Book of the Day Posted Apr 21, 2021

Book of the Day > Peter Schlesinger: Eight Days in Yemen

● Purchase ● An unprecedented document of one of the Middle East’s most extraordinary cultures
 
In 1976, Peter Schlesinger (born 1948) visited the Yemen Arab Republic (as the northern part of Yemen was then called). He was accompanying the photographer Eric Boman, who was on a fashion shoot assignment for a French magazine. Yemen had been closed to foreigners for many years and in the interest of encouraging more tourism the government decided to court media outlets. Over the course of his eight-day stay, Schlesinger took hundreds of photographs documenting what he saw as he traveled from the capital, Sanaa, and on through the northern city of Sa’da.
 
Forty-two years later, as he began making this book, Schlesinger shared these images with Bernard Haykel, a professor at Princeton University and an expert on the Middle East. He was taken aback at their existence, since documentation of Yemen in the ’70s is so rare. Haykel provides an enriching introduction that brings to life the world Schlesinger captured.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 20, 2021

Book of the Day > High On Design: The New Cannabis Culture

● Purchase ● The cannabis industry has become a thriving activity. Consuming the plant and using its derivatives have become legal in several countries and paved the way for a new generation of design-savvy and diverse consumers and entrepreneurs. High on Design showcases the new brands, designs, and creators behind this revolution. Meet the creative minds behind Gossamer, a biannual print magazine for casual weed smokers and curious mind. Learn everything you need to know about pot and weed as a medium for cultural understanding with Mia Park and Dae Lim, creators of Sundae School. Expand your culinary horizon with Michelin-Starred chef, Claus Henriksen who will give you an insight into his haute cannabis cuisine and gourmet herbs. Have a look inside Broccoli, a female-run magazine about cannabis culture and discover the most exciting cannabis businesses around the world from High Road, an award-winning dispensary design studio to Tokyo Smoke, a Canadian cannabis retailer.
 
While reflecting on the novel aesthetics and trends of contemporary cannabis culture, High on Design also gives a profound view of the phenomenon regarding politics, history, legalization, and society. This is your guide to the best brands, the most stylish dispensaries, the slickest products, and the most creative entrepreneurs.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 17, 2021

Book of the Day > For Cats Only

● Purchase ● Feline architectures: a fun and affordable picture-book of cats with their cat trees
 
Every cat owner knows the frustration of shelling out a considerable amount of money for a cat tree or scratching post only to find that their feline family member prefers to sleep in the box the item came in. Some lucky cat owners also know the unexpected delight that comes from seeing cats use the accessories made just for them, the strange satisfaction of catching their kitty relaxing on their kitty-sized furniture.
 
Against stylish pastel backdrops, Swiss photographer Pascale Weber poses her feline subjects on a variety of different cat-specific pieces, lounging on the roof of a fuzzy ice cream truck and balancing atop a three-pronged scratching post that resembles a cactus. Her photography series captures the undeniable charm of cats on their best behavior while also providing a tongue-in-check echo of more serious forms of design. The artfulness of each cat tree mirrors the contemporary aesthetic trends of human-sized architecture and sculpture: multifaceted, functional and ultimately representative of those who utilize such structures. Each cat presents their home just as proudly as a person might in this surprising combination of art and animal photography, perfect for cat lovers and art enthusiasts alike.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 16, 2021

Book of the Day > The Essential Louis Kahn

● Purchase ● This photographic tour of every one of the buildings designed solely by Louis Kahn represents the architect’s greatest accomplishments.
 
This book focuses on over twenty buildings that were designed solely by Louis Kahn. From his native city of Philadelphia to the heart of Bangladesh, Kahn’s architecture reflected his fascination with science, mathematics, history, and nature. Striking new interior and exterior photographs by esteemed architectural photographer Cemal Emden reveal the characteristic features of Kahn’s aesthetic: juxtaposed materials, repetition of line and shape and geometric precision. Also evident is the way Kahn’s designs flourish in a variety of settings–religious, governmental, educational, and residential. The book gives close attention to Kahn’s most iconic buildings, including Erdman Hall at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania; the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad; the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka, Bangladesh; and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, as well as a cluster of residences he designed in the Philadelphia area. Chapter openers written by architecture professor Caroline Maniaque, an introduction by academic Jale Erzen and an extensive chronology by academic Zekiye Abali, as well as a selection of Kahn’s most insightful statements complete this book, which allows for a rich understanding of Kahn’s architectural ingenuity.
Events Posted Apr 15, 2021

Personalized copies of Deanna Templeton's WHAT SHE SAID Available to pre-order!

Already a “Best of 2021” photobook, Deanna Templeton’s fantastic new MACK offering What She Said is now available! We had intended to have a real-life signing event for its launch, but as we’re all still playing it safe, Deanna will be specially personalizing copies with your choice of inscription (within reason of course) and a special rubber stamp created for the occasion. Order by April 24th, while supplies last! Order now on our website here.

“What She Said takes its title from a song by The Smiths: “What she said was sad / But then, all the rejection she’s had / To pretend to be happy / Could only be idiocy. ”The work originates in portraits Deanna Templeton made on the streets of the US, Europe, Australia and Russia, in which she captured women in their adolescence: punks and outcasts whose ripped jeans and tights, tattoos, and hairstyles stand as testament to this transitional moment in their lives as they navigate the intensity of teenage life. Templeton grew up in an ostensibly different environment in 1980s youth, but she recognized in them something of the universality of female adolescence, as they struggled with similar disappointments and challenges she encountered as a young woman. The book combines these modern portraits with gig flyers and Templeton’s own teenage journal entries from the mid to late 80s, in which the familiar experience of growing up is laid bare in all its antagonism, humour and pathos.”

