5B4

Five books in a suitcase

2011-08-21T11:56:00.004-04:00

While in Europe a couple months ago for the Rencontres d'Arles festival I found quite a few interesting items and as I look over them I see my tastes have drawn me to almost as many non-photobooks as photo-related ones. As I speak to other photobook obsessives I find a common denominator - it is harder and harder to find the "fix."

The first is the new Enrique Metinides book Series from Kominek Books. Metinides is often referred to as the "Mexican Weegee." Metinides worked as a newspaper photographer and many of his gritty, often gruesome images were used in the 'nota roja' tabloids. This book concentrates less on his individual greatest hits but on series of images he made while photographing crime, accidents and natural disasters in Mexico City and surrounding areas. The work is given an interesting design treatment courtesy of Syb (Sybren Kuiper) one of the leading Dutch designers working today. By far, it is the best presentation of Metinides work to date. Highly recommended.

Gregoire Pujade-Lauraine's The Significant Savages was another choice which had a strong following at this year's Rencontres d'Arles festival. Included in the exhibition From Here On which was curated by Martin Parr, Joan Fontcuberta, Joachim Schmid, Erik Kessels and Clement Cheroux, The Significant Savages compiles hundreds of "profile images" from the social networking site Facebook and presents them in an extremely handsome package that comments on how we see ourselves and how we present ourselves to the larger community. In part it is a critique but it does not lose its empathy with a cooler than thou vibe that is all too common with other archives of kitsch and stock imagery.

The next book, Nicolas Giraud's All Work and No Play from Boa Books is probably the oddest choice I was completely compelled to bring home. Over several years, Giraud created his own "phantom literature book," a typescript version of the "manuscript" that Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) was working on in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining. Part fiction and part concrete poem, All Work and No Play sits in the obsessive space between an ordered mind and one that is unravelling. It might at first sound like a book that strikes a single note but design and typography freaks will want to take a long look at this deceptively simple work.

Aymeric Fouquez's Nord from Kodoji Press is another that made the long haul back to NYC. Fouquez photographed WWI memorials built on actual battle sites in the north of France that were designed by the British architect Sir Edmund Luytens. Protected by law until 2018, these memorials sit in landscapes that are slowly developing and where modern real estate interests could threaten their existence. Politics, history, memory and loss all hang in the mist that enshrouds many of these skillfully made images. Each book comes with a small signed "self-portrait" print of Fouquez as a child on one of the many family outings to these gravesites.

The last in this set of books is Ricardo Cases's Paloma al Aire. This has become one of my favorites, describing a small group of 'pigeon racing' men in Spain. Using brilliantly colored paint, these men color their birds with identifying marks on their wings and bellies and set them off to chase a female. Shot with flash, Cases turns these normally everyday creatures into exotic beings that apparently wind up coming to rest in bushes and trees, putting their owners through their own paces in order to retrieve them. Humorous and quirky, I can't leaf through this spiral bound book without feeling light and giddy over creatures I mostly find repulsive.

More to come...

Yesterday's Pictures #4 by Gunther Karl Bose

2011-06-26T05:13:00.000-04:00

Longtime readers of 5B4 will know I have continuously sung the praises of the Institut fur Buchkunst in Leipzig. The quality of the books they publish, most often by their students and instructors, have earned a special place on my shelves because of their content and clever design. Not to mention that some of the books (at 10-35 euros) are so absurdly cheap to acquire for their quality.

One recent series of "publications" I discovered last year is by the graphic designer and instructor at the Institute Gunther Karl Bose. I put the word publications in quotes because these are more single image works of art than a traditional "book". Yesterday's Pictures is a small series of images Bose has produced from his archive of 1960s-70s advertising images which are backed in linen and which unfold like a map from the delicate size of 4X6 inches to approximately 16X20.

My favorite so far is Yesterday's Pictures #4 whose title is Miller Beer Six-Pack. The original image was created in 1960 by a commercial firm in Milwaukee Wisconsin called Genack Studio and shows a slightly larger than life pair of man's hands assembling (or disassembling) the cardboard container of a six-pack of Miller Beer bottles. Simple and straight forward? Yes and no. The linen gaps break the overall picture into a grid contributing additional lines and angles to an already dimensionally complicated photo.

Other images in the series I found to be a bit more kitsch heavy - two 1960s-era nude women photographing each other, a woman holding up a color chart, and a Chinese bottle of coca-cola. All of the images are from the personal archive of Gunther Karl Bose.

Yesterday's Pictures are a little more expensive at 40 euros each but they are in very small editions of 20 per image. I am not sure where to buy them as I have only seen them at the Kassel Fotobook festival and there is no ordering information online via the Institute or anywhere else. If I find out more information, I'll post it in the comments section.

Drawings on a Bus, 1954 by Ellsworth Kelly

2011-06-20T05:41:00.003-04:00

After the Kassel festival I suffered from a bit of photobook burnout. The festival is growing to a decent size but 4 twelve hour days looking and talking about books can send even the most dedicated to seek a break. So, I wanted to intersperse a few non-photo related books over the next weeks which I found irresistible on this trip.

The first is a book which was published by Matthew Marks Gallery and Steidl in 2007 and can be found at a very cheap price on some remainder tables in Europe - Ellsworth Kelly: Drawings on a Bus, 1954. My copy set me back a measly 12 euros.

After six years in Paris, Kelly returned to New York in 1954 where a friend gave him a hardcover publisher's dummy of an old Sigfried Giedion Bauhaus book from the 20s thinking the blank pages would be perfect for sketching.

While riding the bus, this sketchbook (number #23), was filled with the chance drawings of the bus window shadows as they fell across the pages. Quickly marking the pages with the various changing shadows, he later inked in the outlines at his studio. Some of these sketches he later developed into larger paintings.

Abstract and in bold black and white they define the space on the page with graphic impulsive gestures which seem closer to typography than a response to simple light and dark patterns on the paper. The sequence reveals the pages filling with more black giving the sense of zooming in on the subtle nuances of these shadow/letter forms until an oval void spread across facing pages punctuates the ending.

The size of the book, the cardboard slipcase, printing and length feel near perfect. The fact that the blue cover - originally designed by the great Laszlo Moholy-Nagy for Giedion's book Bauen in Eisenbeton, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Frankreich - remains intact with Moholy-Nagy's typography and design suits the content in resonant ways.

L.A. Women by Joachim Schmid

2011-06-14T05:25:00.003-04:00

One of the foundations of Joachim Schmid's work is the thought that there are way too many photographs in the world already so why not put those that exist to some intelligent use. At least, let us look at them a second time and contemplate their existence, or recontextualize them and introduce further questions of what we look at, what we draw in meaning, and what are the lasting values of the images. His latest book L.A. Women has a darker, real life context which is why I have chosen it as a follow up to Watabe Yukichi's A Criminal Investigation.

In December 2010, the Los Angeles Police Department released 180 photographs of women found in the home of a known serial murder suspect. The release of the images was a public appeal for help in identifying the women who might be missing and those still alive as the known victims number only a dozen. The photographs do not tell which are which, they provide only a pool of possibility.

Without the context of sensational serial murder attached, the images appear to be innocuous portraits made with poor quality film, digital and video cameras. All are black women but for two whites. Some would look like pictures that people post to Facebook pages or snapped by friends. Many of the women smile, some appear asleep, many sit in the passenger seats of cars. A few of the images reveal small clues that some of the women might be exposing their breasts to the photographer although none of the croppings reveal any nudity.

With the context of being attached to the suspect, we search for grim clues. Many of which appear to have been taken in the back of a van. We notice that the rear windows have been masked with opaque paper or tinfoil. Some might be prostitutes but as Schmid says in his introduction, "We don't know," not even if the suspect took the images himself. One is snapped standing outside of the vehicle through the open passenger side window. She smiles as if stopping to chat with a neighbor. Does she know the driver or is the smile an automatic instinctual response to the camera? Is she being enticed into the car? offered a ride? In another, the photographer casts a shadow as he(?) frames a vertical but nothing is revealed that might lead the investigation. We feel the pull of information but are left dangling within the eeriness of the images.

We stare into the faces, some blurred by technical imperfections, and are confused by their calm expressions and smiles. We know the potential of the situation they are frozen within and for a moment we connect on a basic human level for survival - to warn and protect. Or, perhaps like viewing an image of a person before execution, we look to feel fear and master death one image at a time.

L.A. Women is available through Blurb. Joachim Schmid is a part of the ABC (Artists' Book Cooperative) which is currently the subject of a show at New York's Printed Matter.

A Criminal Investigation by Watabe Yukichi

2011-06-09T12:47:00.004-04:00

Many of you have wondered if 5B4 is dead. The answer is no, I needed a two month break. Not because I am too busy publishing (I always keep myself very busy) but because I was having trouble finding things to write about. I am not a professional writer nor critic so finding something to say which I haven't already in the past 400+ posts can be a bit of a task. That said, I just attended the Kassel Photobook festival with a small satchel of items which has me excited to spread the word on a few books I discovered. Watabe Yukichi's A Criminal Investigation from the publisher Xavier Barral is my first choice of favorites so far.

Sitting closely to the tradition of a photo novel, A Criminal Investigation follows a police detective in 1958 Tokyo as he investigates a gruesome crime - the discovery dismembered body near Sembaku Lake in Ibaraki Prefecture. Accompanying the detective was the photographer Watabe Yukichi who seems to have documented the progress of the case as thoroughly as the investigators did to the crime.

Yukichi was a freelance photojournalist who was granted special permission to document the "dismembered-corpse case" as it was referred. Shooting in black and white 35mm, the results play out like a film noir, complete with the detective looking more and more like a Japanese Humphrey Bogart as the story develops. In fact, as one becomes drawn into the filmic quality of every detail of the pictures and sequence, it is easy to overlook that this was an actual criminal investigation was of something so sinister.

As a photographer, Yukichi worked this situation with apparent vigor. Each and every picture is interesting in its own right - I can't find a superfluous image in the edit. Bookwise, A Criminal Investigation has a near perfect form and tone for such an essay with Japanese folded pages and a deep gravure-like printing. Its unique page twisting design causes interesting breaks in the flow of images like small chapters or vignettes as the case turns its various corners. A minimal amount of text contributes the facts of the case and the conclusion which took several more years to solve. I won't spoil the ending.

A Criminal Investigation was co-published by Le Bal in Paris which currently has an exhibition of this work along with Yutaka Takanashi and Keizo Kitajima. Copies are available in the Le Bal bookshop.

Tea, Coffee, Cappuccino by Boris Mikhailov

2011-04-09T12:24:00.000-04:00

Writing in the foreword to his 1996 book Am Boden (By the Ground) Boris Mikhailov states; The fourth year of change. Not much has been reorganized, but a lot has changed. I already notice the tendency towards a "new" society, a deterioration in the quality of life for most people and the waning hope that some time everything will turn out fine for them. He continues; To a certain extent, I was always a street photographer. I always searched the streets for historical symbols of the present times. The streets reflect social processes like a mirror. What that book and its companion Die Dämmerung (At Dusk) described was bleak - everything seems to have collapsed at once spreading, in Mikhailov's words, the feeling of a natural catastrophe. It was felt in the book's titles - the darkening end of an era and the lowered perspective pulling us to the earth. the title of his newest offering Tea, Coffee, Cappuccino published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König might be signaling a lighter, more positive view. Guess again.

Photographing in his hometown of Kharkov, Mikhailov has once again taken to the streets to reflect social process. On the cover, three men laugh and smile good-naturedly at the camera, almost mocking the choices offered by the book's title. What choice has been given by the arrival of western splendor? Cappuccino? The blossoming adverts that rise above the crumbled and muddy streets? Nearly everyone in the 200 color photographs seem to be carrying shopping bags and bundles full of goods giving the impression that success has been achieved but as Mikhailov speculates "a flux of cheap commodities has conquered ubiquitously, creating a colorful new plastic reality." The previous eras long breadlines have now been replaced by lines waiting for infrequent trams.

The facing spreads form disjointed panoramics which seem a natural continuum to By the Ground and At Dusk. Mikhailov notes that the photos 'fitted together in a chronologic order: what was photographed earlier is at the beginning, and the later photos are towards the end.' This order, bracketed by images of people kicking up their heels in impromptu can-can dances, seems to show a drift into a mental state of escapism and spectacle until a Kurt Cobain Jesus makes his appearance in the final photograph.

Bookwise, Tea, Coffee, Cappuccino is straightforward in design and printing. The flow of images seems daunting because of the amount but appropriate for a book that is partly about the dream of excess. The awkward cover design seems to be a nod towards the poor design of the ever-present advertising seen throughout the book.

As in all of Mikhailov's other books his presence is felt or literally seen as both insider and outsider. In Tea, Coffee, Cappuccino he pratfalls out of a kiosk doorway and perches on a small railing trying to inject humor as an occasional diversion. This portrait of Kharkov might be his darkest work yet. Even though Case History portrayed a populace often homeless and rife with disease there was a sense that death - an end to the misery - was close at hand. In Tea, Coffee, Cappuccino, what he has shown might be the state for a long time to come.

d.a. levy Electric Greek Poems by Jon Beacham

2011-04-04T12:57:00.005-04:00

My love of typography especially that adapted by great designers like Jan Tschichold and others has led to an appreciation of the concrete poets working from the 1950s onward. These were poets who refused to think of words as mere indifferent vehicles without a visual life of their own that could further communicate by their physical arrangement on the printed page. People like Dick Higgins, Claus Bremmer and Emmett Williams are among the well known but my favorite who isn't usually cited would be Ferdinand Kriwet, who for photobook lovers, created the circular "poem" that precedes the photographs in Ed van der Elsken's classic book Sweet Life.

One poet who I knew little about before discovering a facsimile of his work produced by local Brooklyn artist and printmaker Jon Beacham is D.A. Levy. Levy was a Cleveland based poet and artist working in the 1960s and his self produced mimeograph books were his main medium.

As primarily a bookmaker, his most widely distributed works The North American Book of the Dead, Cleveland Undercovers, Suburban Monastery Death Poem, and Tombstone as a Lonely Charm count as only a few among over 160 publications he produced in his short lifetime before committing suicide on November 24,1968 at age 26 (11 days after I was born).

In the fall of 1968, Levy was invited to Madison to be a poet in residence at the University of Wisconsin by David Wagner and Morris Edelson. During this time he created a series of concrete poems and a collection titles Electric Greek Poems - a reference to the originators of visual poetry which were used as decoration for religious artworks and alter shaped poems dating back to the 2nd century BC. This facsimile collection contains some of the last works created by Levy before his death.

19 individual sheets printed by hand on a Vandercook, Jon Beacham has published an edition of 165 copies faithful in every way exactly to the original but for use of a brown cover stock instead of the original blue. The physical aesthetics of craft - the imperfect typewritten covers (set with an IBM Selectric typewriter) and the slight impression of the ink into the paper from the pass of the Vandercook's drum - are a welcome distraction from the digitized detachment from objects not touched by hands.

Go here to order and find out more about Beacham and his other projects.

Films by Paul Graham

2011-03-31T12:59:00.002-04:00

The debate years ago on whether film was "better" than digital ruffled a lot of feathers. The old guard held tight to their precious rolls fearing for their eventual disappearance. The argument was framed in technical details but the simple fact is, it is photography either way and making a lasting image is no easier with digital as it was with film - you just don't have to get your hands wet. Ironically, the negative health effects of photo chemistry is probably about the same as digital if you edit and process files with your radiating "laptop" laying across your groin.

As a printmaker for most of my adult life, I maintain a love for film and the process of developing and printing. It is not "magical" for me nor has it ever been watching images form in chemistry under amber safelights. I simply love the way light reflects off of the paper and sensing the chaos of grain that has built the image. Paul Graham's newest book from Mack books Films is an homage to that basic component of grain which is not so easily mimicked by pixels.

Graham has scanned small portions of his negatives and enlarged them to reveal only the grainy color dyes. These large color fields are as minimalist as he could get away from his usual approach to picture making. Some might be confounded by this book after his celebrated A Shimmer of Possibility but for me, this work fits into a continuum as I see most of his books not only exploring the social landscape but the basic make-up of photography. His books A1 and Troubled Land could been seen as examples of the optics, the precision and depth of field we might expect from large format work. His book Beyond Caring is more reliant on the speed of the shutter to still the goings on in DHSS offices. His book End of an Age embraces the variety of color balance from many light sources as he circles his pirouetting figures. His book American Night amplifies the role of the aperture in his description of what we want to see and what we might be willing to overlook. And now Films brings the microcosm of the physical material to light. As Graham has said of this work, it is a "negative retrospective" of his practice.

Films is beautifully printed in a high-gloss paper stock to mimic the sheen of celluloid. In a few plates I sense he is also employing a bit of Gaussian blur to create cloud-like alternates that one might see if they have not critically focused the enlarger - a potential human "mistake" in the process which digital certainly has put to death. Those small flaws for me translate into a feeling of something crafted by hands from an imperfect medium. Dust and scratches, unevenly aligned enlargers, a tong mark at the edge of paper - maybe those will become new photoshop filters that can be applied at the stroke of a keypad.

Kiss the Past Hello by Larry Clark

2011-03-22T08:00:00.003-04:00

The idea is to put all these fucking teenage boys in one place and just finish it there. just put the whole obsession with going back in one book and maybe it will be finished, maybe I can do something else. - Larry Clark interviewed by Mike Kelly

Larry Clark's latest is a book titled Kiss the Past Hello which was published on the occasion of his show at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and it has one promising quality, if you missed out on Tulsa, Teenage Lust, Punk Picasso or the Los Angeles 2003-2006 Volume 1 then this would be a book to fill a gap on your shelf. If you have any of those aforementioned books then this will seem nothing more than a reshuffling of the same deck of cards. Seems putting the past away is much harder for Mr. Clark since he spoke to Kelly in the late 1980s.

