Book of the Day > Sunseekers: The Cure of California by Lyra Kilston. Published by Atelier Editions. "Sunlight was once considered medicinal, a substance that doctors prescribed and architects summoned indoors with bold new designs. Around the turn of the 20th century, sun-drenched locales like Southern California proved an ideal testing ground for unorthodox thinking about healthy living, from diet to fitness to housing. The region’s celebrated climate and untamed nature lured waves of newcomers—health-seekers, iconoclasts, dropouts—all seeking antidotes to physical and civilizational ailments. Their search led to remarkable curiosities like the “Health House,” a helio-therapeutic modern home; the world’s first raw vegan cafeteria; and a group of eccentric barefoot men who camped out in the hills and canyons, getting back to nature long before the 1960s. Lyra Kilston revisits these lesser-known histories and unusual characters, tracing the colorful and surprising origins of how the region became a famed magnet for healthy living."

JOIN US SATURDAY, MAY 18th FROM 4:00 - 6:00 PM

ROHINA HOFFMAN: HAIR STORIES

BOOK SIGNING AND CONVERSATION WITH ALINE SMITHSON

Hair Stories is a series of excerpted interviews and color portraits of a diverse array of women that explores the complex relationship women have with their hair. Indian-born, Los Angeles–based photographer Rohina Hoffman deployed the interviewing skills she has developed in her training as a neurologist to establish an intimate rapport that allowed for a truthful dialogue about the role of hair in these women's lives. Though conceived and shot before the #MeToo movement, this salient project presents hair as a metaphor for identity, femininity, and the manner in which women struggle for control over their own bodies in a sometimes misogynistic world. Hair Stories shows that hair is more than just style or aesthetics; it is a physical manifestation of the ongoing hope and history of women.

Born in India and raised in New Jersey, Rohina Hoffman is a fine art photographer whose practice uses portraiture and the natural world to investigate themes of identity, home, women’s issues, and adolescence. A graduate of Brown University Medical School and resident at UCLA Medical Center, her training led to a career as a neurologist. While an undergraduate at Brown University, Rohina also studied photography at RISD and was a staff photographer for the Brown Daily Herald. A skilled observer of her patients, Rohina was instilled with a deep and unique appreciation of the human experience. Her ability to forge the sacred trust between doctor and patient has been instrumental in fostering a parallel connection between photographer and subject. Aline Smithson is an artist, educator, and editor based in Los Angeles. She is best known for her conceptual portraiture and a practice that uses humor and pathos to explore the performative potential of photography. Growing up in the shadow of Hollywood, her work is influenced by the elevated unreal. She received a BA in art from the University of California at Santa Barbara and was accepted into the College of Creative Studies. After a decade-long career as a New York Fashion Editor, Aline returned to Los Angeles and to her own artistic practice. She founded LENSCRATCH, a photography journal that celebrates a different contemporary photographer each day, has been the Gallery Editor for Light Leaks Magazine, and has curated and jurored numerous exhibitions.

Please join us at Arcana Saturday May 18th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM to meet Rohina Hoffman as she engages in what is sure to be a thought-provoking discussion with Aline Smithson on the work, and signs copies of her new, already-sold-out (!) Damiani publication. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy of "Hair Stories" or Ms. Smithson's wonderful "Self & Others - Portrait as Autobiography", please place your order here, or call us at 310-458-1499.

Book of the Day > Trevor Paglen: From the Archives of Peter Merlin, Aviation Archaelogist. Published by Primary Information."Commemorative coins, patches, mugs and other ephemera from the shadowy world of US military aviation and aerospace. In From the Archives of Peter Merlin, Aviation Archaeologist, multidisciplinary artist Trevor Paglen (born 1974) collaborates with Peter Merlin, a former NASA archivist, on this new artist’s book featuring a photographic inventory of objects from the aerospace historian’s archive of research culled from military bases such as Area 51. Featuring images of challenge coins, patches and commemorative mugs from within these bases, as well as debris recovered from the surrounding crash sites, the book presents both a social and technological investigation into the US government’s secret aviation history from the atomic age to today's drone wreckage. The symbols and texts featured on these objects that celebrate covert missions range in character from goofy to sinister, though their actual meaning may never be fully explained to the public. In addition to photographic images, the book includes an essay by Paglen as well as in-depth captions of the archive’s inventory, offering context for this history and addressing the present-day ramifications of these military advancements across the realms of communication, surveillance and warfare."