Book of the Day Posted Jun 26, 2020

Book of the Day > Eileen Gray, Designer and Architect

Purchase ● A smartly designed and beautifully illustrated look at the life and work of an elusive and influential designer and architect
 
Eileen Gray (1878–1976) was a versatile designer and architect who navigated numerous literary and artistic circles over the course of her life. This handsome volume designed by the amazing Irma Boom chronicles Gray’s career as a designer, architect, painter, and photographer. The book’s essays, featuring copious new research, offer in-depth analysis of more than 50 individual designs and architectural projects, accompanied by both period and new photographs.
 
Born in Ireland and educated in London, Gray proceeded to Paris where she opened a textile studio, studied the Japanese craft of lacquer that would become a primary technique in her design work, and owned and directed the influential gallery and store known as “Jean Désert.” Gray struggled for acceptance as a largely self-taught woman in male-dominated professions. Although she is now best known for her furniture, lighting, and carpets, she dedicated herself to many architectural and interior projects that were both personal and socially driven, including the Villa E 1027, the iconic modern house designed with Jean Badovici, as well as economical and demountable projects, such as the Camping Tent.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 25, 2020

Book of the Day > Home Computers: 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation

Purchase ● A celebration of the early years of the digital revolution, when computing power was deployed in a beige box on your desk.
 
Today, people carry powerful computers in our pockets and call them “phones.” A generation ago, people were amazed that the processing power of a mainframe computer could be contained in a beige box on a desk. This book is a celebration of those early home computers, with specially commissioned new photographs of 100 vintage computers and a generous selection of print advertising, product packaging, and instruction manuals. Readers can recapture the glory days of fondly remembered (or happily forgotten) machines including the Commodore 64, TRS-80, Apple Lisa, and Mattel Aquarius—traces of the techno-utopianism of the not-so-distant past.
 
Home Computers showcases mass-market success stories, rarities, prototypes, one-offs, and never-before-seen specimens. The heart of the book is a series of artful photographs that capture idiosyncratic details of switches and plugs, early user-interface designs, logos, and labels. After a general scene-setting retrospective, the book proceeds computer by computer, with images of each device accompanied by a short history of the machine, its inventors, its innovations, and its influence. Readers who inhabit today's always-on, networked, inescapably connected world will be charmed by this visit to an era when the digital revolution could be powered down every evening. 
Events Posted Jun 24, 2020

Who Doesn't Love Fashion Photography?!?!

Gordon Parks

For almost as long as we've been peddling books, our longtime friend and local ally Peter Fetterman has been one of the great purveyors of photographic prints. As shop owners tend to do, Peter has been setting special things aside for himself all this time, and right now there is a spectacular selection of Fashion -related images culled from his personal collection available as an online auction from Phillips. "Tailor Made: Fashion Photographs From the Collection of Peter Fetterman" features masters such as William Klein, Cecil Beaton, Melvin Sokolsky, Horst P. Horst, Sarah Moon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lillian Bassman, Ormond Gigli, Gordon Parks, and many more.The breathtaking catalogue simply as an online exhibition is reason enough to visit, but everything here is for sale. This is a rare opportunity to see and potentially acquire some of the classic prints one only sees in books and on the walls in Museums. We hope you will show Peter and his amazing gallery staff some tangible love by visiting the auction. If you're a fan of Fashion Photography - and who isn't - click on the link below. You'll be glad you did!

 

 

Click Here to View the Auction Selection
 

 

And, on the Arcana front, to celebrate our reopening and compliment the "Tailor Made: Fashion Photographs From the Collection of Peter Fetterman" auction offerings, we have put together an online selection of like-minded Fashion Photography rarities in all price ranges. Chosen especially for our event, many are uncommon and/or signed, and all are worthy of your attention. Most are one-of-a-kind, so act now while supplies last! 

Click Here to View the Book Selection

William Klein

Book of the Day Posted Jun 23, 2020

Book of the Day > Death Magick Abundance

Purchase ● More than any party, parade, team, or disaster, New Orleans is the people. The ones who persevere, survive, strengthen, and transform the city in all its unceasing vibrancy. For nearly a decade, photographer Akasha Rabut has documented this thriving culture. In Death Magick Abundance, her first book, she reveals the city’s spirit through the pink smoke of the Caramel Curves, the first all-female black motorcycle club; alongside the Southern Riderz, urban cowboys on horseback in the streets; and many others who represent the next generation of New Orleans. Seeking to interpret and preserve a sacred cultural heritage while redefining itself against a constantly shifting landscape, Death Magick Abundance is a conduit for the love and unending beauty of New Orleans and its people to flow to the rest of the world.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 20, 2020

Book of the Day > Teju Cole: Fernweh

Purchase ● The picturesque vistas and apparent stability of Switzerland have made it an elusive subject for contemporary photography. Over a five-year period (2014 – 2019), Cole found a distinctly new way to look at a country that has been the quintessence of tourist experience for almost two centuries. Fernweh muses on the German word for a longing to be elsewhere. Cole’s meditative and scrupulously composed work, made with colour film, is evocative of the hidden history of the Alpine nation as well as of its highly curated terrain. Returning to Switzerland year after year, Cole shares the patience and mild palette of luminaries of contemporary European photography — but the constructivist tension in these images is all his own. With photographs shot in every corner of the country — from Vaud to Graubünden to Lugano — Fernweh creates a vision of Switzerland that, though largely devoid of human presence, is rich in human traces; none more so than Cole’s own distinct way of seeing.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 19, 2020

Happy Juneteenth!