No doubt Clark has produced a few great books over his lifetime and this is no small task as most suffer a sophomore slump and fade quickly. Clark obsession with youth and specifically boys comes from, in his words - a desire of wanting to "go back" and "be them" and not possess them - has remained the motivating factor in making new work in both still images, collage and films. An honest and sad confession that has made his work worth following.

As he shifted from the drug scene into describing narcissism the pictures became looser and less edited (reminding Kelly of action painting), the next logical step for Clark was to move into film. The difficulty is, with exception of his first film Kids, the way Clark approached film has sucked some of the spontaneity out of his process with contrived plot lines and action.

So in a way, Kiss the Past Hello is the return to his youthful, confessionary truth that he seems to partake in every few years but no matter how many times work can be recycled, the need to republish it in a book turns him into a franchise.

Kiss the Past Hello will be hard for fans of Clark to resist. It comes in a box, has a nice design, a poster and a supplement booklet with several essays and the interview with Kelly. The book is fairly cheaply printed and seems like it is the quality of on-demand production even though it was printed in Antwerp. It was produced in an edition of 2500.

If you haven't had enough of kissing the past hello you will no doubt also hear about Clark's Tulsa Reader 1971-2010 which is an 'artist book' of interviews, articles, press releases, gallery memos, letters to the editors - surrounding Larry Clark's controversial photo series, Tulsa.

I thought at first this would be something worthwhile and it might be for someone, but the content looked much less interesting than it sounds. The presentation is a thick xerox book perfect bound (basic unsewn glue binding) with floppy materials. The 'collage' aspect that seems to be touting an artist book flavor seems a stretch but I guess that is cutting it too close to defining what an 'artist book' can be. Past or present this seems like shelf filler to me.

Andy Warhol: Photographs

2011-03-19T09:37:00.001-04:00

The only show of Andy Warhol's photographs ever exhibited during his lifetime closed three weeks before his death in February of 1987. It was not a showing of polaroids or photobooth pictures, it was an exhibition of 70 black and white prints sewn together in small grids of identical repeating photos. The grids ranged from four images to twelve with the strands of thread linking them hanging loosely in the center. Robert Miller Gallery who showed the work also published Andy Warhol: Photographs and I think its damn good - not just good, damn good.

The central motif of repetition in Warhol's screen prints is obviously present here as are the subjects of celebrity and the mundane. In a few he directly references himself; one with a four image grid of a man opening his jacket to reveal a t-shirt with a portrait of James Dean rendered in the style of Warhol, and another where he has rephotographed a portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong.

The book's order and facing pages are paired to link or contrast the immediate subject or to formally play off of one another; stacks of photo prints are paired with shots of leaves, lines of cars in a parking lot faces a grid of venetian blinds, a grouping of skyscrapers and porn theater posters, ceramic plates and a muscular statue, clouds photographed out a plane window face a white fur coat, the modesty of a young chinese soldier matched with a lingerie clad woman's back.

The act of looking is challenged as our eyes fight to draw themselves from the middle of the grids to see the "whole" and at the same time the individual. The tug and pull of these images makes our focal point dart around the grids searching for a comfortable point to rest - which can be nearly impossible.

The book itself is cleanly designed and edited by John Cheim who ten years later would start the gallery Cheim & Read. The printing is decent but be aware of the binding. After 25 years, the glue in most of these has dried out and the signatures have a tendency to split apart from one another.

Archeologie de la Mine by Didier Vivien

2011-03-16T14:12:00.002-04:00

I cannot read French so I am probably missing some of the nuances of Didier Vivien's Archeologie de la Mine published by Marval in 1994 but it is compelling both in its photography and layout.

Archeologie de la Mine is about a major coal mine that existed in the northern region of France bordering Belgium from 1720 until its closing in 1990. It was the main source of employment for the surrounding towns which prospered because of the richness of the coal seams. It was also the site of Europe's worst mining disaster when on March 10, 1906 an explosion killed 1100 miners.

Vivien photographed the mine and its surrounding area in a fairly non-romantic tone considering the history and expected depictions of miners as heroic men working under miserable conditions. This is a colder view more akin to the authorless topographic-style especially when Vivien moves out of the mine buildings and into the landscape of shale heaps. The book ends with images of the transition into a suburban neighborhood complete with big box stores.

Book-wise, the layout of Archeologie de la Mine is very well conceived. Simple full bleed square images - many on facing pages that create dynamic spreads. The printing is a decent, open rendering of a full range of tone but to the attentive viewer it can be seen as slightly inconsistent throughout the book. Archeologie de la Mine includes a short essay by Eric Wawrzyniak.

I hadn't heard of Didier Vivien nor this book before discovering it by chance and I would be curious if anyone else out there had known of it. It seems like an overlooked gem to me.

Desperate Cars by Sebastien Girard

2011-02-24T12:02:00.001-05:00

The invention of automobiles and the invention of photography both promised a new engagement with the larger world. As gasoline powered engines and shutter driven cameras proliferated, the 'far from home' suddenly became visible. Photographers embraced autos and their presence has often become a breeding ground for meaning. From Lartigue's early car pictures which feel futuristic and offer the promise of adventure to Robert Frank's images of the car as rolling isolation booths. Cars have represented a multitude of themes from wealth and elegance to violence and rampant ecological destruction. One of my favorite titles from 2010, Sebastien Girard's Desperate Cars takes a look at the autos around his suburban neighborhood in Toulouse, France.

There is little text at all in Desperate Cars, Girard opens with endpapers which plea 'Save Their Souls' - and follows with a concentration on the small damage and wear. Some have rolled in piss and shit; others have had their rear view mirrors smashed off; one has its bumper held on by bungee cords. It is all pretty minor - smashed windows and such - so one might ask 'who cares?'

Other photographers have done major work on vehicles that have killed their passengers and have been twisted into shapes unrecognizable. My interest in Girard's approach extends to what I see as one of photography's flaws. There is a tendency to look to extremes and I find it a much more interesting problem to look at the subtle and make it hold your attention. I have in the past written about how I perceived Raphel Waldner's work and I do find the descriptions seductive but this work seduces me in a much more nuanced way, for instance, Girard has chosen to describe his subject in the dark and from the same distance. Throughout Desperate Cars, the scale of the objects described are almost all similar. There is no medium shot or master shot etc - they are all close-ups. This unique strategy makes the book fell like you are revolving around the vehicles - navigating not so much a photograph, but navigating around an object. He sequenced these images with a flair for great pairings that complement the content and formal play as well.

As for the chips and bumps versus the great seven car pile-up fatality covered in crash-dust, this work is more about the wear of life rather than the moment of death. It is less common to die in a car crash than to have life simply chip away at you, like water does to stone overtime. These cars wear their damage like we wear our appendix scars.

Desperate Cars was self-published in an edition of 500. The quality is near perfect from the printing to the hand binding done by Van Waarden in the Netherlands. A signed and numbered limited edition with a print is also available. Sebastien Girard will be presenting his books and work at this year's International Photobook Festival in Kassel Germany from June 1-5th at Documenta-Halle.

City Metaphors by Oswald Mathias Ungers

2011-02-21T07:28:00.003-05:00

Seen from the clouds, my old suburban neighborhood in Arizona with its dozens of cul-de-sacs must have looked like a gaggle of spermatozoa about to ride off into the sunset. Whether that was the holistic thought of the architect and land developer can't be confirmed - keep in mind it was the late 60s, early 70's though.

I would like to be able to read maps the same way that I read photographs. Meaning, to enable my first impressions to be filled with analogies, metaphors, and symbolism but instead, the rational mind takes over and I see measured facts and deadpan reality. For the German architect Oswald Mathias Ungers however, bridging imaginative perception and a blueprint from a city planner produced a fascinating book titled City Metaphors just re-published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig.

Originally appearing in 1982, City Metaphors presents over 50 pairings of various city maps throughout history with images from science and nature. Each of the pairings is then "titled" with a single descriptive word printed in both English and German.

In Ungers' mind, the division of Venice becomes a handshake, a spirally designed city in India becomes the universe, the plan of the city of St Gallen, Merian from 1809 becomes a womb and so on. Easily, the formal similarities can be seen in each pairing but there is the third level of perception introduced by the title. The factual reality (the plan), the perceived reality (the image), and the conceptual reality (the word).

As Ungers writes in his foreword; The way we experience the world around us depends on how we perceive it. Without a comprehensive vision the reality will appear as a mass of unrelated phenomenon and meaningless facts, in other words, totally chaotic. In such a world it would be like living in a vacuum; everything would be of equal importance; nothing could attract our attention; and there would be no possibility to utilize the mind.

5B4 Photography and Books is now on Facebook

2011-02-17T12:20:00.004-05:00

Do you need more reasons to sit and stare blankly into a computer screen? Yes? Well then I have a perfect outlet for you, I have started a 5B4 Photography and Books Facebook page.

Why you ask?

Simply because I often come across interesting little art and photo related books which I would like to mention but I can't invest the time to write about. So, these orphans will be showcased on Facebook instead of being ignored. Think of it as a vitamin supplement for daily book deficiencies.

Check it out and tell your friends.

5B4 Photography and Books on Facebook

Gerard Fieret 1924-2009 (Focus Publishing)

2011-02-17T10:49:00.001-05:00

Last weekend I did a presentation of the Errata Books on Books series during the "Weekend of the Photobook" festival at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam and one of the only books I found irresistible was Focus Publishing's monograph on Gerard Petrus Fieret from 2010.

This book is number 15 in a series on Dutch photographers. From what I am told, the series was established by Prins Bernhard Cultural foundation and specifically featuring artists who hadn't been recognized before with a major monograph of their work. Other artists in the series include: Sannes Sannes, Koen Wessing, Pieter Oosterhuis, Piet Zwart, Paul Citroen, Eva Besnyo, Nico Jesse, and others.

Through the extensive biographic essay in Gerard Fieret 1924-2009 which accompanies over 100 images, the more I learn of G.P. Fieret - the man - the more questions arise in attempting to figure out his life's work. He was forty-one when he took up photography - able to 'hide' behind its mask, but photography also exacerbated his fear of being 'seen' which left him vulnerable to a continuous state of persecution fantasies and conspiracy theories.

It is still unclear whether his obsessive use of ownership stamps were to ward of his fear that his work was being stolen (by the 'moloch' conspiracy he often referred to in interviews), whether he was purposely vandalizing his own images because of self-confessed feelings of anxiety and guilt ('I am a demonic person, I've done terrible things...'), whether he was, as I have ventured to guess before, stamping the nude female forms as an indication of 'ownership' of the women he portrayed.

On the subject of this series which started in the 1990s, Fieret was to be the first published twenty years ago but due to his contentious personality, it was abandoned in the favor of a monograph on Sannes Sannes. Sannes had been an artist who Fieret had displayed jealousy towards, later even becaming convinced that Sannes had stolen images from him and published them as his own. When Sannes died in a car accident in March of '67 Fieret became increasingly caught up in his own paranoid reasoning and historical reconstructions.

In the end, this biographical portrait renders a man who seems more disturbed than I had previously understood from the two volumes from the Fotomuseum Den Haag. A pack rat who's studios were littered with prints (some kept, for lack of space, in the freezer), a care-giver to small animals who was once evicted from an apartment for keeping too many pigeons, and a man haunted by childhood traumas of incest and abandonment.

Bookwise, Gerard Fieret 1924-2009 is a fine collection of images. The printing - although hard to tell with Fieret since his actual prints often embrace imperfection - can seem a bit blocked up at times but overall there is a quality fitting to Fieret. It was published in an edition of 1500 copies.

Outside In by Stephen Gill

2011-01-29T10:05:00.001-05:00

For years Photoworks has been commissioning photographers to explore areas of the South East of England, the results of those projects often wind up as exhibitions or, more importantly in my opinion, book projects. Last year Photoworks invited a few artists to explore Brighton and three new books have been published; one by Stephen Gill, one by Rinko Kawauchi and one by Alec Soth's daughter Carmen. My favorite of the bunch is Stephen Gill's Outside In.

With his ever present good humor and desire to think outside the box with his photography, Stephen decided to introduce material found in Brighton into the body of his cheap plastic lens camera. Thus seaweed, insects, broken glass, and garbage get in the way of his already hazy palette creating instant forms of collage.

Now those familiar with my past opinions of Stephen's books will know that I have a way of loving the way the books look and feel but find the actual photography not as interesting. Hackney Flowers is my personal favorite, Hackney Wick I still don't understand the fascination people seem to have with that title. Ok, so it wasn't my cup of tea.

My enjoyment of Outside In is curious to me because what I can see through all of the silhouetted objects in these pictures, the actual photographs aren't brilliant by themselves. Nor is the interplay between the objects and the image as strong as on display in Hackney Flowers, yet I am captivated by this little book. I think partly because in addition to the beauty of some of the images it provides for me fascinating puzzles of the optical properties of photography.

How, for example, does there seem to be a piece of electronic (?) equipment inside the camera rendered as if it was itself photographed in natural light (see fifth image in comp above)? Also, I imagine that if one introduced a lot of three dimensional objects into a camera such as this, when the camera was held up to make an image, most of it would slosh down to the bottom of the camera (which would actually be the top of the frame) yet in Gill's images much of it seems to be defying gravity and evenly disbursed. I am not doubting Gill's claims of process - just aspects in some of the images confound me, albeit in pleasurable ways.

Gill makes the analogy in his brief afterword in Outside In that these photos are like the "regurgitated contents of a giant vacuum cleaner bag." I like the thought of that. Photography already holds the potential for producing the illusion of literal and almost infinite description in "straight" practice. Gill's images seem to have physically sucked up parts of the world, shook them around unpredictably, and spilled the contents onto pieces of paper - a new order that is as messy and confounding as the world itself.

Outside In was published by Photoworks and the Archive of Modern Conflict.

Paris: Carnet de Recherche by Krass Clement

2010-12-29T10:32:00.003-05:00

Seeing the name Paris scream across the cover of Krass Clement's newest book Paris: Carnet de Recherche I braced myself for disappointment. The "home" of street photography has produced numerous books in the past which find themselves amounting to little beyond "greatest hits" collections of images offering syrupy nostalgia and no surprise. Clement is well aware of those familiar trappings - perhaps that is why the cover image printed right on the book's cloth shows a romantic Paris metro X-d out by a couple of steel girders. His is an uphill battle which I am delighted to see proves he is an artist who tests our expectations.

As in the best of Clement's books, Paris: Carnet de Recherche is a personal journey. Starting with a suite of images entering the city by train, we pass by cold landscapes of factories in dense grey light. Upon arrival, the city itself and its citizens appear weighed down and sluggish. Light seems to fight to illuminate the architecture and streets. It is hardly a warm arrival - our first destination - an empty cafe.

Photographed in both 35mm and square formats, Clement weaves through the city lingering for moments on small sequences of images - a woman improvises a dance in a bar that briefly lightens the mood; a protest in the streets led by youth. Interspersed are a few intimate images of women in hotel rooms, perhaps we are not traveling alone but our wanderings in the streets seem perceived through the eyes of someone longing for connection. Less for connection to place but for people.

In many of Clement's books of the past there is an obvious filmic quality. The repetition of images allows the subtlety of events to play out with surprising result without feeling indulgent. Following the gestures of a man swallowing a drink while two women gossip in the background is resonant in its simplicity. There is less of that "step by step" quality here which I find often so powerful, but I suppose it is due to when these images were made in his life as a photographer. Photographed in the 60s and 70s these would consist of early works of Clement's perhaps done before he was fully conscious of the methods he would employ in his later work and bookcraft. Here the sequence at times feels like a stream of jump-cuts and can appear sporadic. This might have been a fatal flaw to the book had Clement not been the great photographer he is. Still, he finds the connections between the individual frames to form links that, for the observant, will not disappoint. The end picture of a sequence of nighttime streets protests of youths burning a car is of a small wedding party where the wedding dress and veil reflect the previous conflagration. In another pairing, a woman on a subway hangs on the arm of a lover while on the facing page, a woman supports a dress she is offering for sale at a street market.

Bookwise, Paris: Carnet de Recherche is beautifully done. The publisher Gyldendal which releases many of Clemen't books has again done a superb job with design and printing. One relief is that there is no introductory text nor afterword - the photographs are allowed to stand on their own as an open-ended journey.

Clement's Novemberreisse from 2008 was one of my favorite books of the year and I was happy to see Paris: Carnet de Recherche appear as a "best of" suggestion by a couple people in the comments of my 2010 list. It was a steady contender for inclusion on mine as well but it has taken me some extra time to fully appreciate its nuances. Like most of Clement's best, it is a slow and quiet burn that lingers long after the covers are closed.

Dear Knights and Dark Horses by Thomas Roma

2010-12-14T14:15:00.000-05:00

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time—back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." - Thomas Wolfe

In 2005 I agreed to make some photographs for a non-profit organization concerned with returning veterans who were facing homlessness. For various reasons they had fallen through most societal safety nets after being denied their military benefits and were then living in shelters or worse, on the streets of New York. I was put in touch with a man living on Staten Island who's disability benefits had been revoked. What he did initially get in benefits from the government was now being asked to be paid back. Broke and unemployed, he and his young family were facing eviction from their home.

We talked and smoked cigarettes on his front porch while I made a handful of pictures. He was 29 and had spent two tours of duty in combat in Iraq. He spoke openly and even with excitement about his friends who were still serving as if he had just returned from an amazing and successful fishing trip. He asked if I would like to see some of his photographs.

