time before Instagram.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 03, 2022

Book of the Day > Vanessa Winship: Snow

● Purchase ● In Snow, Vanessa Winship’s latest monograph, we see that what’s not entirely comprehended is far more compelling than what is well understood. Perhaps that’s a truism, but it’s one that is rejuvenated and refreshed by each new and peculiar telling. This book is just such a revelation.
 
The origins of Snow lie in a commission (this from an artist who very rarely works on assignment, although Winship says she often approaches things “as if I have somehow been sent by someone”), but the photographer’s interest in what she found soon eclipsed anything that could properly be thought of as a “story.” So, she made repeated trips to a particular landscape – and, notably, a particular season – in order to fathom what it was that had disconcerted her in the initial making of these photographs.
 
Winship is well known and highly regarded for her intimate portraits, but in Snow we experience a noticeable physical distance between the photographer and her subjects. What little the viewer can possibly grasp onto is the subtle repetition of the humblest elements of the earth. Collectively, the pictures come to embody the artist’s struggle to connect and to make sense of this place while ultimately acknowledging that she, like us all, is nothing but a stranger in this world.
 
This estrangement is echoed in a piece of fiction – by the poet and novelist Jem Poster – that’s woven through Snow. It tells of a female portrait photographer and her recalcitrant subject. But this character is not Winship, and the sitter is not someone in a Winship photograph. Poster’s is a fiction based on an imagistic construct – another beguiling layer in a complicated book that seeks always to expose the slipperiness of narrative and to destabilize easy readings.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 02, 2022

Book of the Day > *SIGNED​* Peter Fetterman: The Power of Photography

● Purchase ● The power of photography lies in its ability to ignite emotions across barriers of language and culture. This selection of iconic images, compiled by pioneering collector and gallerist Peter Fetterman, celebrates the photograph’s unique capacity for sensibility.
 
Peter has been championing the photographic arts for over 30 years. He runs what is arguably the most important commercial photography gallery in the world. During the long months of lockdown, Peter ‘exhibited’ one photograph per day, accompanied by inspirational text, quotes and poetry. This digital collection struck a chord with followers from around the world. The Power of Photography presents 120 outstanding images from the series, along with Peter’s insightful words.
 
This carefully curated selection offers an inspiring overview of the medium while paying homage to masters of the art. From the bizarre Boschian fantasies of Melvin Sokolsky to the haunting humanity of Ansel Adams’s family portraits; from Miho Kajioka’s interpretation of traditional Japanese aesthetics of to the joyful everyday scenes of Evelyn Hofer; from rare interior shots by famed nude photographer Ruth Bernhard to Bruce Davidson’s wistful depiction of young men playing ballgames on a street; this book gathers some of the most unique and heartening photographs from the 20th century. Each image is a time capsule, offering us a glimpse into days gone past. Yet each photograph also speaks of tranquility, peace, and hope for the future.
Events Posted Jun 01, 2022

Book Signing at Arcana 6/11/22 > Arthur Grace: Communism(s): A Cold War Album

PLEASE JOIN US FOR A BOOK SIGNING ON SATURDAY, JUNE 11TH, 4:00 - 6:00!
 
ARTHUR GRACE: COMMUNISM(S):  A COLD WAR ALBUM

 

For most people in the West, the realities of life behind the Iron Curtain have faded into caricatures of police state repression and bread lines. With the world seemingly again divided between democracies and authoritarian regimes, it is essential that we understand the reality of life in the Soviet Bloc. noted American photojournalist Arthur Grace was uniquely placed to provide that context.

 

During the 1970s and 1980s Grace traveled extensively behind the Iron Curtain, working primarily for news magazines. One of only a small corps of Western photographers with ongoing access, he was able to delve into the most ordinary corners of people’s daily lives, while also covering significant events. Many of the photographs in this remarkable book are effectively psychological portraits that leave the viewer with a sense of the gamut of emotions in that era.

 

Illustrated with over one hundred and twenty black-and-white images - nearly all previously unpublished, Communism(s) gives an unprecedented glimpse behind the veil of a not-so-distant time filled with harsh realities unseen by nearly all but those that lived through it. Shot in the USSR, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and the German Democratic Republic, here are portraits of factory workers, farmers, churchgoers, vacationers and loitering teens juxtaposed with the GDR’s imposing Social Realist-designed apartment blocks, annual May Day Parades, Poland’s Solidarity movement (and the subsequent imposition of martial law) and the vastness of Moscow’s Red Square.

 

Beautifully printed in Italy by publisher Damiani Editore, Communism(s) was co-edited by Arthur Grace, Arcana's own Lee Kaplan, and Deadbeat Club Press' Clint Woodside, who also contributed the book's striking design. Read some of its impressive advance reviews from The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Sunday London Times, and join us Saturday, June 11th to acquire your own copy of this timely document signed by photographer Arthur Grace

 

If you cannot attend, place an order here for your very own copy of Communism(s) signed by Arthur Grace to be picked up at the store or shipped to you after the event.
● Purchase ● 

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