Book of the Day Posted Jan 19, 2022

Book of the Day > Nadine Ijewere: Our Own Selves

● Purchase ● A celebration of identity and individual human beauty, this vibrant monograph is the first book dedicated to fashion photographer Nadine Ijewere—the first Black woman photographer to land a cover of Vogue in the magazine’s 125-year history.
 
Dazzling color, dreamlike backgrounds, and a fierce gaze are the hallmarks of Ijewere’s work. But most important to the London photographer is subversion of traditional concepts of beauty. In fashion work, editorials, advertisements, and film stills, Ijewere draws not only on her roots in Nigeria and Jamaica, but also on her own experiences as a young Black woman in South East London whose skin color, hair, and body type were nowhere to be found in the pages of magazines. Ijewere’s vibrantly colored, brilliantly staged pictures often focus on themes of identity and diversity, and feature nontraditional subjects that celebrate the uniqueness of disparate cultures. This first monograph includes images from her series of Jamaicans across different generations; photographs of young people defying gender norms on the streets of Lagos; along with editorial work she has created for Vogue, and fashion shoots for Stella McCartney, Dior, Gap, Hermes, and Valentino. At the vanguard of a history-changing artistic movement, Ijewere’s remarkable career has made her one of the most sought-after fashion photographers working today.
Book of the Day Posted Jan 18, 2022

Book of the Day > Rinko Kawauchi: Illuminance: The Tenth Anniversary Edition

● Purchase ● Ten years after publishing Illuminance in 2011, Aperture is delighted to bring this beloved book back into print, retaining Rinko Kawauchi’s original sequence and signature melding of keenly observed gestures, quotidian detail, and a finely honed palette.
 
On the book’s original release, Alec Soth declared Illuminance “an exquisitely produced monograph [that] should make Rinko a household name.” An expanded edition with additional texts by curator David Chandler; philosopher Masatake Shinohara; and Aperture’s creative director, Lesley A. Martin, this reissue contributes new context to and perspective on Kawauchi’s influential work. Extraordinarily poetic, brimming with imagination and sensibility, and following international acclaim, this exquisite ten-year anniversary edition will entice lovers of photography once again.
Book of the Day Posted Jan 15, 2022

Book of the Day > Jake Reinhart: Laurel Mountain Laurel

● Purchase ● Laurel Mountain Laurel: the title is a sort of rough palindrome, appropriate for Jake Reinhart’s vision, in which time is reflected upon itself and the end is also the beginning (and is also the end). The transient and the enduring are revealed to be one and the same.
 
These photographs – somehow both tender and unsparing – were made in Southwestern Pennsylvania, in the Youghiogheny region. One surviving translation has it that “Yough” means four, and “henné” means stream. “I’ve been along those four streams, and I’ve seen how they come together;” Reinhart says, “losing their specificity yet retaining what is inherent to each – creating something larger and joining places and people that would otherwise appear disjointed and separate.”
 
As for the streams, so for the images in Laurel Mountain Laurel: individual pictures exist essentially, while together they bind both space and time – the eternal and the geological brought into a semblance of coherence with the fragile and the human. We see that, despite our best efforts to erase and exploit, the land will ultimately have its own way, and on its own schedule.
Book of the Day Posted Jan 14, 2022

Book of the Day > Standing On The Corner Art Ensemble & Dozie Kanu: Function

● Purchase ● A postcard book that serves as an accompaniment to Standing On The Corner Art Ensemble's new movie "Function: An Exhibition-Index Film" made in collaboration with the Studio Museum Harlem and sculptor Dozie Kanu. The piece is part film essay, part performance film and mediates upon time, memory, forgetfulness, sculpture, anti-prophetics and the time travel function of images -- both still and moving -- how they depict the past and simultaneously reveal conditions of the future. The book is symbolic of that idea; stills from the film have been converted to postcards meant to physically travel time and space.
Book of the Day Posted Jan 13, 2022

Book of the Day > Sadie Barnette: Legacy and Legend

● Purchase ● Sadie Barnette’s celebratory installations explore collective and familial histories in glittering, speculative spaces
 
Oakland-based multimedia artist Sadie Barnette (born 1984) has made groundbreaking explorations of her own family’s history and archives. She situates her father Rodney Barnette’s activism, including his founding of the Black Panther chapter in Compton, CA, and his surveillance by the FBI, in the social history of California and global histories of resistance against racial injustice. Through government documents, photography, writing, installation and her signature use of hot pink, Barnette transforms the bond between father and daughter into an art that speaks to the power of community action. This volume features several new works created for the exhibition, as well as a reproduction of the zine Barnette created as a tribute to her father’s New Eagle Creek Saloon, the first Black-owned gay bar in San Francisco.
Book of the Day Posted Jan 12, 2022

Book of the Day > Senon Williams: Words Don't Mean Much

● Purchase ● ★ Join us for a book signing with Senon Williams on Saturday, January 29th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM ★
 
The old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” is turned on its side in Words Don't Mean Much, Senon Williams’ new book of aphoristic phrasing. Far fewer words are needed to create an illuminating image in the mind’s eye, conjuring immediate multi-sensory experiences.
 