On his laptop he previewed for me hundreds of images; his friends posing with futuristic weaponry and displaying a bravado that belied any apprehension. Interspersed were dozens of images of bodies of Iraqis strewn along the roadsides and in ditches. I say the word "bodies" but they looked more like rumpled bedsheets of skin with a limb or bone protruding indicating it was once a human being. He revealed no emotion but his pace slowed to half time, lingering on the photos of the bodies longer than his friends. I masked my inability to stomach his slideshow by staring at his hand working the computer mouse. I asked him if he looked at these pictures often and he said "all the time." Almost sounding hurt he added that his wife wouldn't look at them with him. He also mentioned he wished he could go back and serve a third tour or longer. He had found something inside himself there that he seemed to long for now that he was safe at home. I think of that man as I look through Thomas Roma's book Dear Knights and Dark Horses published this year by Powerhouse.

How photographers shape their personal protests vary greatly. Some book a flight and search out access to war to photograph directly and other do so in a more nuanced way. Roma is not a photojournalist. His book is a quieter, less immediately sensational protest, but none the less powerful. For those unaware, Roma has been photographing in Brooklyn for thirty years and is a prolific bookmaker. He is not a world traveller and rarely leaves home to make photographs. What connects him to home, his values, and desires, is woven into the texture of his pictures.

In January of 2004 Roma photographed Army National Guardsmen of the 258th Field Artillery Regiment as they were about to be deployed to Iraq from Jamaica, Queens in New York City. He pairs these portraits with a collection of pictures of coin-operated pony rides that can be found outside of many convenience markets and drug stores in his home city of Brooklyn. Divided in the book - the pony rides first, then the soldier portraits afterward - the pictures metaphorically comment on bravery, past youth and the moment felt when required to leave home. It avoids glamorizing war and bravery, instead concentrating on the individuals without depicting them with pity. These are the same men we sit next to on the subway, stand in line behind at the bank, or work beside.

If we associate youth with going to war, one will be surprised to see that a majority of these portraits are of men who appear to be older than expected. Perhaps some signed up for the National Guard with the intention of taking advantage of college money or a paycheck, playing the odds that history wouldn't thrust them into combat. Decked out in fatigues and loaded down with equipment, there is a weighty sluggishness present in the postures which I find unsettling. They are momentarily frozen like their dime-store counterparts waiting to be set into action. In front of Roma's camera, they look off towards an uncertain future while background details sometimes foreshadow their vulnerability. In one image, a ghostly disembodied leg marches through Roma's slow exposure.

The size, the sing-song title, and the simplicity of presentation of Dear Knights and Dark Horses, share qualities that might bring to mind it is book meant for children. One could argue it is. It is a parable of how experiences change our lives. Most of us will never go to war, our lives will change and our perspectives shift through less life threatening means. War however seems to change people like a blunt instrument. Like the man I met in 2005, they come back changed forever.

Best Books of 2010

2010-12-08T23:03:00.008-05:00

Year three of 5B4 has now passed and it is time for my Best Books of the Year list. There have been several books that will wind up being life long keepers so here are my top picks for 2010.

1. Lewis Baltz: Works
Long awaited box set finally released and is better than my already high expectations.

2. For Now by William Eggleston
Just received a copy right in time for the list. Great edit by the film-maker Michael Almeryda.

3. A New American Picture by Doug Rickard
My biggest surprise of the list. This work will be discussed for years to come.

4. Foto en Copyright Volume II by GP Fieret
Volume II of Fieret's life long passion for sensuous women and everyday life in The Hague.

5. Parse by John Baldessari

6. Quatorze Juillet by Johan van der Keuken
A few rolls of old film added with book smarts by Willem van Zoetendaal equals a near perfect little book.

7. Broken Manual by Alec Soth
Soth's approach to book-making is getting better with each title. My personal favorite of his so far.

8. Desperate Cars by Sebastien Girard
A follow up to Girard's Nothing But Home and as good. Can't wait for the third volume...

9. Mexican Suitcase: Robert Capa
A ton of material assembled into a fine form. What more do you want?

10. The Pond by John Gossage
It's a reprint with three extra plates and a new essay. One of my all time favorite books so it needs to be on the list!

11. In Numbers Serial Publications by Artists Since 1955
Smartly assembled by Philip E. Aarons, Andrew Roth and Victor Brand.

12. Four Cowboys by Richard Prince
Only four images which aren't his? And a best of the year?

13. 720: Two Times Around by Andrew Phelps
It's not just because of my nostalgia for skating...

14. How Terry Likes His Coffee by Florian van Roekel
A fine first book. Looking forward to his follow up...

15. Michael Schmidt 89/90
Michael Schmidt, enough said...

What were your faves of the year?????

Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream by Jindřich Štyrský

2010-12-03T09:29:00.003-05:00

While in Prague last Spring I found a facsimile reprint of Jindřich Štyrský's Emilie přichází ke mně ve snu (Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream) published by Torst in 2001.

Originally published in 1933, only approximately 20 known copies remain of Emilie přichází ke mně ve snu. Štyrský was a painter, poet, photographer, collage artist and editor. A founding member of The Surrealist Group of Chechoslovakia he edited for the Erotiká Revue that included illustrations by well-known Czech artists and had an imprint called Edice 69 (Edition 69) where Emilie přichází ke mně ve snu appeared as volume 6.

Štyrský was fascinated by dreams and recorded his own through writing, and later, drawings. For him, the dream state was a storehouse of motifs that he would join together in collage and painting until his death in 1942.

Styrsky's imagery is a blurring between the erotic and the morbid. Using hardcore porn clipped from German and English stereo-cards and books, Styrsky disassociates sex from procreation and conceives of it from a purely pleasure giving point of view. The incongruous elements of plant details, a parachute and starry backgrounds emphasize the orgasmic while skeletons, men in gas masks, coffins and disembodied eyes draw a more sinister tone. Styrsky may have been poking fun at puritans who certainly would have been enraged by the montages by including the darker elements. As Bohuslav Brouk wrote in his afterword for Emilie; "People who hide their sexuality despise their innate capabilities without being able to rise above them. They deny their mortality...Any illusion to to their animality, not only in life, but also in science, literature and art, wounds them because it disturbs their day-dreaming."

This reprint brings together 12 photo-montage, the introductory erotic dreamscape written by Styrsky about Emilie, the afterword by Brouk and a modern essay by Karel Srp written in 2001. The original edition included just 10 photomontages, Styrky's story and the Brouk afterword. Two plates from the series which were edited out of the original might have been excluded because of suspected child pornography. Those two have been included here.

The book is printed on paper I imagine was chosen to reflect the original, it is matte in finish and the typesetting seems to also reflect the older edition as well. The original however consisted of the ten plates tipped onto the page and not printed.

Another edition I discovered of Emilie přichází ke mně ve snu was printed for the Ubu Gallery in 1997. This edition features a black cover, is slightly larger in size than the original (only about 1/2 to 3/4 inch in height and width) and is printed on a glossier paper stock. This edition includes the same texts as the original translated into English. The original texts were in Czech. This edition also includes the two additional controversial plates. It was published in an edition of 1000.

Note: Thanks to Charlie Rhyne for informing me about the Ubu Gallery edition.

A New American Picture by Doug Rickard

2010-11-30T08:33:00.003-05:00

The older notions of photographers physically exploring their world may have in some ways come to pass. The Egglestons, Shores, Levitts, Winogrands ventured out with perhaps only the loosest intentions or framework of a "project" and allowed the world to provide. It is common now for artists to conceive of a project first and then impose that view almost filter-like upon what they are looking at. I would never argue that one approach is better than the other as long as - in the case of the latter - the work doesn't become a mere illustration of an idea. For me, I learned photography through an ability to trust in the world and a rather strong distrust of "ideas," so clever frameworks rarely excite unless the work from image to image surprises and transcends. Doug Rickard's work in his book A New American Picture has me excited, perhaps a bit disturbed, and completely captivated.

Rickard's work on this project has a clever framework. He has been exploring the world through Google street views. Google has been mapping the world from the vantage point of the center of its streets. The camera, tethered to a GPS system, is mounted on a car and takes wide angle images every twenty feet or so from a fixed height of about 7 feet. The user of Google's street views can not only pan 360 degrees but pan up and down and zoom in on a part of the image. The final images are run through facial recognition software which attempts to blur the faces of people unintentionally recorded when the camera car passed by.

Surveillance cameras in banks or on city streets have the potential to record an image which is as worthy of high praise as any made by Frank or Evans. So is the case of the billions of snapshots made around the world every day from amateurs. Rickard has been sifting through Google's images to - like any photographer working in the streets - find interesting things to stare at and photograph them off of his computer monitor. In terms of street photography, several factors have been taken away; one is timing as the photographs are triggered by the GPS system when the car passes over a specific coordinate and the second is vantage point, so the usual "finding out where to stand" element is off the table as well.

In A New American Picture, which through its title and chosen locations I sense a nod towards Evans's American Photographs, you will find hints of the historical reference points which have certainly informed Rickard's work. The photographers I mentioned in the first paragraph are brought to mind and Rickard's attraction to a certain color palate is common to the 1970s photographers working in color, especially Eggleston.

A grid of these images are on display at the new Le Bal museum in Paris alongside Anthony Hernandez, Lewis Baltz, Chauncey Hare, Walker Evans and others and I was struck by how the splayed perspective of the camera-car's wide angle lens (which seems to be around a 24mm in 35mm terms) echoed Hare's interiors or the field of view from Hernandez's Los Angeles bus stop images. This wide field of view presents interesting photographic problems that fascinated artists like Garry Winogrand - one of which is asking the question of how small can an element such as body language or gesture be and still carry some of the weight of an image. In most of Rickard's choices people are reduced to basic features which rely on such elements for meaning.

The places he has chosen to "google" were often spots Rickard has physically traveled to at one time or another and then when back at home, looked for that same place on street views. Most often he is drawn to the outskirts of cities where the fabric of society is being tested by poverty and run down infrastructure. A majority of the citizens caught in his frames are black, the homes bring to mind the bleakness of Evans's descriptions of depression era houses - an appropriate concentration on the part of Rickard considering the recent economic blight in America.

If I find flaw in A New American Picture, it is with the edit. I happened to see a talk on this work with David Campany and Sebastian Hau at Le Bal and if my memory serves me, there were several images I found captivating in that slideshow which are missing here in the book. The book does have a page noting Plates 1-69 which seems to hint at further volumes and Campany mentioned editing the Le Bal exhibition from over 300 of Rickard's images. This edit favors more images of a single person alone in the landscape which I find a bit repetitive.

A New American Picture was published by White Press. Each title they publish has a hand-crafted quality which is elegant and well done. For those not familiar with White Press' other books check out Frederick Lezmi's Beyond Borders, Verena Lowenhaupt's CU Tokyo, and Igor Chepikov's M.O.C.K.B.A. A New American Picture was made in an edition of 200 numbered copies. I have heard that there might be a larger publisher planning a different book of this same work but either way, it is books like these which show that the history of the photobook is still moving forward and Parr/Badger should start working on volume III.

Errata Editions Books on Books #9-12 finished!

2010-11-28T09:57:00.009-05:00

I know that I have been starting each of my very sporadic postings with an apology for the silence but I am finally back in NYC after attending Paris Photo, the Offprint Paris Book Fair, and spending several days press checking the new Errata Editions books in China. I wasn't able to blog while on press just like last year because the Great Firewall of China is still blocking access to blog sites. I promise to be resuming my posts regularly. My "vacation" is now over.

This time around I was five days on-press as we were doing five books (four new and a second printing of Walker Evans: American Photographs). I survived on little sleep and lots of what I now call a "Wall-Mart Espresso" (3-5 packets of powdered Nescafe coffee in a half cup of hot water stirred with the body of a Bic lighter). As exhausting as the press checks are, I am pleased with the results and hope you'll be too. The new books are:

Books on Books #9 Paul Graham: Beyond Caring. Published in 1986 Beyond Caring is now considered one of the key works from Britain’s wave of New Color photography that was gaining momentum in the 1980s. While commissioned to present his view of ‘Britain in 1984,’ Graham turned his attention towards the waiting rooms, queues and poor conditions of overburdened Social Security and Unemployment offices across the United Kingdom. Photographing surreptitiously, his camera is both witness and protagonist within a bureaucratic system that speaks to the humiliation and indignity aimed towards the most vulnerable end of society. Books on Books #9 presents every page-spread of Graham’s controversial book along with a contemporary essay by writer and curator David Chandler.

Books on Books #10 Zdeněk Tmej’s Abeceda duševního prázdna (The Alphabet of Spiritual Emptiness) published in 1946 enables a rare look, from a captive’s perspective, inside a Nazi forced labor camp in Breslau, Poland during World War 11. It is remarkable that Tmej, a Czech citizen made to work for the Nazi war effort for two years, was allowed to photograph at all, let alone describe the psychological stasis of his experience with the poetic voice that these portraits and still-lifes convey. Books on Books #10 presents every page spread from this extremely rare and fragile document including the original texts by Alexandra Urbanová translated for the first time into English. Czech photo historian Vladimír Birgus contributes a contemporary essay on Tmej called Zdeněk Tmej’s Conscripted Labor in Germany.

Books on Books #11 Alexey Brodovitch’s Ballet. Published in 1945 is one of the most legendary of photobook masterpieces. While already established as a leading influential art director and graphic designer, Brodovitch turned his photographic talents towards rehearsals and performances of ballet companies visiting New York stages. Shot in 35mm and disregarding traditional conventions of “good” technique, Brodovitch pushed the boundaries of description to create a panorama of images that perfectly captures the motion and spirit of dance. Books on Books #11 reproduces every dynamic page spread from this rarely seen volume along with a contemporary essay written by leading Brodovitch scholar Kerry William Purcell.

Books on Books #12 László Moholy-Nagy’s 60 Fotos sets forth the framework and ideas behind the ‘New Vision’ of modern photography from the legendary Bauhaus teacher and key figure in early experimental photographic practice. Published in 1930 as the first book in the planned Fototek series on ‘New Photography,’ 60 Fotos evoked a complex and multi-layered dialogue using some of Moholy-Nagy’s finest examples of ‘straight’ photographs, negative prints, photograms, and photomontage. Books on Books #12 reproduces every page spread from this classic treatise on photography along with a contemporary essay from the noted photo-historian David Evans.

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Pre-order your set of the Limited Editions of Books on Books #9-12 here.

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Lewis Baltz: Works

2010-10-25T13:43:00.004-04:00

Have you ever had a night of pure gluttony? Ever sat down, watching for instance the playoffs for the World Series - seeing both your hometown and adopted town lose - on your lap is a half gallon of ice cream and in your right hand, a spoon. You keep making a mental note that you shouldn't have anymore because the carton is three quarters empty and the edge of your spoon-hand is practically a plaster cast of sugar. Yet you take another spoonful and press the substance to the roof of your mouth making those little half swallows like a baby suckling a breast. While savoring the flavor, the coolness or the slight grit to the ice on our tongue, your hand automatically motions downward for another shovel full. You feel slightly disgusted with yourself. That is how I felt as I kept methodically turning pages of every book in my first choice for Book(s) of the Year - the Lewis Baltz: Works box set from Steidl. I couldn't stop. Just one more picture. Then another, and another, and another, as if the books would disappear off my shelf the following morning.

It probably comes as no surprise that I have been a fan of Lewis Baltz since art school and have sought out his books over the years. I saw him speak once in the late 90s where he recounted a story about showing John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art his New Industrial Parks photographs. While looking at the photos John had made three piles of pictures - when he was finished he showed Lewis the prints the museum would want to purchase. Lewis said he was a bit offended and said they would have to buy all of the set or none - it wasn't divisible.

I shyly asked Lewis about this after the lecture because I didn't understand why he was so offended about John choosing images. I asked "isn't that a curator's job to chose images etc." Baltz responded with a few elegantly worded sentences, 50% of which I couldn't understand because of my stunted vocabulary but what I did comprehend without a dictionary was the idea that dividing up the work could contextualize it differently than if it were kept together. Would a painter cut a canvas if the curator only wanted a section? (Ray Johnson would but who else?). Baltz asked if we could continue the conversation outside so he could smoke but I took the opportunity to slink back into the crowd and disappear being that, although he was extremely nice (Michael Schmidt once described him "with oriental politeness"), I felt completely intimidated by him.

I think I partly respond so strongly to Baltz and Robert Adams and maybe to a lesser extent, Gossage, because the describe landscapes that seem so familiar because I grew up in Arizona where construction/expansion and destruction are linked. Where ideas of money outweigh all common sense. I would ride my bike through entire neighborhoods with paved roads and cul-de-sacs but no homes to be seen - the investors pulled out just before any foundations were laid.

The dividing line between nature and suburb was defined by where paved roads bled into dirt and the no-mans-land strip where people would drag their refuse into the desert for illegal dumping. To come across a sun-blistered washing machine miles from the nearest home in the desert feels like stumbling across a crime scene - violence sensed in the shimmering heat off its surface.

Three books of this ten volume set were released a few years ago through the Whitney Museum and RAM - The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California, The Prototype Works, and The Tract Houses. This set includes; Park City, Nevada, Maryland, San Quentin Point, Sites of Technology, Near Reno and Continuous Fire Polar Circle. The only large body of work that is missing is Candlestick Point which I assume was excluded because it is Baltz's only book which is not in a square format.