Book of the Day Posted Apr 14, 2021

Book of the Day > A Time of Youth: San Francisco, 1966–1967

● Purchase ● A year before 1967's famed Summer of Love, documentary photographer William Gedney set out for San Francisco on a Guggenheim Fellowship to record “aspects of our culture which I believe significant and which I hope will become, in time, part of the visual record of American history.” A Time of Youth brings together eighty-seven of the more than two thousand photographs Gedney took in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood between October 1966 and January 1967. In these photographs Gedney documents the restless and intertwined lives of the disenchanted youth who flocked to what became the epicenter of 1960s counterculture. Gedney lived among these young people in their communal homes, where he captured the intimate and varied contours of everyday life: solitude and companionship, joyous celebration and somber quiet, cramped rooms and spacious parks, recreation and contemplation. In these images Gedney presents a portrait of a San Francisco counterculture that complicates popular depictions of late 1960s youth as carefree flower children. The book also includes facsimiles of handwritten descriptions of the scenes Gedney photographed, his thoughts on organizing the book, and other ephemera.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 13, 2021

Book of the Day > Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And

● Purchase ● Four decades of multimedia exploits in race, art politics and subjectivity: a long-overdue survey on conceptual performance artist Lorraine O’Grady
 
Conceptual performance artist Lorraine O'Grady burst into the contemporary art world in 1980 dressed in a gown made of 180 pairs of white gloves and wielding a chrysanthemum-studded whip. For the next three years, O’Grady documented her exploits as this incendiary fictional persona, visiting gallery openings and providing critiques of the racial politics at play in the New York art scene. The resulting series, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, was merely the beginning of a long career of avant-garde work that would continue to build upon O’Grady’s conceptions of self and subjectivity as seen from the perspective of a Black woman artist. This survey of O’Grady’s work spans four decades of her career and features nearly all of her major projects, as well as Announcement, the opening series of a new performance piece seven years in the making. Contextualized by an extensive timeline with letters, journal entries and interviews, Both/And provides a long-overdue close examination of O’Grady’s artistic and intellectual ambitions.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 09, 2021

Book of the Day > Joseph Rodriguez LAPD 1994

● Purchase ● In the mid-nineties, the LAPD was in search of a public image make-over after the Rodney King uprisings. The City Charter was reformed by increasing civilian oversight of the LAPD, the militant police chief of the moment, Daryl Gates, was forced to resign and Willie Williams became the first African-American chief of the department. I was no stranger to this type of assignment. At that time I had already published two books, Spanish Harlem and East Side Stories, which depicted life in impoverished neighborhoods. Covering LAPD gave me a chance to show how police operated in marginalized communities, and how those communities were affected by individual cops and the department as a whole.
 
As part of these efforts, the LAPD gave photographer Joseph Rodriguez unprecedented access to document the officers in the field for The New York Times, hoping to give the public an image of a “kinder, gentler cop”, as the headline put it. For weeks, he immersed himself in the daily workings of the 77th Street, Pacific and Rampart Divisions. Four years after Rodriguez rode along with Rampart officers, the station became notorious when the biggest scandal in LAPD history erupted in an astonishing spectacle of officer corruption that included the murder of a fellow cop, a bank robbery, unprovoked shootings of alleged gang members, drugs stolen from the evidence room, and other crimes.
 
In 2020, the year of Black Lives Matter, a generation after these photos were taken, new uprisings demand reform yet again and the same questions about policing – what are they for, who do they serve, and who do they protect – shape the public discussion.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 08, 2021

Book of the Day > Kristin Bedford: Cruise Night

● Purchase ● Scenes from the Mexican American lowrider life: a clothbound photobook documenting a vibrant LA car culture
 
Known for her quiet portraits of American cultural movements, Los Angeles–based photographer Kristin Bedford’s new work, Cruise Night, is an intimate and unstaged exploration of Los Angeles’ Mexican American lowrider car culture.
 
From 2014 to 2019 Bedford attended hundreds of lowrider cruise nights, car shows, quinceañeras, weddings and funerals. Her images offer a new visual narrative around the lowrider tradition and invite outsiders to question prevalent societal stereotypes surrounding this urban Mexican American culture. Bedford’s photos explore the nuances of cars as mobile canvases and the legendary community that creates them.
 
With bright color photography and a unique female vantage point, Cruise Night is an original look at a prolific American movement set against the Los Angeles cityscape.
Book of the Day Posted Apr 07, 2021

Book of the Day > Age Of Collage 3: Contemporary Collage In Modern Art

● Purchase ● Dive into an art form existing at the intersection of design, commerce, and abstract expression.
 
Cut, paste, create: while collage was conceived in the early 1900's, it seems to be the perfect form of expression for the 21st-century, with all its juxtapositions, eclecticism, and strange bedfellows. In our present age of collage, the simple act of mixing together different elements allows us to question our reality and make new worlds.
 
The Age of Collage showcases a new crop of artistic vanguards advancing the medium’s possibilities, piece-by-piece. Equipped with a craft knife, paintbrush, stylus, scissors, or tablet, a collage artist’s toolkit is as varied as their creations and this book brings their work back to the paper page.
 
From the poignant and provocative to the comic and curious, The Age of Collage features the creations of more than 60 artists. Packed with visuals and a number of in-depth profiles revealing what drives the hands behind the pieces, this comprehensive volume is a celebration of the enduring power of collage.
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