This book of poems is derived from the text in Williams’ ink on paper drawings, a sampling of which are pictured at left. The drawings are textual extractions and gather momentum within the book, exhibiting great attention to materials and craftsmanship. Every detail, from select paper to classic typeface, has been considered. An object, not unlike a sculpture, can be viewed from all sides, handled— and leafed through in the case of this book—front to back, back to front, or randomly opened. Words Don't Mean Much is a small pocket book, easy to conceal. A book to keep all to yourself or share int4mately.
 
Native to Los Angeles, Senon Williams is a lifelong visual artist and musician. His longtime study of economy with words and multiple meanings centers on the desire to create glimpses into the inherent human struggle, both ancient and contemporary. Williams’ work finds space in the natural—exposing outstanding and devastating stages of human evolution.
Book of the Day Posted Jan 11, 2022

Book of the Day > Richard Mosse: Displaced

● Purchase ● The Fondazione MAST presents the catalogue of the first-ever anthological exhibition of Irish artist Richard Mosse.
 
From his early photographs in Iraq, on the US-Mexico border and in the Balkans to the images of the Infra project taken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from the imposing Heat Maps of refugee camps on the route to Europe to his most recent works shot in the Amazon rainforest, Mosse explores the possibilities of documentary photography today, between the recording of reality and art.
 
116 large-format photographs of great visual impact are accompanied by the critical essay of the exhibition’s curator Urs Stahel and by the contributions of Michael J. Kavanagh, reporting on Congo and Central Africa since 2004 for the Economist, Bloomberg News, the New York Times, BBC, among many other outlets; Christian Viveros-Fauné, curator-at-large at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum; and Ivo Quaranta, professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bologna.
Book of the Day Posted Jan 08, 2022

Book of the Day > Armando Alleyne: A Few of My Favorites

● Purchase ● The first book on the New York painter’s eclectic iconography of jazz musicians, boxers and friends
 
With bright patches of acrylic paint and carefully placed found ephemera, New York–based artist Armando Alleyne’s (born 1959) multimedia portraits are immediately eye-catching, drawing viewers in to inspect and appreciate the layers of meaning collaged on top of one another. Alleyne’s renditions of jazz musicians, Afro-Latino singers, and his own family members and acquaintances are rife with color and contemporary iconography as well as references to the artist’s own life. Series such as Shelter Blues reflect on Alleyne’s experiences of homelessness, while Maria’s Song pays homage to his late sister through a pantheon of religious imagery. This volume is the first book on Alleyne, highlighting a lifetime of work alongside snapshots and personal anecdotes.
Book of the Day Posted Jan 07, 2022

Book of the Day > Jackie Nickerson: Salvage

● Purchase ● Portraits that explore how environmental and economic circumstances shape people’s lives
 
American-born British artist Jackie Nickerson (born 1960) began photographing Zimbabwean farmworkers in 1996. Her first series of these portraits served to change the perception that those who work in African agriculture are disempowered, unmodern people by highlighting their individual personalities through their handmade clothing. Ever since, she has continued in the vein of portraiture as a tool for social awareness, with a particular emphasis on global labor practices and agriculture. Her recent series Salvage interrogates the homogeneity of the artistic conventions, such as balance, likeness, proportion and scale, that characterize the portrait genre. In contrast to these expectations, Nickerson’s photography engages both her subjects and her viewers with light, airy color palettes and nontraditional framing, sometimes obscuring her sitters’ faces to imply anonymity within a larger system or otherwise photographing them from a low angle to emphasize their authority within the image’s frame.
Book of the Day Posted Jan 06, 2022

Book of the Day > Helmut Newton. Legacy

● Purchase ● Virtually unparalleled in scope and spanning more than five decades, the photography of visionary Helmut Newton (1920–2004) reached millions through publication in magazines like Vogue and Elle. His oeuvre transcended genres, bringing elegance, style, and voyeurism to fashion, portrait, and glamour photography through a body of work that remains as inimitable as it is unrivaled. Having mastered the art of fashion photography early in his career, Newton’s shoots invariably went beyond standard practice, blurring the lines between reality and illusion. Newton’s clear aesthetic pervades all areas of his work, particularly fashion, portraiture, and nude photography. Women take center stage – with subjects such as Catherine Deneuve, Liz Taylor, and Charlotte Rampling. Moving beyond traditional narrative approaches, Newton’s fashion photography is imbued not only with luxurious elegance and subtle seduction, but also cultural references and a surprising sense of humor.
 
During the 1990s, Newton shot for the German, American, Italian, French, and Russian editions of Vogue, primarily in and around Monte Carlo where he was living from 1981 onwards. Transforming locations like his own garage into starkly contrasting or particularly minimalist theatrical stages, Newton would often portray the eccentric lives of the beautiful and rich, full of eroticism and elegance, in unconventional scenarios. He made use of and simultaneously questioned visual clichés, at times tinged with self-irony or mockery, but always full of empathy.
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