In comparing some of my older first editions to these some differences can be seen. Firstly, the printing always looked good to my eye with Baltz's books but compared to these new Steidl printings, the plates are more open and yet retain their richness revealing more detail. In Park City, Baltz has moved the captions opposite the images much like in his New Industrial Parks book rather than as a list before the plates start. He also replaced the Gus Blaisdell essay - in the original edition, a "Foreword" which appears afterward - with a newer essay by Hubertus van Amelunxen. Maryland, which was released originally as a booklet from the Corcoran Gallery of Art as a part of the 1976 exhibition The Nation's Capital in Photographs, shows all of the images from the exhibition in their correct order since the catalogue, for whatever reason, is sequenced out of order. Nevada, a 1978 Castelli gallery catalogue I never owned so I cannot compare but this version contains 15 images and I imagine is the same.

All follow the same design and size, all are covered in cloth the color of freshly poured concrete. It was printed in 1100 copies all of which are signed and numbered. I had heard this will be a quick sell out so I hope some of you that can afford the price can still manage to get a set.

Three Annual Reports from Ringier

2010-10-10T22:44:00.004-04:00

The Swiss-based media company Ringier founded in 1833 has for several years published over 400 fine art books under their imprint JRP Ringier with the likes of Richard Prince, John Baldessari, Louise Bourgeois, Fischli and Weiss and others. What some might not know is that Ringier commissions an artist each year to spice up the corporate droll of their annual reports. Some of these titles are later released for sale (minus the company's financial graphs and information) as artist books but recently I picked up a few of the actual annual reports. Often these differ slightly from the "released" version of the book but they are interesting none the less.

The first is the latest from 2009, John Baldessari's Parse. As you know from some of my past postings I am a big fan of Baldessari and Parse is a new favorite. Working from a large and seemingly endless archive of film stills he "processes" the images by cropping, clipping and juxtaposing them into new visual realizations. Often full of humor and absurdity, they create new narratives like a badly acted B movie.

Within the "chapters" of Parse, Baldessari reveals the original picture in its un-cropped fullness. This can have the effect of a mental flashback where the viewer rests for a moment on the "real" context of the original yet recognizes that the original is as strange as his processed edited version. The way Baldessari designed each page in Parse makes for a fascinating panorama of images where the flow of his fragmented language compels the viewer to make connections.

This "report" edition varies from the released artist book in paper stock and binding. This version is softcover with a thick cardstock covers which for this somewhat thick book makes for a flimsy shell. This is not really a criticism, as it's drooping and floppy nature, for me, is as enjoyably unruly to hold as his images are to decipher.

The second I received is a report from 2005 created by Richard Prince called Jokes and Cartoons.

Made up of clippings, paintings and emails, Jokes and Cartoons repeats a hand full of old gags based on social cliches and expectations engendered by the cultural mainstream. As Prince has said of his material: "Jokes and cartoons are a part of any mainstream magazine. They're right up there with the editorial and advertisements and table of contents and letters to the editors. They're part of the layout, part of the 'sights' and 'gags.' Sometimes they are political, sometimes they just make fun of everyday life. Once in a while they drive people to protest and storm foreign embassies and kill people."

The third report is the oldest from 2002, HELLO... created by the artist Alexandra Mir. If the Baldessari is my favorite, this one runs a close second.

Mir, in trolling through the picture archives of Ringier has created a daisy chain of images where each picture, often a family snapshot or press image includes two people. The person on the right side of the frame connects to the following image where that person appears with a third person which connects to a fourth person and on and on and on. As Ringier is a company has been family owned from its beginnings, this chain work starts with a picture Hans and Annette Ringier on the cover and moves through a world of public figures including the artist herself. Eventually, the chain comes full circle where the last photograph include Hans Ringier again, of course on the right side of the frame connecting him to the cover image - and round and round we go a second time.

This report over its 60 pages makes only a couple hundred connections but the structure of this could potentially amount to a lifetime's work of connections made that encircle the span of the world's photographed population. Skiing is a repeated motif which, for me, appropriately accentuates the ease in which Mir presents these often cleaver connections of people.

Other reports that haven't been released for sale include works by Josh Smith, Richard Phillips, Matt Mullican, Christopher Williams, Liam Gillick, Harold F. Müller, and Christian Philipp Müller.

Der Rote Bulli and Eyes Look Through You

2010-10-07T09:03:00.000-04:00

This year I was invited to contribute a couple essays to books that are currently available. Since blogging is more or less pressure-free, I accepted these challenges with great apprehension but I'm fairly happy with the results. You be the judge.

The larger of the two is a brick-like catalog from the NRW Forum Dusseldorf called Der Rote Bulli: Stephen Shore and the New Dusseldorf Photography. This is an exhibition curated and edited by Christoph Schaden and Werner Lippert on the occasion of Dusseldorf's Quadrennial 2010 that examines the generations of photographers that have studied at the Art Academy in Dusseldorf under Bernd and Hilla Becher. At its heart, is the transatlantic dialogue between Germany and the United States that rose due to the influence of Stephen Shore's work that would appear in his landmark book Uncommon Places.

Der Rote Bulli - The Red Bully - refers to the red Volkswagon van that appears in Stephen Shore's photograph Church Street and Second Street, Easton, Pennsylvania, June 20, 1974. This image was made on the first day Shore used an 8 x 10 camera that he had been given by the influential Metropolitan Museum curator Weston Neuf after Shore set off to the industrial regions of Pennsylvania. He had made only one previous photograph before setting up his tripod on Church street, a straight on portrait of Easton resident Nicholas Bader wearing an unbuttoned pink shirt. In that image, Bader stares directly into the lens with a questioning gaze, presumably a mirrored reflection of Shore's own expression as he was depressing the shutter - figuring out how this new tool would greatly shift his approach to photographing.

In Schaden's book and exhibition, the Church street image becomes an important marker that would connect the German and US dialogue on current practice. One year after the Church street picture was made it appeared in the legendary New Topographics show in Rochester. The Becher's, who were the only European photographers to have work in the show, had seen the image and eventually purchased a print of it for their own collection soon thereafter. Whatever the presumed attraction they might have had to that particular image, one superficial link is interesting to note, they had also owned an identical red VW van in which they had logged thousands of miles documenting industrial architecture until Bernd's death in 2007.

In examining Shore's influence on the Becher students of the Art Academy in Dusseldorf, Schaden has chosen a smart edit of images from the expected stars (Gursky, Struth, Ruff, Hutte, Hofer), but more importantly, from unexpected or less familiar artists like Volker Dohne, Wendelin Bottlander, Tata Ronkholz, Andi Brenner, Claus Goedicke. This is an important inclusion since the Becher's taught almost 80 masters students between 1976 and 1998.

Several texts accompany this 344 page book, including essays by Christoph Schaden, Maren Polte, Gerald Schroder and mine on the reception of the Becher's work in the United States between 1968 and 1991. My essay is based on, and indebted to, the in-depth two year research by Christoph Schaden on the various ways the work was perceived here in the US which often ran in opposition to how the Bechers saw their work.

The exhibition in Dusseldorf will be on-view at the NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft in Dusseldorf until January 16, 2011.

The other book I contributed to is Eyes Look Through You from the Brooklyn-based photographer Ted Partin who was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany.

For the last decade Partin has been photographing his friends and extended tribe in Brooklyn and elsewhere with the lush description from an 8 x10 camera. His subjects, mostly thirty-somethings around the age of Partin himself, persuade us to see their individualism in these intimate portraits. Neither completely real (Partin often directs his subjects) nor consciously conceived fictions, his pictures sit within a territory where the dividing line between the innocent and perverse, reality and fantasy, is often blurred.

His subjects aren't fearful of presenting their personal idiosyncrasies to his camera or the larger world in general. They tattoo their bodies and modify themselves in the hopes of shaping their personal identities. In the image that graces the cover, a boyish-looking young woman lays on a table as the tattooist's gun, barely perceptible, works on her shoulder. She gazes as calm as if simply deep in thought. Pain has become a commonplace experience that is endured, perhaps even invited. This is one thread which links many of Partin's photographs; life is full of discomfort, arm yourself and adapt, get used to it.

Partin acknowledges that sitting before a camera creates a level of discomfort for most of his subjects, so why not work within this emotional space and use the effect to the picture's advantage? This sentiment is felt by noticing how many of Partin's subjects find themselves posing upon uncomfortable looking surfaces. Tabletops, asphalt rooftops, sidewalks, iron gratings echo of the world's hardness.

What do we ultimately take away from Partin's pursuit? His pictures persuade us to see individuals, giving them volume and weight. Beyond age difference, tattoos or clothing we enter a common human exchange as if meeting someone face to face. Their image is to be considered and though photographs do not allow us to fully "know" these people in any real sense, we draw a resounding connection through their poignancy, in hope of knowing just a little more about ourselves through their presence.

Eyes Look Through You is hardcover and includes two essays and a transcript of an interview between Partin and Sylvia Martin, the exhibition's curator.

How Terry Likes His Coffee by Florian van Roekel

2010-09-27T11:35:00.008-04:00

I am not dead and neither is 5B4. I have just been swamped with two months of preparing the next four Errata Editions books to be press-ready for November. Those of you that have published your own books understand how much time and effort goes into their production – try doing four at once. I will announce what they are this coming week.

There is a small stack of books here that I have been wanting to write and now that life is getting more manageable I can get to them. The first is Florian van Roekel’s How Terry Likes His Coffee which I discovered a few months back during the Arles festival.

The book is subtitled: A Photo Odyssey into Office Life. I have never had a desk job, worked 40 hours a week for a paycheck, nor wanted to and I have a strong sense that I wouldn’t be a good fit in such an environment. I believe in the adage Do something you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life, so it is my hope that there are millions of people out there who love sitting in conference rooms, talking on phones, and passing the hours reading excel documents, otherwise this can get too depressing.

How Terry Likes His Coffee opens with a few pages of white, lined paper upon which people have doodled, perhaps somewhat unconsciously while on the phone or performing some other task that can’t quite take full control of their mind. These pages prepare you for the expected – the staleness of office drudgery. They are hopeful but ultimately fleeting reminders of an alternate dreamlife and the need for an active mind to be stimulated. Coffee might be the other need. The first photograph, as hopeful as the drawings but as sad, describes flaccid balloons and party decorations hanging from a drop ceiling. One balloon is marked with the number 50 and one might suspect these are the remnants of an improvised birthday celebration that will be taken down and thrown away by the office cleaning crew.

That photograph is followed by a few somewhat predictable still lifes of file boxes and water coolers. Things get more interesting for me a couple pages later as Roekel describes suit jackets draped over the backs of chairs. They seem to sway to some unexpected breeze – a flurry of movement disrupting stale air.

The monotony of work, especially in front of computer or while on the phone has been a common theme in photography. One might think of Friedlander’s brilliant repetition of people staring into computer screens which were published as multiplying grids in the catalog Three on Technology from the mid-80s. Roekel engages a similar strategy through repetition, photographing the backs of people’s heads as they go about their assigned tasks, the crispness of his lighting highlights hair-styles as a subtle marker of personality in each person.

The fourth “chapter” for me becomes the most interesting section as Roekel creates facing page diptychs of the workers on the phone. Often nearly identical pictures with only slight difference in the shift of the eyes or hand gestures. The workers are not speaking but listening. Their eyes seem to make clear that they are in the midst of digesting what is being said yet we might read deeper realizations are taking place.

The office space as absurdist comedy has been effectively done before by the likes of Tunbjork and there is a sparseness to this work I like throughout the book. Roekel boils down the images to simple close-ups. There are almost no photos that establish what this business is, nor the layout of the larger space. They keep you focusing on small details for their meaning. They are claustrophobic and the way his artificial light falls off quickly to darkness brings an ominous tone which can be stifling.

The last chapter is a suite of pictures outside of the building where a managed landscape of trees transitions the corporate from the natural. Again Roekel keeps his camera close and doesn’t offer much by way of escape. He photographs the trees much in the same way he photographed the suit jackets – slowly swaying in the silent breeze that has blown through his exposure.

How Terry Like His Coffee was published in an edition of 500 hand-numbered copies.

Soviet Aviation by Rodchenko and Stepanova

2010-08-13T08:37:00.005-04:00

The book that won Best Photography Book of the Year at PhotoEspana is Editorial Lampreave's facsimile of Alexander Rodchenko and Vavara Stepanova's Soviet Aviation originally published in 1939. This was one of the famed "World's Fair" publications (along with a series of small booklets) created to show off the Soviet Union's advances in science, technology, and all great affairs of the State structure. Rodchenko and Stepanova were assigned the task of designing three which also included Moscow and A Pageant of Youth which featured sports and athleticism as its subject. With seemingly endless amount of money flowing from the State into such publications the design and craftsmanship that went into some of these propaganda books is now known to be extravagant. Often with die-cuts, gatefolds, use of different paper stock and fine art printing, the results can be breathtaking.

The genesis of Soviet Aviation apparently happened at breakneck speed. According to the dates and terms of the original publishing contract, Rodchenko and Stepanova had only eleven days after signing onto the project to show a complete mock-up of the final book and had less than one month to fully realize and present final art work to the printer - much of it requiring heavy retouching to the original photos.

Rodchenko was in charge of design and Stepanova handled the "object" and "story," but Point 8 of their publishing contract terms effectively erased public knowledge of their authorship by stating "the artist will not declare any right to intellectual property." In all three books, neither Rodchenko's nor Stepanova's name can be found but rather a credit that these books were simply, "printed in the Soviet Union."

Soviet Aviation is a beautiful book with many page spreads that show Rodchenko's brilliance towards dynamic layouts. Some pages have stand alone images which are perceived as simply pictures in an album while other spreads form incredible photomontage and graphics we have come to be familiar with in other Rodchenko and Stepanova collaborations like Moscow Under Construction, First Cavalry, and Ten Years of Uzebekistan.

That said, Soviet Aviation is also one of the simpler books in terms of it bells and whistles. There are no die-cuts or gatefolds and unlike several other publications that employed the use of different toned inks in their printing, this one is printed in a uniform monochrome blue making it in comparison much less dynamic. Of course, this makes it a curious choice of all of the Rodchenko and Stepanova books to reprint but ultimately the most practical. The cost to a modern publisher (surely not working with State monies) to reproduce all of the extravagances of those other titles would be certain to strain the budget to the breaking point.

Soviet Aviation present the entire original book in full scale - standing 15" high. Included are two contemporary essays in the back - one written by Rodchenko's nephew Alexander Lavrentiev - that discuss the history of the book and the Soviet Union's advances in flight. Both are well written and vastly informative.

Printed over seventy years ago, the original was meant to be a celebration of flight and innovation created by the anonymous hands of a collective society. That voice, carefully crafted by two geniuses of book objects and design, may have wanted to appear to be spoken from a unified nation but the nuance of language belongs to just Stepanvova and Rodchenko.

El Lissitzky and Max Burchartz reprints from Lars Müller

2010-08-05T23:54:00.001-04:00

While in Koln Germany recovering from the Kassel festival burnout I made many non-photobook discoveries, one of which was a series that Verlag Lars Muller published in the mid-90s reprinting facsimiles of great graphic design from the 20s and 30s.

These are cardboard slipcased boxes of loose material, often magazines, pamphlets, posters and single sheet replicas of letterhead or company advertising created by El Lissitzky and Max Burchartz and others. Individual boxes are dedicated to the work of one designer. I believe there are four in the series. Two others I saw but didn't buy are on the pamphlets and prospectus from the architect Hannes Meyer, and reprints of the architecture magazine from the Bauhaus, ABC which was published from 1924-28 (edited by Hans Schmidt, Mart Stam, El Lissitzky and Emil Roth).

The first that caught my eye in the Walther Konig's bookstore is a box that contains reprints of El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg's Vesc magazines. It debuted in 1922 with the aim of acting as a "link between two neighboring communication trenches" - that of young Russian and western European artists triangulating Berlin, Paris and Moscow. Constructivist in agenda it featured art and writing, "whose task is not to embellish life but organize it."

Its emphasis on literature, art and music contained divergent attitudes and viewpoints partly due to the editor's openness to include of a wide variety of contributors but mostly because 1922 was a watershed year when Dadism was splitting into new camps rational and irrational tendencies - constructivism and surrealism. Contributors included; Lissitzky (of course), Fernand Leger, Boris Pasternak, Le Corbusier, Nicolai Punin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Raoul Hausmann, Harold Loeb, Juan Gris and dozens of others.

This box includes the three issues of Vesc in two booklets (the original issues one and two were combined into a single volume) and a larger book of translations and essays on the magazine's history. There are relatively few illustrations with the articles but the typography and layout are visually exhilarating. The contemporary book of comments and translations (which thankfully includes English) has a fine essay by Roland Nachtigaller and Hubertus Gassner.

The second box from this series I picked up is even better than the first, Max Burchartz: Typografische Arbeiten 1924-1931. If the Lissitzky and Ehrenburg box seems a little empty since it is only three booklets, the Burchartz box is virtually overflowing with material.

Although he never reached the level of fame attached to other designers, Burchartz is now considered a pioneer of modern design. His beginnings in painting and advertising expanded into typography, photography and furniture design. Admired by Jan Tschichold, some examples of his page layouts appeared in Tschichold's classic The New Typography in 1928. His theories of color control for building interiors that he developed while working with the architect Alfred Fischer were thought groundbreaking but ultimately forgotten until recently.

One of the most exciting inclusions in this box are a series of company pamphlets he made for the steel fabrication company Bochumer Verein. Bold use of color schemes, photography and typography beautifully illustrate offerings of bells, springs, railroad tracks, mining tools, crankshafts, and mechanisms used for ship propellors. One might imagine that much of the design greatness of these 10 folios from 1925 went perhaps unnoticed by the tradesman who they were aimed to entice.