Here are some celebratory books to get your party started. Book(s) of the day > Meals, Music, and Muses: Recipes from My African American Kitchen by Alexander Smalls published by Flatiron Books (@asmalls77, @ flatiron_books); Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African-American Cooking by Toni Tipton-Martin (@tonitiptonmartin, @clarksonpotter), Edna Lewis: At the Table with an American Original (UNC Press), Princess Pamela's Soul Food Cookbook: A Mouth-Watering Treasury of Afro-American Recipes (@rizzolibooks), The Unqualified Hostess: I do it my way so you can too! (@whoopigoldberg, @rizzolibooks), Trap Kitchen (@therealtrapkitchen).

 

Book of the Day Posted Jun 18, 2020

Book of the Day > Solange Pessoa

Purchase ● The first English-language monograph on seminal Brazilian artist Solange Pessoa (born 1961), this substantial volume is also the artist’s most comprehensive to date. Pessoa’s sculptural work, which often mobilizes materials like human hair, leather, wax and animal blood, evokes issues related to human and animal bodies, vacillates between beauty and abjection and forges formal connections between indigenous Brazilian traditions and international postminimal art.
 
Surveying work from throughout Pessoa’s career, from her beginnings in the late 1980s through to the present, with selections from the artist’s sketchbooks and archives, this volume argues for Pessoa’s unique contribution to Brazilian art. Including texts by international scholars Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira and Alex Bacon, as well as an interview with Pessoa by Liz Munsell, Solange Pessoa introduces English-language readers to the artist’s compelling body of work from the past three decades.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 16, 2020

Book of the Day > > The Candy Book of Transversal Creativity

● Purchase Link in Bio ● A celebration of the transversal community from the iconic magazine. The Candy Book of Transversal Creativity showcases the best content from the groundbreaking style magazine's twelve issues, with photography by icons such as Nan Goldin, Ryan McGinley, Jack Pierson, and Ellen von Unwerth; such muses as Hari Nef, Divine, and Laverne Cox; and thoughtful and insightful writing by influential cultural trans figures such as Amos Mac and Geena Rocero.

Founded a decade ago by Luis Venegas, C*NDY is the first and only style magazine to focus on the transversal community, or transgender and gender-nonconforming/nonbinary people, transvestism, cross-dressing, drag, and androgyny. C*NDY has a devoted fan base and respect from industry leaders for showcasing the most creative and important names and talent in transversal fashion, art, and culture. This book brings together for readers the most timeless, inspirational, and aspirational pages of fashion, art, culture, makeup, glamour, icons, amazing transformations, and fun.

This is an inspiring celebration of the many levels of transversal creativity and people, all facing an exciting future.
Book of the Day Posted Jun 14, 2020

Book of the day, In Memoriam > John Hiltunen

In memoriam: John Hiltunen. It was love at first sight when we first encountered Mr. Hiltunen's work through @creativegrowth at the #LAABF2016.

John Hiltunen is a facsimile of John Hiltunen's original artist's book published by Books for All Press ( @bfa_press ),  a non-profit publisher working solely with artists with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities to publish artists' books. "John Hiltunen began making collages in 2006. Before this time, John focused on rug making, wood work, and ceramics. After participating in Paul Butler’s “Collage Party” in 2007, John’s collage work became a consistent artistic pursuit.  His clever juxtapositions, which typically combine animal and human subjects mostly derived from fashion and natural history magazines, are provocative in their humor and yet surprisingly earnest in intention. Straightforward in their absurdity, John’s collages are naturally uncanny with cats, dogs, reptiles, and other wild animals looking posh in the latest fashions. In 2012, John’s work was the focus of a major group exhibition curated by Matthew Higgs at Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco. He has also exhibited at White Columns, New York, Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, the San Francisco International Airport, #goodluckgallery and had his work represented at contemporary art fairs like NADA Miami, the Independent, and Frieze New York. In 2013, he was honored as a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award, given to those artists whose work show promise, talent, and individual artistic strength but who have not yet received widespread recognition. John’s work is also in the private collection of Cindy Sherman." #johnhiltunen @creativegrowth

 

Book of the Day Posted Jun 13, 2020

Book of the Day > Paul Mpagi Sepuya

Today (6/13/20) was *supposed* to have been our book signing with Paul Mpagi Sepuya, but, well, you know the story…
So we’re going to celebrate the book again (it was book-of-the-day on 4/28) here today. "Paul Mpagi Sepuya presents the work of one of the most prominent up-and-coming photographers working today. Sepuya makes photographs of friends, artists, collaborators, and himself. He challenges and deconstructs traditional portraiture by way of collage, layering, fragmentation, mirror imagery, and the perspective of a Black, queer gaze. Although the creation of artist books has been a long-standing part of his practice, Paul Mpagi Sepuya is the first publication of his work to be released widely, co-published with the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis on the occasion of a major solo exhibition. Interview with the artist by Wassan Al-Khudhairi. Contributions by Malik Gaines, Lucy Gallun, Ariel Goldberg, Evan Moffitt, and Grace Wales Bonner."
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