Other items included are a couple of advertising pamphlets for a door handle company called Wehag which feature some door handles Burchartz designed himself, a theater program booklet and theater schedule poster from 1925, a poster from a vacuum company called Orion, as well as personal designs for his letterhead and calling card.

The paper stock and printing used for these boxes reflect the original materials. All in all there are 26 items to Typografische Arbeiten, all of which are produced at 1:1 scale. Also included is a booklet on Burchartz's personal history but unfortunately for me, it is in German with no English translation.

These reprint boxes are modestly priced at around 60-80 dollars and luckily from what I see through used book listings they haven't really jumped in price a great deal since their initial publication. If early design and typography is your thing then these are well worth a look.

For a Language to Come by Takuma Nakahira

2010-08-03T23:51:00.001-04:00

My last posting on the sweep of awards for Japanese books in Arles leads me to mention the new edition of Takuma Nakahira's For a Language to Come just published by Osiris.

Originally appearing in 1970, Kitarubeki Kotoba no Tameni is Nakahira's jarring description of a dark world - a landscape where the natural order of light and shadow, distinctions of space and time, is upset. From the opening image, the descriptive qualities of Nakahira's approach set a tone of brooding, where even the brightest burst of light can't seem to penetrate the shadows. His staggering vantage points seem envisioned by someone wounded or intoxicated by their surroundings. The apocalypse is nearing or has passed, that is unclear, but the physical impact of the environment on this wanderer couldn't be clearer.

The stifling claustrophobia of space in this world is extreme. Nakahira purposely condenses his tones and contrast to foreshorten space leaving little opportunity to breathe in the landscape. At night, spotlights and fluorescents offer little depth as if the speed of light was dragged to a standstill. When in natural light, we are often oppressed by a weighty haze of grey sky pushing down on the horizon line. The few pedestrians we encounter seem like sluggish sleepwalkers aimlessly going through the motions of life. This is not the dark but invigorated vision of Moriyama but a slowed pulse, the occasional images of lolling waves setting the pace.

This reprint follows the same edit and sequencing of the original. The original jacketed softcover wraps have been changed to a hardcover with a new design by Hattori Kazunari (a new interpretation of the idiosyncratic original by Tsunehisa Kimura). The original rich gravure printing, since now an extinct process, has given way to a finely handled offset. The paper is slightly glossier than the original.

In questioning how photography functions as either a language or something that exists "on the reverse side of language," Nakahira would ultimately re-examine his work in 1973, find it shackled by "expression" and shifted towards the attitude that photography must be like "an illustrated dictionary...[which]... consists only in clarifying the fact that material things are things." This would lead to his burning much of his past work on a beach near his home.

Now that this new edition is presented to us after so much has been written about it - essentially confirming its status as one of the masterpieces of Japanese photography - it is interesting to question how it will be seen, apart from scholarship, within a contemporary viewpoint. Considering Nakahira's initial attempt to reject and destroy it, a level of historical value has won out. 40 years has passed since Nakahira revealed this world and questioned what is photography and what is language, now it can be tested again and see how his "thoughts" stand against time.

Yutaka Takanashi: Photography 1965-74

2010-08-01T00:03:00.005-04:00

A month ago marked the start of the 2010 Les Rencontres D'Arles smoking convention which I attended for a few days. I found a small number of books (still trying to show restraint) which I will mention in the upcoming weeks. The main draw for me is the competition which names one "contemporary" book and one "historical" book as "best of the year" - the winners get 8000 euros each. Last year I entered the first Errata Editions books for the historical prize and we didn't fair very well. The judges that year were extremely critical of the concept of my books and not for the reasons you would think. (See my report from last year for more details).

So this year I entered the new Errata books with no hope of a prize but purely to help introduce them to a new audience. That Saturday, the day I was leaving, they made the final decision on the two awards and I was excited, not to mention surprised, to hear that this year's judges liked the series so much they were considering them for the historical prize. Their final decision went to Japanese Photobooks of the 60s and 70s from Aperture instead, but I am pleased to say that during the award ceremony that evening, they gave Errata Editions a special runner-up mention.

The winner of the contemporary book went to Only Photography's fine book Yutaka Takanashi Photography 1965-74. Only Photography is Roland Angst's independent publishing house in Berlin. Their books are beautifully produced with a strong care towards design and printing and the Takanashi book is their best so far. Past titles have been Ray K. Metzker's Automagic and Frauke Eigen's Shoku.

This hardcover book presents an edit of 41 images from Toshi-e in a large vertical format and the selection corresponded to an exhibition of mostly vintage prints that was on display at Galerie Priska Pasquer in Cologne, Germany. This marked the first solo showing of Takanashi in Germany. One of the gallery directors, Ferdinand Bruggemann is a specialist on Japanese photography and contributes a fine essay on Takanashi and his masterwork, Toshi-e. A second essay by Hitoshi Suzuki, who was an assistant to Kohei Suguira the book's designer, provides a personal remembrance of discovering the book in Seguira's design studio while it was being created. A short preface from the gallerist Priska Pasquer opens the book.

Yutaka Takanashi Photography 1965-74 is beautifully realized with three different cover images silk screened onto the cloth of the boards. A yellow translucent dustjacket wraps the book and the color I have been told reflects the tone off an exhibition poster from the first solo exhibit of this work in Japan in the 1980s. The printing of the plates is also exquisite - a modern offset interpretation of the original's lush gravure which remains rich and clean. The design reflects the twisting and turning of the original (horizontals oriented vertically) but with additional gatefolds for a few of the horizontal pictures. It was printed in an edition of only 500, 30 of which come signed and numbered with a print. An additional 100 were signed and numbered by Takanashi. I strongly recommend this book if you can get one. They are a bit pricey but I assure you it is because these books were expensive to produce.

So this year was a clean sweep of awards nodding towards Japan (it was also our study of Toshi-e that had gotten the main attention from the jury). My congratulations go to Aperture and Roland of Only Photography, I don't mind coming in second when the competition was that strong.

720 (Two times around) by Andrew Phelps

2010-07-30T10:02:00.007-04:00

“Two hundred years of American technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground of unlimited potential. But it was the minds of 11 year olds that could see that potential.” - CR Stecyk

"Richard Armijo was kicked out of Whittier (skatepark) again for the last time. Maybe his hair was too short, maybe it was his attitude, maybe he just doesn't care. Things are different this go around because Richard and his friends say they're not going back...Ever." - CR Stecyk

The only other thing I was ever good at in my life before photography was skateboarding. I spent nearly everyday from 1980 to 1989 throwing my body around like a dishrag in roughly paved drainage ditches and halfpipe ramps in Arizona and later New Jersey and New York. Those hardcore years are scarred into my hips and shins. After art school, a part of my life has been spent struggling to stay connected with the feelings I had skating back then. I still kick around a bit and tell myself I "still skate" but it is more in my mind than reality. I was never good enough to gain sponsorship, never liked competing, and now, at 41, suffer a bad knee and the worst of traits a skater can feel, fear. I hold on by watching videos of new generations perform feats on the streets and ramps that my generation couldn't have thought possible. It is a passion, like photography, I imagine I will take to the grave.

I make strong comparisons between skating and photography. Both require large amounts of passion, attention to your surroundings, perseverance and risk taking. I see a skater's line as artistic and improvisational as anything William Forsythe choreographs, as sculptural as Richard Serra, or as mind bending as Matthew Barney. It has creates its own language, both in words and form that is as unique as Kurt Schwitters or John Cage.

There are many books on skateboarding but most fail because they suffer from the same trait that I have succumbed to, nostalgia. Powerhouse Books just published Full Bleed which is a compilation of images from the 70s through the 2000s of east coast skaters tearing up NYC. It's an interesting highlight reel of greatness but nothing more. It leaves me in the past like so many now distant memories, where as Andrew Phelps' newest book 720 (Two times around), a small self-published, spiral-bound book of 16 pictures in an edition of 100, holds more of the actual spirit of skating than any image of Huf or Gonz caught at the apex of a trick.

While photographing in Austria, Phelps discovered an abandoned corporate building which had been infiltrated by skaters. They set up makeshift ramps and obstacles with the aid of a few power tools and ingenuity. Left behind doors unhinged from their frames and upturned desks transform into a playground within the wasteland of empty offices and corridors of failed big business.

There are no skaters present, no "tre-flips" or "blunt slides" being performed. Their presence is felt by the wheel marks on walls and blackened, waxed edges of ledges. The improvisation of construction and the lingering excitement of what must have been felt upon the first run up any of these obstacles hangs in the air. Graffiti on the walls marks a list of the fleeting accomplishments. "Mario bailed" but Phil pulled a "backside crooked grind." That unique language again. For the uninitiated it is nonsensical, but to see a backside crooked grind, that is a universal language.

720 (Two times around) is dedicated to both Mike McGill and Robert Adams. Mike McGill revolutionized skating in the 80s with the invention of a spinning 540 degree air performed 5 feet above the lip of Del Mar skatepark's keyhole bowl. It was a spectacle which stunned onlookers and marked a turning point in skating - perhaps like Adam's The New West marked a turning point in photography. As Phelps concludes in a brief afterword, "When I dream of skating, I'm Mike McGill. When I dream of photographing, I'm Robert Adams." Two very different sources of inspiration, one spectacular and the other deceptively not, both meeting the same outcome to push a medium of expression forward for new generations.

Two books by Mariken Wessels

2010-07-27T00:03:00.000-04:00

The last artist book Mariken Wessels published was a narrative of found material she discovered in an Amsterdam shop. Elisabeth - I Want To Eat is an assemblage of old photographs, postcards and letters that describe a young woman's life budding and then, rather shockingly, leading towards depression and, what I read as, an implied suicide. It is a reconstruction which blends some fact with loads of interpretation.

In one of the letters translated from Dutch, Elisabeth's aunt, in an attempt to help Elisabeth think differently about her life writes, "But unpicking yourself, that can be done, why am I doing this, couldn't I do it better (for me and for everyone else) in a slightly different way? Each little thing builds the whole. In accordance with the same system as all matter is built up from molecules and atoms." This suggestion of parsing and twisting the events of her life is also the strategy Wessels employs in these works. We grapple with trying to understand this life presented to us through only a few pieces of ephemera which insists that our own twist of psychology intervene.

Wessels' newest artist book, Queen Ann. P.S. Belly Cut Off from Alauda Publications is a look into a life of a woman named Anneka.

Anneka appears to be a woman haunted by loneliness and obesity yet she puts forth a fun-loving and warm, if at times slightly demented, demeanor. When we are shown recent images of her, she (or the artist) has painted their surfaces with adornments such as brightly colored hats or veils or cut out parts of herself in the pictures with shears. In some, she adds a second coat of lipstick or nail-polish that transforms her into an over-the-top eccentric where we might question her sanity.

In one image from which the title refers, she writes, "In a way I really do feel like a "Queen." I think that fits. Although lacking the wealth but perhaps like our image of famous queens, Ann is also slightly lonely, unsatisfied, and displays vengeful violent streaks which in this case, she plays out on her own image rather than others. She seems to mock even her own ideas of beauty in how she "improves" the picture makes herself presentable - all ribbons and bows with make-up dripping from her eyes.

In both Queen Ann and Elisabeth, sexuality is an overt presence. In Elisabeth a suite of scratched nude photos (think G.P. Fieret) is presented, perhaps made as self-portraits or by a lover. In Queen Ann, photography as a somewhat transgressive act is also included - that of what appears to be a middle interlude of stills from a sex film (with Ann as the star?). This is followed by a more recent image of Ann holding an image of herself as a young attractive teenager - the weight of wishing for the past is felt.

Although melancholy in overall tone, Ann's unique character and playfulness outshine her underlying problems with aging and self image. The last images, shot on super-8 film, show her running and twirling, arms outspread, in a forest. A smile is sensed through the grainy and blurred image just before she disappears behind a stand of trees.

As with many contemporary books from The Netherlands, both of these are beautiful objects. The care and attentiveness to "the book" is felt but never trumps the content. In Elisabeth, English translations from Dutch type-written on green tissue paper are loosely laid in are a wonderful touch, and Queen Ann includes a sealed glassine envelope of 4x6 inch snapshots. It isn't clear if this last element, the glassine, is meant to be torn open or whether the images are meant to be viewed through the translucent paper (the metaphoric haze of memory?). You decide. Maybe in that case, collectors should buy two.

Errata Editions limited editions signed by David Goldblatt

2010-07-25T08:42:00.004-04:00

If you have not yet ordered your set of the Errata Editions newest books now might be the time. A little while ago David Goldblatt stopped by our studio to sign some books, so for a brief time we have Limited Edition sets available with David's signature in Books on Books #7: In Boksburg. All current orders for the sets will be shipping with a signed copy, you do not have to specify.

See the Errata Editions website and click on the 'SHOP' page for ordering details.

Car Crash Studies 2001-2010 by Raffael Waldner

2010-07-22T10:53:00.004-04:00

The skin was broken around the lower edge of the sternum, where the horn boss had been driven upwards by the collapsing engine compartment. A semi-circular bruise marked my chest, a marbled rainbow running from one nipple to the other. During the next week this rainbow moved through a sequence of tone changes like the color spectrum of automobile varnishes. As I looked down at myself I realized that the precise make and model-year of my car could have been reconstructed by an automobile engineer from the patterns of my wounds. - from Crash, J.G. Ballard

I have never been in a car crash. Two friends of mine were once in a nighttime high speed head-on collision - one, the passenger, died immediately; the other, the driver, walked from the car physically unscathed. For years, it wasn't the details of the actual accident that were described to me that I dwelt upon, but the story told to me by my surviving friend when visited the car at the police lot to collect his personal belongings from the interior.

The car had been hit on the right front passenger side because he had instinctively jerked the wheel to the left at the last moment. The passenger seat, with Mike, had been compressed so that it came to rest near the trunk. By my friend's account the entire right side of the car was shorn away but the left side, except for the doors jammed into their casings, looked clean. There was something in his description about the post-violence, the lingering event felt in the crash dust seen in the bright afternoon sun, that was more horrifying and memorable than his descriptions of the moment of impact.

Raffael Waldner's Car Crash Studies 2001-2010 just published by JRP Ringier brought these thoughts back to mind.

For the last decade, Waldner has concentrated on automobiles, photographing "the impact of violence and the way it changes the product." The results of his nighttime ventures into scrapyards photographing wrecks might be seen as a sort of attempted typology of the unpredictable transformation of an object that took place in matters of split-seconds.

His still-lifes, described with large format precision accentuated by strobes, are loaded with the tension between beauty and the horror of the implicit event that occurred. If it sounds or looks cold, it is. His is often the sensibility of a scientist, or an insurance photographer might take to matter-of-factly complete an accident claim. Their simplicity is belied by the new forms of twisted metal, the spider-web of windscreen glass, the scratched and battery-acid burnt paint varnishes that he focuses upon.

A degree of fetish is apparent, both on the part of the photographer and reflecting on car culture. The autos shown here are mostly high-end sports cars of a variety common with associations to wealth, sexuality and vanity on the part of the driver. They are expensive status symbols rendered valueless in an instant - the sexual prowess of the driver left limp in a cabin full of flaccid airbags and useless gear shifts.

Waldner breaks the book into various section starting with the surface damage to the car's skin. Abstract and painterly, these feel more like a conscious artistic decision, something that many of the other images seem to resist. He follows with sections on areas of impact that sequentially move us closer and closer to the details. The last sections are interiors and finally a small suite of engine blocks removed completely from the vehicle. The sequence might suggest a sort of autopsy (no pun intended), moving from outer body to inner and diagnosing the damage to individual organs.

If Waldner's book has one flaw I feel it is in the amount of photographs. It is oddly sits between not being 'Becher-exhaustive' enough to feel like a full exploration of a 'typology' and having too many of one section over another. This might be due not through lack of the photographer having material but from the editing which was done by Christoph Doswald. This is not a crushing blow to how the entire book functions but rather like a small design flaw that might be perceived after several test drives.

Car Crash Studies 2001-2010 includes closing essays by Christoph Doswald and Maik Schluter.

Quatorze Juillet by Johan van der Keuken

2010-07-19T08:23:00.007-04:00

My best find while in Europe during the Kassel festival was a new book from Willem van Zoetendaal on Johan van der Keuken called Quatorze Juillet.

In July of 1958, Van der Keuken was wandering through Paris and happened upon a street celebration. A stage had been set up, music was playing, people were dancing and Van der Keuken - like most photographers might - took the opportunity to shoot a few rolls of film. The day resulted in one of his more well-known images of a couple dancing which has made it into several of his books - 6 to be exact including Paris Mortel. Most all of the other negatives were never published.

Quatorze Juillet is a book of the other images he made that day presented in a cinematic sequence which gives a look into a much larger, and delightful, afternoon along the Seine. Edited by Noshka van der Lely and Willem van Zoetendaal this construction of a larger narrative suggests Van der Keuken's interest in "stills that move", a curiosity that would later lead him into film-making.

On page one we encounter a couple, they dance, closely embraced, in a vertical image which isolates them from other dancers and celebrants. As Van der Keuken twirls around them photographing, the larger celebration is revealed. People on the periphery become the new leading players and smaller narratives develop - a man approaches a group of young women, another walks through the frames carrying a long ladder, a car speeds around the corner whooshing through the crowd. Small flirtations take place and the photographer works works like a fly on the wall - testing each frame and trying variations which, in my mind, are as wonderful as the image he finally chose as "his best" from the day. This is not a re-edit of mediocre pictures made better by the inclusion of others.

As with most of Van Zoetendaal's books, the care in making Quatorze Juillet is excellent. The choice of paper stock - an uncoated matte stock - is bound sempuyo-style producing a double thickness of each page.

The printing was done by Calff & Meischke in Amsterdam and while I was visiting Holland I stopped by the printing facilities to visit Freek Kuin who had just finished printing the book after testing out several paper and ink variations. Stacks of proofs laying on the floor revealed slightly different interpretations of tone and contrast. Each looked good on their own but when directly compared, slight shifts of color emerged, the contrasts popped or the ink suppressed details. The final result made apparent the vast choices to be made in book reproduction and Freek is an extremely passionate craftsman in putting ink to paper.

The design is also superb. Van Zoetendaal designs most of his books and the placement of the images on the page in Quatoze Juillet is a fascinating study of design. The images are oriented towards the bottom of the page, not extreme enough to be readily noticeable at first, but it pushes the sequence along, connecting the images and grounding them - amplifying Van der Keuken's vantage point since a few of the pictures were shot from the elevated musician's stage.

I received one of only a handful of advanced bound copies of this book that were made to show in Kassel so I am not sure if the book is officially out yet, but this was made to accompany an exhibition of the work at FOAM in Amsterdam this year. I don't know how many they made but if you can get your hands on one, I doubt it will disappoint.

Bernhard and Hilla Becher: Ephemera, Catalogs and Books from Librairie 213

2010-07-16T23:46:00.008-04:00

I am finally home again after the second leg of my European tour. Can't say I am happy about that but the photobook burn out I felt after the Kassel Photobook Festival, which started my trip back in May, seems like such a distant memory now. All of my new acquisitions have more or less made it safely to the States and I am going to ease back into regular postings if time permits.

My brain is still recovering from the trip so I thought I would start with a book/catalog which doesn't require much effort from me. It is an overview of ephemera, catalogs and books that have been published on Bernhard and Hilla Becher from Librairie 213.

Librairie 213 is the French book dealer Antoine De Beaupre. Some of you might know him from the Galerie 213 and the slickly designed exhibition catalogs they published in the late 1990s - most notably, one on William Eggleston that has all the plates tipped onto the pages.

This catalog on the Becher's work starts with their earliest appearance in an art magazine review in Die Sonde in 1964 and progresses through their recent books published as late as 2010. Much of the early ephemera such as promotional posters for Anonyme Skulpturen and exhibition announcement cards are the reason to pick this catalog up as many of these items have been lost to history. Last year at Paris Photo Antoine had a framed copy of the Anonyme Skulpturen poster from the Moderna Museet and if expendable income were at my disposal, it would be on my wall right now.

With each entry there is only the most basic of publishing information, all in French, so this teeters between being just a sales catalog (no prices are listed) and a bibliography for Becher scholars. It was printed in an edition of 500 with 50 copies numbered and signed by Hilla Becher.

As with all of Antoine's publications, the design is by Olivier Andreotti of Toluca Studio. At approximately 11 x 11 inches and with high production standards but for the occasional slight Morey patterning in the plates you might over look the 25 euro cover price.

Note: There is no mention of this book on the Librairie 213 website but perhaps email Antoine about getting a copy.

Each year, seemingly made and given free as sales pieces for Paris Photo, Antoine has produced a few other fine catalogs. In 2007, his booklet on 31 Japanese books from 1968 and 1982 is worth looking for if there are any left floating around. Although it is well-trod territory and most of the books won't be a surprise, again the production standards are wonderful.

The same goes for his book on German photobooks En Allemagne from 2008. This one charts an implied timeline of 66 books starting with Renger-Patzsh and Rudolf Schwarz's Wegweigsung der Technik and ending with Jorg Sasse's D8207. Neither of these last two catalogs specify how many were made.

Lost for Words by Peter Fraser

2010-06-25T23:26:00.000-04:00

My dream world is almost completely empty of all possessions. When I fantasize about the perfect home, it is almost monastic in appearance. It is flooded with light, has a small library, perhaps a few pieces of artwork sparsely punctuating a couple walls, my cat (the only chaos), a large bed, and the warming presence of someone I love. There is little, if any, bric-a-brac. The world Peter Fraser describes in his photographs is the one I hold at bay. His new book from the FFotogallery in Wales Lost for Words is for me, a decent into one version of hell.

That may sound extreme, hell, but looking at all of the objects he describes in his books my mind reels with the well intentioned but ultimately disturbed creations that surround us daily. Fraser thrusts our noses inches from things which might seem familiar at first and while seducing with color and a straightforward view, he accentuates their decay or artifice.

Looking at his photos I remember the same sinking feeling I used to get as a child when I would pull my N-gauge train set from under my bed only to find that within a short time the small foliage and resin lake, which I labored over to reconstruct reality and suspend disbelief, had been covered in a fine layer of dust and cat hair. It all seemed futile. No longer could I become completely captivated by that miniature world when the locomotive would emerge from the mountain tunnel hauling a huge dust bunny.

When Fraser published his book Material in 2002 I was less disturbed. That work felt partially contained within laboratories and work spaces sealed off from my usual environs. Thus, I could contain it - my mind told me 'that is there, I am here.' With much of his other work though, there is no comforting barrier, I am here, it is here too - just look down at the floor. I want to escape into the blue of the bird's egg in one of his images but those damn thorns and the scraped gold edge of the picture frame just above it keep escape impossible. Those loaves of bread made of foam are harmless yet the color (jaundiced skin?), and the wrinkles make me slightly nauseous.

Just like with the train set of my past, there is a pleasure in disrupting the scale of things. In Fraser's pictures it is a stylistic language he employs that teases the mind. It takes a moment to understand the relationship of these often physically small objects to the larger world. Not enough information is given to know the full answer. We are left grappling, lost for words.

I try to decipher the chalk markings that appear on the side of a red bookcase in the last plate of the book but thankfully their logistical meaning is beyond my grasp - if they weren't, I might be of a mind to follow their direction and descend further. Instead I still have the option to close the book and safely contain this madness. A blue spine peeking from a shelf is less disturbing - it can now coexist with my dream world.

A)rt B)ook C)ologne

2010-06-16T09:01:00.007-04:00

Home again. Back to work, real life, less kölsch (more Brooklyn lager) and maybe the occasional blog post. While in Amsterdam, Prague and Germany I managed to find another 32 pounds of books. I checked the delivery status of my first shipment to find it arrived to the Errata office in Chelsea. Yesterday after coming from the airport I ran over to pick the books up only to find the sturdy well packed box nearly transformed into the shape of a ball. Crushed corners, one seam on the side fully open to where you could see the bubble wrapped books inside (customs treatment??) and to my horror... a sign that moisture had creeped up one side like the box had sat in a puddle.

With my trembling hands I tore the box open cursing DHL and as I started unpacking the books I was amazed that only one title out of the 16 had suffered during shipping, the rest were safe and sound.

Some of the titles I shipped in that package had come from Bernd Detsch of Art Book Cologne which I have mentioned here on 5B4 before when I was in Cologne last year. Art Book Cologne is a remainder house on Deutzer Freiheit 107 across the Rhein from the city center. If you visit Cologne I strongly suggest you make a visit. Bernd has been dealing in the business for years and has a great selection of books at big discounts. If you ask nicely, maybe he will let you walk through the warehouse and among the palettes of books, many are titles not listed on his regular site but ones he sells at good prices on-line through ABE and other listing sites. He also has his own private collection of artbooks that are not for sale in the back which would make anyone envious.

It's pretty fascinating to see what becomes a remainder, or what gets discovered in a warehouse somewhere and turns up at his place. For instance, the huge stack of Anthony Hernadez's Landscapes for the Homeless (Volume 1) - a book I had on my want list for some time now. He has them in mint shape for 40 euros.

Last year Art Book Cologne was where I found several Christian Boltanski books, a great El Lissitsky reprint of About 2 Squares, Ilya Kabokov's My Mother's Album, and several others. This year I found a great 1990 catalog of photography by the late Sigmar Polke from the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden, shrink-wrapped copies of the two-volume Richard Prince Paintings and Photographs from 2002 and Marcel Broodthaers Texte et Photos from 2003.

For me, as an American, even with the added shipping costs it is a chance to get some great deals on European remainders which would be rather expensive in the States. Check them out here.

Kassel Fotobook Festival 2010

2010-05-31T23:55:00.005-04:00

This may be a bit of old news by now since my travels have prevented me from my usual postings but I wanted to mention the fun happenings at the 2010 Kassel Photobook Festival. This year Dieter Nuebert and crew changed the venue to the main hall where Documenta takes place every 5 years. The building is twice the size of the art school where the festival has been the last two years but the place drew a great crowd - about double the attendance of last year. There were more booksellers, better exhibition spaces for the visiting artists and, most importantly, more scenic views for the smoking convention which has now become another event in itself.

After a free ride to Kassel with the Schaden crew and briefly helping them set up their tables I scoped out the other booksellers. Dirk Bakker was present and had some great stuff including a 'newspaper' for the Becher's Anonyme Skulpturen. A stand from Vice Versa manned by Kurt Salchli offered up a few really cool books (a new Richard Prince book Four Cowboys and Car Crash Studies 2001-2010 by Raffael Waldner). Schaden had the largest set up and many good things as usual, including a new book of Yutaka Takanashi (Photography 1965-1974) from Only Photography books. Takanashi is currently enjoying a nice exhibition of many vintage prints at Galerie Priska Pasquer in Koln.

Yannick Bouillis of Shashin Books in Amsterdam had many nice titles. He is now specializing completely in Dutch photo and art books and his prices are very good. Last year when I visited his shop, I picked up a couple titles from him and even though some were in Parr/Badger, he still had them on the shelf for regular price. This year he had a couple perfect copies of Why Mister Why for around 60 euros each for instance. Check out his online store, I wasn't familiar with half of the books he had at the festival.

One set of books I missed out on seeing fast enough to get myself were by the artist Ferdinand Krivet. It is a set of three individual books published in 1971 by Verlag Kiepenhevert in Koln. I think the title of the set is Stars: A lexicon in three chapters. Reminiscent of Klaus Staeck's Pornografie, they are completely made from appropriated imagery. Thanks to Walther Zoller and Cecilia for letting me see what I missed.

Another surprise was taking a second look at Nico Krebs and Taiyo Onorato's book The Great Unreal from Editions Patrick Frey (2009). I hadn't liked it much on my first leafing last year but now I am dragging it home. Also a big surprise was Viviane Sassen's Flamboya from Contrasto. Once I got past what I think is a horrible cover (too cutesy and trite), the inner book is pretty wonderful. Her book Sol y Luna from Libraryman was released last year but wasn't much my cup of tea. Also, there is a retrospective of Michael Schmidt taking place in Hamburg at the Haus der Kunst so they published a very nice hardcover catalog of work from 1989/1990. That comes home with me as well. I was trying to show restraint the whole festival but you know how things work.

Of the other tables, there was one for my favorite bookmakers and schools, the Institut fur BuchKunst in Leipzig. It was a real pleasure to sit and talk with Gunther Karl Bose,one of the instructors there and a great bookmaker himself. I featured two of his books on 5B4 last year. They only hasd a few books for offer but he showed me a few out-of-print titles which blew my mind. One which I must get my hands on, published just recently and already OOP, is XX-: The SS-Rune as a special Character on Typewriters by Elisabeth Hinrichs, Aileen Ittner and Daniel Rother. It is an examination of fascism presented through a history of the typewriters used during the Third Reich and the special lead type characters they invented. According to Gunther, this book was made mainly as a response to Steven Heller's Iron Fists, a book which they thought was a little too one dimensional in dealing with the subject. As I mentioned it is OOP partly due to the small print runs of their books (around 250 - 400 copies each) but also because the main newspaper in Frankfurt wrote a full article about it because it is a design and research masterwork. I somehow will get one and write about it.

In between many hours browsing titles, lectures took place with Paul Graham, Alec Soth, Rinko Kawauchi, Rob Hornstra, Joachim Schmid, Leiko Shiga, Niels Stomps, Sybren Kuiper, Lesley Martin speaking on Aperture's history, Ferdinand Brüggemann talking about Japanese books, a presentation about Soviet photobooks, Dr. Bettina Lockmann on the outsider view of Japan, and many others. I didn't see all of them but was amazed at the rock-star status of Alec who started his lecture with an old drive-in movie style pre-film ad "Show time with Alec Soth (rhymes with 'both'.)." Surprising with all of the lectures was how few questions were asked after each presentation. Maybe the hall is intimidating but I remember last year there were many more.

The exhibition for the Best Photobooks of the Year was fascinating as Stanley Greene's newest book Black Passport garnered THREE nominations. I was pleasantly surprised that Darius Himes of Radius Books nominated my Books on Books study of Yutaka Takanashi's Toshi-e as his pick. Thank you Darius! Like last year, a nice catalog of the choices was produced and is available for sale.

The other main attraction was the book dummy show. Each year the festival has a call for entries for unpublished photographers to submit a book. This year over 400 books were entered and the best 50 were put on display. This year's winner was the photographer Werner Amann and his book American.

After three and a half days of books and hotel bar marathons even I was so sick of photobooks that I needed refuge and left after one last post-game beer with Dieter and the clean-up crew - catching a ride to Amsterdam with Yannick Bouillis and Sebastien Girard. I drew the short straw and wound up crammed into the back of a van with boxes of left over books crushing me, my spine being readjusted with ever bump of the highway on the four hour ride. We unloaded the van at 2:00am and after a sleepless night listening to Girard start snoring not 4 minutes after laying down, I did the best thing possible the next morning - search out the bookshops in Amsterdam.

H.B-D.S.

How to travel with books...dont!

2010-05-27T05:37:00.006-04:00

I will be doing a recap of the Kassel Photobook Festival plus a look into the 40 pounds of books I shipped home from Europe. I was going to give a preview but I packed them before I snapped a few photos.

In Berlin now scoping out the bookshops, then onto Prague, then London for the Self-Publish Be Happy show at the Photographer's Gallery. Final stop is Dusseldorf Germany for Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber's Ant!Foto Festival starting on Thursday June 10, at 7:00pm located at the Kunstraum. There will be several guest speakers: Wassinklundgren, Taiyo Onorato, Nico Krebs, Joachim Schmid, Jason Lazarus and many more including myself. Those talks start on June 12th at 1:00pm. More info is available below.

Until I return or have another moment to write, be well and check out the Ant!Foto Festival...

Mast: a new used bookstore in NYC

2010-05-08T23:58:00.001-04:00

The third year anniversary of 5B4 passed last month without me even noticing until now. I haven't been posting much lately, partly because I am finding it harder to sit down to write, partly because I am about to leave for Europe for 5 weeks (get ready for complete silence...maybe), but mostly because I spent every day of last month helping my friend Bryan and his wife James build a bookstore. Yes, a fucking used book store...where you buy, you know, used books.

The store is called Mast and it is on Avenue A between 4th and 5th streets in Manhattan. Today was the opening and the crowds braved the blustery winds and filled the store for over ten hours. The first sale of the day just five minutes after he opened was Brion Gysin and William Burroughs's The Third Mind. My purchase was a copy of The World from Here: Treasures of the Great Libraries of Los Angeles. Of course, a book about books.

Mast is a decent sized but smallish space so the stock has to be a bit curated. If you're into really good 20th century art, photography, philosophy, film or literature, you'll want to stop by. His prices are well below retail and it is a place where you may come in looking for photobooks but leave with a bag full of killer academic film books (the cinema book section is the best you will find in the city. Hands down). So check out this new spot. Buy a book. They make you smarter.

The Infidels by Marcel Dzama

2010-04-29T23:55:00.001-04:00

Almost nothing about the booksigning for Marcel Dzama (and Spike Jonze) at David Zwimmer Gallery seemed normal. The gallery assistants selling the books were kind and attentive (even allowed me to bring in two of my own books). They said 'Thank you' with sincerity and asked my name in case I wanted my books personalized. I wore a smile from their show of kindness.

Being early, I took some time to look at the few huge Stan Douglas prints that lined the main gallery walls when another perky assistant approached me and asked if I was there for the signing. "Oh Great!" she replied as if I had just offered to buy her a new car. She shuttled me into the back rooms of the gallery where a small arrangement of Dzama paintings were on display, "We'll be starting soon. They are still setting up. Thanks for being patient!" Patient? It was only 4:55 and the signing was scheduled to start at 5:00.

I wound up being at the head of the small line that was gathering near the darkened entranceway of one of the larger galleries - a different gallery assistant apologized for the delay (5:02) with even more sincerity than the first. It was as if the closer you got to the area of the event, you were entering into a zone of infectious childlike happiness. I was soon to discover why. Upon being allowed to enter the signing - only one or two people at a time (Lisa Kereszi was my partner) - we were met in the darkened hallway by one of Dzama's 6 foot tall snowmen and a smaller childlike figure whose paper-mache head wore no discernible emotion. These two led us into a nearly pitch black space where off in the distance you could just make out a dimly lit table upon which rested four arms holding a couple of Sharpie markers.

Marcel and Spike took their time cheerfully drawing and signing. They personalized each book by completing the drawings each other started. They told us, "If we take too long you can watch our bear," off in the corner, a bear could be made out swaying to the rhythm of the light music, a beer can rested on the floor. After several minutes of signing and chatting (about Spike's amazing slow-motion pyrotechnical intro piece to the Lakai Fully Flared skate video) and thank you's (from them) we reentered the lit world (with the snowman and child showing us the way) and saw that the line had grown to dozens.

I had imagined the signing was going to be the usual white table affair shuttled along by impatient assistants which is a rational expectation, but for an artist like Dzama who creates not just drawings and paintings but entire worlds seemingly complete with history and mythology why would I expect a booksigning to step out of that world? A new book called The Infidels from Sies + Hoke Galerie and Druck Verlag Kettler is the latest offering of his recent work.

Dzama's world is populated with an expansive cast of hooded women, military men, snowmen, monsters, tree people, bats, and deer that appear in his paintings, drawings, films, dioramas and sculptures. Its basic language is that of a primitive children's TV show - that is, if children were allowed to be exposed to violence, sexuality and the savage fantasies common to his prolific output.

His watercolor paintings often appear as choreographed panoramas of states of war. In The Infidels, his balaclava hooded women (that might remind us of a blend of Hamas and Cossacks) seduce with their sexuality and wage war while pirouetting as if in a Busby Berkeley film. Acts of violence and grace are acted out on plain fields of paper where gravity is upset and history and fantasy collide.

Throughout the work there are ties to great Dadaists like Duchamp, Picabia, and Hoch. His bizarre fetishes, sardonic political commentary and dark humor are presented in vignettes which confuse how we respond. An act of violence is waged with a smile or a victim wears an expression of nonchalance. It is hard to determine in Dzama's work who are the allies and who are the foes. One drawing will belie the alliances of another. His skewed emotional dynamics seem to hint that within the chaos of violence, everyone is to blame - victim and perpetrator alike. Mob mentality rules.

As with most of Dzama's books, The Infidels is elegant. He often combines his watercolors with pages from his sketchbooks which are stream of consciousness collage, some of which working diagrams of new characters, dioramas, and ideas. Rarely are his books simply a presentation of plates but beautifully designed works which draw you into his world through experimental forms. His book The Course of Human History Personified is half plates and an essay and half a double-sided, fold-out panormama which stretches to several feet. His book from David Zwirner from 2008 Even the Ghost of the Past is two books attached by the same covers making two entry points to the work and process.

Reducing Dzama to simple metaphors does an injustice and the work itself seems to resist such readings as much as inspire them. His dream-like scenes feel like part of a larger narrative just out of our reach as if its own history has not yet been written. With these books, Dzama is piecing together his own printed history, a record where he is free to play and create. With childlike enthusiasm I follow along, and fondly remember the day I saw a drunken bear dancing in a darkened corner.

David Goldblatt In Conversation April 29th at Howard Greenberg Gallery

2010-04-24T10:02:00.000-04:00

Errata Editions and Howard Greenberg Gallery are pleased to invite you to an evening with the South African photographer David Goldblatt in conversation with writer Joanna Lehan on Thursday April 29th. The opening of David's exhibition of the work from his landmark book Particulars will happen that same evening starting at 6pm at 41 East 57th Street Suite 1406. The conversation on both Particulars and In Boksburg will start promptly at 7pm.

Pre-signed copies of the Errata Editions study of In Boksburg will be available for sale.

Gone? by Robert Adams

2010-04-20T08:53:00.001-04:00

If there is a single notion that links several of Robert Adams's recent books, it is that of walking. Of course walking with a camera slung over shoulder or around our necks is usually the case with any photographer but how many make 'the walk' felt in their pictures?

Anyone who knows Robert Adams' photographs is aware of he is a steadfast conservationist. He also seems to be a pessimist pining to turn back time so we as a world, could chart the right course in regard to our treatment of our surroundings. His new book Gone? is a walk through the landscape of his home region of Colorado made in the mid-1980s where a balance seems to have been struck between civilization and nature.

Adams starts us off within a suburban development where foliage on the tree-lined streets dwarfs the homes and cars of the residents. His vantage point is of a pedestrian, looking forward, our path clearly laid by the road ahead stretching off into the distance. On our periphery, things get our attention; an alder in a yard, some small brush scrub in an undeveloped lot, and most dramatically, the sky of a near perfect afternoon.

Within several pictures we have moved away from civilization and into the hills discovering streams and secluded spots that feel relatively untouched. Here Adams basks in the sunlight allowing his lens to be flared - a reminder that a living being is behind this point of view and not simply a recording device.

His 35mm multiple frames - sometimes slight variants of the same picture - 'walk' us through the book which is a strategy of bookmaking he explored in Listening to the River. Adams writes in a brief statement about the work, "In middle age I revisited a number of marginal but beautiful landscapes that I have taken for granted when I was a boy. As I walked through them I sometimes asked myself whether in the coming years they would survive overpopulation, corporate capitalism, and new technology. On those days when I was lucky, however, my questions fell away into the quiet and the light."

There is a comfortable loneliness about the pictures as if all one would hear is a slight breeze and the repetitive footfalls on loose soil. Towards the end of the book we return to the outskirts of town - our trance shaken but perhaps calmed by the presence of a white steepled church. The last triptych stretches the road in front of us in a straight line towards a far away tree dominating the horizon. Within the three pictures, our progress feels slowed, perhaps we are just exhausted or maybe intentionally dragging our heals perhaps to avoid the inevitable return to those disturbing questions of where we are going.

Gone? was published by Steidl and is one of three recent Adams books including Summer Nights, Walking by Aperture and Tree Line which celebrates Adams winning the 2009 Hasselblad Award.

Here...Half Blind by John Gossage

2010-04-05T00:01:00.002-04:00

The headline for the January 27th Post-Bulletin newspaper out of Minnesota declares; New Life for Old Landfill. The Olmsted Country garbage dump will be turned into Minnesota's first "solar farm." Other articles cover a state delay in funding education, and sadly that a Rochester man was killed in a 40-car pile-up. The frontpage "Factoid" reports that Thomas Edison owned the Edison Portland Cement Company, and although they supplied concrete for Yankee Stadium, they went out of business trying to manufacture cement pianos. In the upper left corner, sharing space with the masthead is a tiny triptych of pictures - they announce an exhibition by the photographer John Gossage.

Working off a commission from the Rochester Art Center from the Summer of 2009, Gossage photographed Rochester and some of its inhabitants resulting in an 80 page newspaper supplement that went out to some 40,000 customers on the Post-Bulletin's subscriber rolls.

The work itself is identifiably Gossage. He explores the foundations, pathways and community of Rochester, making known the insignificant details often disregarded by the casual passerby; a plank of wood holding up a small boat, a silhouette of a squirrel traversing power-lines, a handle-less shovel balanced against a tree stump, the last piece of bright concrete at the end of a sidewalk. New Life for Old Landfill. I can't think of a better summation of Gossage's accomplishments over his long career.

The final exhibition and supplement is called Here...Half Blind. The exhibition, as described by Kris Douglas the Chief Curator at the Rochester Art Center in the introduction, mentions Gossage's photographs accompanied by postcards and archive material that "packaged" stereotypical views of Rochester for visitors. The supplement publication does not have this material but instead a single line of newscrawl-type text at the bottom of the page regurgitating banal facts about Rochester's history.

As a book maker, Gossage has explored many forms - none of which have had this mass distribution. One imagines those 40,000 copies stacked in convenience markets, on newsstands, on kitchen tables and resting in the sun on porch steps. The headlines inform and infuriate (school funding delayed!), the human interest stories give hope, and what could this supplement invoke? No doubt a few were interested in looking a little closer at their community through the eyes of an outsider but certainly some would cry out "My four-year old takes better pictures than these!"; Gossage isn't what art looks like for most.

Of those 40,000 copies, maybe 2000 will survive, the rest will be discarded without thought and recycled. My hope is that a single copy will escape pulping and scatter across the Olmsted landfill before the solar farm takes root.

Esopus Magazine

2010-04-03T06:52:00.008-04:00

I don't collect magazines. I have some friends who could build houses out of dog-eared stacks of them; they could clothe their kids with the blow-ins. The only magazine I have kept and actually store happily on my bookcases somewhere between Van der Elsken and Evans is Esopus - Tod Lippy's twice annual pub that delivers all of my favorite things; original art, paper ephemera, ideas, found objects, history, and each issue is loaded with the unexpected and previously unseen.

Esopus is named for a river that originates in the Catskill Mountains and supplies much of New York City with water but unlike that tributary, Esopus is not polluted with advertisements or PR driven material. Its waters are pure, unfiltered, eclectic - the ecosystem flourishing and diverse.

The first thing one notices cracking open a copy is that it seems physically full of stuff; inserts, gate folds, pop-up sculptures, separate pull-out booklets. The paper stock varies determined by the content. The design is brilliant, often using photographs of original material presenting them as objects. Each issue comes with a CD of audio material on the inside back cover as eclectically curated as the magazine itself.

In issue two William Christenberry's Ghost Form (2004) is a gatefold within which pops-up a paper sculpture of a southern barn. Issue 4 reproduces a series of 15 rejection letters from prospective employers to an inquiry from a woman named Zola C Shirley in 1930. Issue 5 has a removable poster by Richard Misrach. Issue 9 includes long excerpts from a journal kept by a man who spent 15 months in a WWII German prison camp. Issue 11 has a section of pages from the Museum of Modern Art guestbook listing visitors famous and unknown. I could go on and on but I just realized that just picking a few things to mention is a futile exercise. Each issue has on average about a dozen contributions which range so widely that I am not really doing this justice at all.

Esopus is a non-profit organization. Each issue costs far more to produce than the 14 dollars cover price and quickly you see why. The quality and inventive presentation sets the gold standard for all magazines.

Note: I realize after photographing some spreads for my composites that they are heavily weighted to the older visual paper ephemera that Esopus has featured. Keep in mind that each issue is a range of different material, much of which is contemporary projects from recent artists.

Dieter Roth Advertisements 1971/72

2010-04-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

Dieter Roth was known to tell friends that he saw himself as primarily a writer and that creating art was simply a "pleasant means" to pay the bills. It might seem to be a tongue in cheek declaration for an artist of his stature but his Swiss passport did list his profession as "writer" first, and then "painter". From the mid-60s onward he wrote poetry, aphorisms, free associations and texts governed by their sound more than meanings. His first book of poetry published in 1966 was called Scheisse. Neue Gedichte von Dieter Roth (Shit. New Poems by Dieter Roth). It was the free-spirited 60s, but that title stood little chance to win over the literary circles of the day. His follow up volume published two years later wouldn't have either, it was called Die Gesamte Scheisse (The Complete Shit).

In the early 70s he expanded his literary aspirations by publishing aphorisms twice a week in the Anzeiger Stadt Luzern und Umgebung, a free local advertising newspaper. In an interview he remarked that those pages of ads were "...so brutal, they're like a gigantic junkyard. So I thought I'd just stick a little tear in them." He sent his friend Erica Ebinger in Lucerne his handwritten or typed missives which she would send along to the paper. He made it clear early into the running of the ads that the paper was not to correct his odd spellings, grammar or punctuation.

Week after week between March '71 and September '72 sentences like; "A good cry is a good night's sleep", "A tear is as mean as a kind word", Cows have served us most fillet steaks", "Fear of 13 is something", "A Coca-Cola is a stone and a tear", and "Can a being see something without being what it sees?", appeared in the paper signed with a simple D.R. The paper terminated the ad contract after running 114 of his intended 248 advertisements citing complaints by readers who were fearful that these were a sort of subversive code, and above all, they seemed to advertise nothing.

Later in '73 Roth would compile these ads using the real newspaper pages into an artist book called Das Tanenmeer (The Sea of Tears). A new book called Dieter Roth Advertisements 1971/72 has just been published by Edizioni Periferia. It reproduces Roth's aphorisms as they appeared surrounded by ads for products and services. Each is translated from German into English.

Sex Objects by Eric Kroll - Sex Theaters by Andre Gelpke

2010-03-30T01:14:00.009-04:00

You know, Eldon (Eldon Hoke aka. El Duce, drummer and front-man for The Mentors)... his starting line when he worked at The Ivar Theater as the film man was "Gentlemen, pitch your tents!" and the guys would pull their jackets up over their crotch. - Carlos Guitarlos

You cannot blame porn. When I was young I used to masturbate to Gilligan's Island. - Ron Jeremy

We'll have this room fumigated when you're out of it! - Kathleen Howard to Barbara Stanwyck from Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941)

To pursue an intellectual discourse is not usually the first response one has when seeing a person naked. The debate has heard a billion opinions whether women who get paid to expose their bodies are in positions of power, or being exploited. Photographers have loved nude bodies. Old camera clubs would mask the perversity of group photo-gangbang sessions by having the models pose "artistically" in the woods or perched on rocks near an ocean as if they were just stumbled upon frolicking around, communing with nature - mother nature as fuck toy. The two books in this post, each calling themselves "a documentary" delve into the world of camera clubs, massage parlors and sex theaters.

The first is Eric Kroll's Sex Objects: An American Photodocumentary published by Addison House in 1977. I first saw this book at Paris Photo in the booth of a dealer who assigned it a hefty price tag. I figured it was rare (I had forgotten to look it up online) but a copy turned up at The Strand Bookstore for 35 dollars so I grabbed it.

Kroll, who had been photographing women since he "was 16" became interested in women who made money through their bodies. Whenever he traveled for a commercial job he would search out massage parlors, nude shows and sex shops and engage in another commercial activity - paying women to allow him to photograph them. Sex Objects is the result of photographing 50 and interviewing over 100 women in 30 different US cities.

Make no mistake, Kroll's photography in this book isn't much beyond the expected. He frames the women posing in their workrooms or against studio seamless in a matter of fact way. He offers two or three photos of about 30 models, shooting them in both black and white and color.

What is good is the way the book is put together. It has a surprisingly playful design for a book from the late 70s with multicolor paper stock for the text pages and contrast between the color and b+w pictures. Large horizontal color images are oriented as verticals, their palette seems to mimic the glossy girly mag spreads from the time period. In some ways the women could be seen as a parade of possible choices within the context of this "documentary." In the interviews the women express a range of attitudes towards what they do for a living. Kroll's own notes include a variety of price lists and ways in which these establishments avoid charges of prostitution by skirting local state law.

Time will tell as to how this book stands after a few readings. I sense that the funky 70s color has much to do with the appeal.

Andre Gelpke's Sex-Theater made its appearance a few years later in 1981 published by Mahnert-Lueg.

Shot entirely in black and white 35mm, Gelpke's approach isn't really much better nor dynamic than Kroll's. In fact, both have very similar sensibilities to arranging their frames - many of which are center weighted images that feel repetitive.

Gelpke starts by alternating images of women painted onto strip club windows with portraits of the real performers. Once inside, the theater's stage is mostly a bare-bones affair with the performers going about their act; fucking, stripping or trying their talents as acrobats. One familiar with Garry Winogrand's pictures in the Ivar Theater in LA will have an idea of the sometimes dreary atmosphere made all the worse by Gelpke's evenly lit flash. In the glaring light of the exposure we see the grime and wear and tear of the stage curtains and walls.

There are some good pictures here but most get treated as if shot from the same vantage point from the audience. Rarely do we see any other audience members other than a hint of them by random disembodied arms stretching into the frame. In the last couple images the stage is filled with a variety of characters as if for a grand finale. Those two pictures become a bit more interesting with potential but sadly they just end the book. Maybe Gelpke is hinting that these places are always a bit of a let down. Surely a stretch but how else does it all manage to look so mundane.

Weavings Performance #2 by Corin Hewitt

2010-03-28T00:00:00.003-04:00

Dear Friends: I am obviously distressed by the jury's verdict but I take comfort in knowing that I have done nothing wrong and that I have the enduring support of my family and friends. I believe in the fairness of the judicial system and remain confident that I will ultimately prevail. - Martha Stewart, March 5, 2004

Reading the materials list from Corin Hewitt's Weavings Performance #2 one might start conjuring the image of a una-bomber type hidden away in a shack (in Portland? Maybe outside of Portland), assembling his devices partly by plan and partly by instinct. The "four turkey feather balls" or "photograph of Ed and Nancy Kienholz's Sollie 17" on the list were items added obviously to aid with the insanity defense.

Corin Hewitt might actually share working habits of such a recluse. He constructs a work space, locks himself away in it for days on end, works with a variety of tools (some not conceived for the tasks at hand), and creates objects which are partly about transformation. Only, if Hewitt's objects exploded, you'd probably start laughing while wiping the beat-juice stained pasta from your forehead. He uses mostly food stuffs; fruits, vegetables, pastas, juices, and makes sculptures out of it. He ingests his material and spits it out, cooks it, lets it rot, photographs it, paints it, leaves it alone, or, as the book's title suggests, weaves it. A FANTASTIC new book (yes I was shouting) from J+L called Weavings Performance #2 is itself an artist book documenting (maybe not) one of Hewitt's performances.

While in the midst of his performances, Hewitt has many mimetic devices (4X5, 35mm, polaroid and digital cameras) at hand to shoot the still lifes he creates within his studio. Not so much for strict documentation as his polaroid pictures sometimes appear within the still lifes not only complicating the picture plane but our sense of image purpose. Is this a procedural? (no). Is this even a representation of the performance? (I doubt it, as a viewer could not look at this stuff so closely). It is an object put together with intuition much like the piece itself - hunter/gatherer-style.

I haven't seen one of Hewitt's performances but from what I read, his constructed studio/workspace is only accessible for the viewer through hinged trap doors and tiny windows, through which you can see him working. These set perspectives (one is described as a lens making the box into a metaphoric camera obscura) would provide our human viewpoint where the images he shot which make up this book are mostly close-up and reductionist. We have little sense of scale, nor lay of the land around the studio. Our faces are thrust into his creations while Hewitt, the performer, stays mostly out of the way. Or perhaps this is his vantage point we are seeing, through the looking glass peering outward. His presence appears in only four pictures - three really, in the fourth he is felt by the blue flame of a torch which is burning the meristems on a head of purple cauliflower (or, at least it looks like cauliflower - could be a severely rotten piece of fruit).

I keep thinking of Fischli and Weiss. Art-making is a serious business so let there be whimsy. A half-eaten plasticine apple sits next to its real, also half eaten, counterpart. Pasta is woven into a partial basket (or is it an Aztec toupée?). Throw some discarded shavings, some straw and a torn up photo into the garbage - photograph it as a discovery. Pay attention, just putting a 5 litre pot on the shelf has potential. As Beckett said, "To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now."

The book is pitch perfect from the layout to the bellyband that graces the cover. Each book is unique, the bellybands were stained by hand with dye made from cherries and cabbages at the printer's facility in Korea. Three inserts are hidden away in a flap on the back cover board. An essay by Marisa C. Sanchez, a conversation between Hewitt and Michael Brenson, and a materials list broken into two categories: Local and Historical. After sitting with Weavings for while, you'll never look at your compost heap the same again.

Douglas Blau ICA Catalog

2010-03-25T01:17:00.000-04:00

Douglas Blau is a curator, writer, artist, and obsessive scavenger of images. His exhibition Fictions: A Selection of Pictures from the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries from 1987 presented a wide swath of images from contemporary painters alongside historical artworks in addition to film stills and photographs that all express a visionary or romantic sensibility. The highs and lows sitting in relation to each other were reduced to dark, bluish-hued monochromes. It was a curatorial feat to create narratives and fictions through the multitude of possible picture connections. For Blau, art's object is to make the relationship between reading and looking, depiction and meaning - accessible and engulfing. A new catalog of his latest work from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Pennsylvania breaks Blau's last ten years of self-induced silence in the art world.

The exhibition and catalog brings 16 works from 2008 and one larger work (188 frames) from 1993-95. Each work is a grid of images collaged and grouped under titles which might hint at the narrative being explored. The work Playtime (2008) offers on first glance a game of hide and seek between two girls that slowly reveals itself to be a larger narrative set in the Gilded Age. The 'stage' is a series of images that toss us between ornately decorated drawing rooms, vast staircases, libraries and theaters. You can enter the grid at any point, become the film's editor and piece together your own inspired narrative. The departure in strategy for Blau's recent work is these groupings hold to one particular moment in history instead of his usual sweep across time.

In many of the works, Blau finds multiple copies of each image reproduced through various types of techniques from letterpress to four-color, etchings to photographs so each grid is in its own way an homage to the history of printed matter. It holds to what the digital age is discarding.

The design of this volume is worth noting as printed catalogs are always an important aspect of Blau's work (one might assume due to its long lasting accessibility as opposed to the exhibitions). Each framed grouping was photographed as installed in the ICA and interspersed are detailed close-ups of one section of each piece. These further crop and dissect the individual pictures, zooming in and out the way one might navigate the exhibition. Mostly these detail spreads are designed to break the repetition of just seeing grid after grid since the individual pictures can appear too small to fully investigate. Because of this, one gets the basic gist of each piece but to become fully engulfed is simply not possible. His catalog from the Fictions exhibitions I remember suffered from this same dilemma, we are held back from falling into these worlds as he does in meticulously assembling this work.

As a side note, I highly recommend reading Blau wherever possible. Here is a link to the piece “Solid Air” he wrote inspired by the work of Vija Clemins that appeared in her ICA/Whitney Museum catalog from 1992.

Record 1974/1975 by June Leaf

2010-03-22T23:18:00.004-04:00

In November of 1974 to January 1975 June Leaf kept a sketchbook of her time in Mabou Mines, Nova Scotia where she lived with her husband, Robert Frank. Steidl has just released a facsimile called Record 1974/1975.

Record starts with Leaf questioning her thoughts and ideas - trying to find the 'stimulation' to proceed. She writes: "Let me start with the series of the woman in the lifeboat. That is the oldest of the ideas. It is also the most faint to me. Perhaps it is already abandoned. I will therefore recount it here...I recalled that in my last series I had become interested in the shape of a knot." For several pages after she sketches a seagull figure whose eye is a knot in string and as the drawings get more frantic and impulsive she declares: "I've come to a dead stop. Should make a sculpture - don't want to! Should play the fiddle - don't want to! Should take a walk - too cold! Where's the inspiration?"

What I find powerful about Record is it is a diaristic outpouring of thoughts, creative bursts and frustrations. One almost feels embarrassed to be witness to these inner states, dreams and confessions. Working in pencil, ink and watercolor the page to page dynamic is jarring. One is splashed brightly with uplifting color while the next is covered with a violent looking scribble impossible to decipher. Thrown into the mix, Robert appears both as a muse and a dark figure, absent and mourning the death of his daughter Andrea who died in a plane crash that same winter.

Throughout Record Leaf's psychological state seems put to paper. One drawing over which she has written "first demon?" starts a fit of violent pages which the pressure from her pencil varies, making deep rich lines over softer squiggles and finally ending with the figure of a man whose mouth is gushing lines. Leaf notes the lines could be either flames or rolls of paper. A few pages further, another figure is made out in crude rendering over which she writes in a childlike hand "Some demon is responsible for all this."

Towards the end of Record her confessional writing turns back to Robert and living in Mabou. In it she writes of the pain of defeat she experiences and the final understanding that, "we can not really live here. I tried, but like the majority of people here, I tread on ground which is not solid. Yes, I would be a fool to stay...Nothing can grow here. The Mabou Coal Mines are finished. Robert will never understand...He wants to be a man alone on a hill looking at the ocean - it is his picture in his mind that he wants to live. This place is no longer a picture to me. It is a graveyard, only good for starved city souls and eyes."

This dark passage of soul-baring is followed by a small drawing on the last page of a peaceful looking landscape drawn in black ink and captioned with the hopeful passage "Sun falls across this page." The drawing is dated November 24th - two days before her first entry in the sketchbook. The knot was still being examined then, perhaps the hope of unraveling it was still a possibility.

A Half Dozen Non-photo Books (for your pleasure)

2010-03-14T23:53:00.003-04:00

Here is part one of a barrage of books with short descriptions, this time mostly non-photographic ones I have enjoyed over the last half a year. Yes I have a great number of non-photo books and although I stand by the statement that photographs work best in book form and that most all other mediums suffer to an extent in reproduction, these are well done and worth a look.

Starting with the most popular artist of all time, Warhol from the Sonnebend Collection published by the Gagosian gallery in 2009 (distributed by Rizzoli) is a beautifully produced oversized book of mostly early work (1962-65) that Ileana Sonnebend collected while she represented Warhol to Parisian audiences.

The Gagosian gallery has been publishing a lot of very impressive books, all of which appeal in design and quality. This publication comes in a cardboard slipcase upon which is silk screened to look like a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. After presenting about 50 works the back section of the book delves into the history of the exhibitions held at Sonnebend's Paris gallery. As a bonus, facsimile reproductions of each gallery catalog and booklet published for each show are slipped into glassine holders.

Also included are dozens of photographs taken during the exhibition openings and a great essay by Brenda Richardson describes the complicated relationship between Andy, Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnebend during his rocketing to fame.

Gerhard Richter's Elbe from Walther Konig and the Gerhard Richter Archive in Dresden concentrates on 31 monotype prints Richter made in 1957. These constitute some of his earliest works as a recently graduate from the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste. He had enrolled in a class for printmaking, he found a disinterest in proper technique and instead spent his time trying out unevenly applied ink on linoleum and wooden blocks.

Many appear to be abstractions while others offer a direct reference to landscapes - some moonlit. In a couple, Richter has penned in figures so the unevenly distributed ink comes across as an atmosphere or haze - something his later work would reflect.

Elbe is softcover and employs a very deadpan design - a straightforward presentation printed on very nice cream-colored stock. A short text by Dieter Schwarz lends insight into Richter's method and motivation.

Sol Lewitt once said that "Artist books are not valuable except for the ideas they contain." I wish that were true today as I would be able to afford his Autobiography and Cock Fight Dance. This book from Edizioni Viaindustriae is a study of Lewitt's complete bibliography of artist books from 1967 to 2002. Although well illustrated, it doesn't go as far as to discuss each individual book - most of which are confined to a single page of coverage. Still, it is a good reference work sure to spawn further exploration into these fine books.

Andrew Dodds' Lost in Space is a small artist book from Bookworks from 2006 which sets out to examine what artifacts were left behind on the moon by the Apollo space projects. He corresponds with scientists, lecturers and heads of physics departments asking what they imagine these objects would look like today after such a long time abandoned on the moon's surface. Complimented by archive photographs and other supporting historical material, it is Lost in Space's design which makes for additional enjoyment. Now if only someone would inform Dodds that the moon landing was faked!

Another book which is based upon historical fact is Jeremy Deller's The British Civil War Part II published by Artangel in 2002. This book documents two things, first the personal accounts of participants of the 1984-85 miners' strikes in Northern England, and second, Deller's reenactment of the confrontation between the strikers and the police in Orgreave in South Yorkshire in June of 1984 - over 800 people participated in this reenactment. Less an attempt to tell the definitive history of the strike or that day but taking the idea of a 'living history' and exploring how that can be interpreted and presented over something that was essentially chaos. The British Civil War Part II contains lots of archive material along with a DVD of present day interviews of people who were in Ogreave that day in 1984.

Lastly I want to mention a new book on Josef Albers' Homage to the Square just published by Editorial RM. Made on the occasion of an exhibition at the Casa Barragan. Albers saw this group as "platters to serve color" which attested to the infinite possibilities of hue and light - colors influencing change on one another. This edition is elegant with a sturdy slipcase out of which comes a small but very nicely conceived book of plates. Accompanying are essays by Nicholas Fox Weber and Brenda Danilowitz, both from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.

I will be serving up another six titles in this vein in just a few days.

In Boksburg: The original 1982 edition

2010-03-11T00:46:00.001-05:00

In the early 1980s a man named Paul Alberts had a plan to create the first serious photographic book publishing company and gallery in Cape Town. The gallery would assemble an archive of South African photography out of the book prints used from each project - the name he chose was The Gallery Press.

Alberts' approach to distribution was through a series of mail campaigns to gather orders directly instead of being subjected to the heavy discounts demanded by bookstores or other distributors. The entire venture with The Gallery Press failed after releasing just one book, David Goldblatt's In Boksburg. It nearly bankrupted Alberts.

After doing our study of Boksburg in the Errata series I was notified by Thomas Alberts, the son of the publisher Paul, that a couple boxes of the original book had been found in storage complete with dustjackets. He is making a few of those books, freshly signed by David Goldblatt, available for sale.

These copies have been in a sealed box since 1982 when they were manufactured so they are nearly perfect. The dustjacket is the original black jacket seen in Parr / Badger's Photobook: A History.

Interesting note about those jackets is that not enough were made for the entire print run of the book. Alberts had run out of money by then so many books were left sitting in boxes without jackets. When not enough orders were coming in for the books with the black jacket, they decided to breathe life back into the project by redesigning it to feature a photograph. Thus the second 'ballerina' grey cover appeared on a majority of the books.

In Boksburg has a long and storied history from its rejection by Optima magazine to print the photographs (with accompanying text by Alan Paton) because they didn't like Goldblatt's viewpoint, to the fact that black and white duotone hadn't been perfected by printers in South Africa and Boksburg was an early test case in getting it right. It is an important book that appeared at a time when photographic books on South Africa, produced in South Africa were in their infancy.

On the lower spine of In Boksburg there is a small number one printed in white. No one could know that this would be the first and only publication that The Gallery Press would release. It was a huge start in retrospect, but maybe at the time it was overestimated the number of people who would want to pay 14 Rand ($3.50) to look at their own values and complacency within Goldblatt's portrait of apartheid.

Click here to inquire about copies of this original edition of In Boksburg which are signed by David Goldblatt and protected in mylar.

Robert Frank: 81 Contact Sheets

2010-03-09T12:20:00.003-05:00

A couple years ago I had heard rumored that the eccentric Japanese publisher Kazuhiko Motomura was working on a special "book" on Robert Frank's contact sheets from The Americans. That rumor had quieted a bit after Sarah Greenough's masterwork Looking In seemed to beat it to the punch by reproducing every sheet that had an image that appeared in Frank's final published edit, but Motomura proceeded anyway and Robert Frank: 81 Contact Sheets from The Americans is out. I have seen it and I have to say it is pretty amazing.

Now before you get too excited; A) it is very expensive at $1500.00 B) Mr Motomura only sells books to people who have bought in the past or will buy a set of ALL of his previous publications which totals around $7500.00 (including this new Frank). So that leaves me out and I guess a few of you too.

If you're one of his past patrons or wealthy, here's what you get. After getting past the shipping carton which I heard was a solid wooden crate, you discover a large very sturdy black box approximately 20 X 24 inches in size. On the front edge, a label with the edition number lets you know which copy of the 300 you own. Lifting the lid reveals a second box made of light wood - burned into the surface is an enlarged version of Frank's signature. Lifting that lid reveals the interior which is foam lined and cradles a silver folded portfolio upon which is embossed Frank's initials. This is lifted out and when opened, reveals a handmade japanese paper enclosure with a dark silver star at the right edge. Opening that you get to the meat of this endeavor - 81 individual enlarged contacts sheets held in place by a large belly-band.

The enlarged sheets are duotone printed with grey boarders and although I didn't measure them I estimate they are between 16X20 and 20X24 in size. Each individual frame is enlarged to approximately 2x3 inches - double the size of a normal 35mm frame. The reproduction is very well done. the images look sharp and certainly you will be able to discover more in each picture than in the Greenough book.

At the bottom of each sheet there is a number which corresponds to Frank's sequencing as they appear in the original book. Like in the Greenough's extensive study, these sheets have edit markings and show some edge wear of the original source material. They are unbound so leafing through them can be a bit cumbersome. My friend Ed, who has the copy seen above, said it took him a few days to get through all of it after an extra day or so getting the energy necessary to tackle it in the first place.

It's a damn impressive presentation but for me it is a bit over the top considering Frank's bohemian personality. If looked at through that perspective, this is so far removed that until you get to the sheets themselves, it doesn't feel like Frank's sensibility at all. I'd imagine Frank being more comfortable with each just showing up in a scruffy, edge-worn photo paper box. His photos are precious but the prints rarely seem as such.

Accompanying the sheets is a silver softcover booklet approximately 11 x 17 which has an index of each photo with commentary by Frank both in Japanese and English. To my knowledge, most of this commentary hasn't appeared elsewhere and although some of it has become the lore of The Americans there are many anecdotes that will certainly be of interest to Frankophiles.

Since the taste of sour grapes is strong, I am just going to buy a $15.00 loupe, unwrap my copy of Looking In from an oversized cigar box insulated with cheese cloth and have at the same material. That's the way I imagine Frank would have wanted it.

Blumen by Collier Schorr

2010-03-05T23:28:00.002-05:00

The photograph reproduced on the back cover of Collier Schorr's Forests and Fields Vol. 1: Neighbors (Opium, 2005) describes a young girl's back as she sits on the slope of a hillock. Her long blond hair and white t-shirt providing a clean backdrop for some wild flowers and long strands of grass which she sits among. It is an image that seems to mark a starting point for her newest volume of the Forests and Fields work Blumen just published by Steidl.

Schorr has been photographing in the small town of Schwäbisch-Gmünd in Southern Germany over the past fifteen years. Her work includes portraits, landscapes and her own stagings which question both the identities of what it is to be "German" and her own status as an outsider. Her approach is quiet yet provocative, with many allusions to history and warfare.

In Blumen, Schorr has undertaken another kind of arrangement leaning more towards the abstract. A majority of the images are photographs of ephemeral flower arrangements which she constructs, not in a studio, but outside where they can be set against the sky. Using string and cut or plucked flowers, the fragile site-specific works are then photographed before the flowers wilt or destroyed by the wind. Seductively beautiful with their saturated color, many constructions, although static, introduce the sense of the blossoms caught in mid-flight to the ground - a slight departure from much of her other work which has a very stayed appearance. Others are almost bondage-like, tense and dominating.

Interspersed throughout Blumen, Schorr includes several images which purposely break what would be a straight forward thematic grouping of pictures. The best of which refer back to the floral constructions - a workshop wall of saw blades and tools haphazardly displayed; a stack of bricks with a bright blue product container and grouping of potatoes laid at its base; a store window display of translucent plastic containers - but have a quality of having been found in situ.

In Ripple (2006) she describes the shoreline of a lake with an arrangement of an open red knapsack, some yellow plastic bags, a small towel draped on a tree stump, all set against the dark rippling of the water's surface. In her past body of work she employed black and white tonalities and dressed her scenes with historical props - military uniforms and architectural details which scream of the past. With this work we are steeped in the present and the two books sit in interesting contrast to one another as chapters of on-going work.

I am conflicted with the full success of Blumen simply due to the inclusion of a couple images. Ideally there is a tension between what I perceive as the carefully constructed photographs and those that appear more impulsive but some of the latter seem simply superfluous. A picture of a slightly blurred garage wall with the hood ornament of a Mercedes for instance. Granted there are only a couple within the 50 images but for me they stick out so strongly that they brought me out of Schorr's fictional description of place and instead back in my mind questioning their blandness.

Blumen's design is elegantly simple. Several gatefolds break the rhythm, slowing the viewer down and enticing further consideration. The cover features no type and instead a wondrously topsy-turvy black and white image of plant shadows - I am not sure if it was originally a horizontal or a vertical - whose only sense of color comes from the tiniest speck of red.

For some, Schorr's theatrics might turn them away. My initial instincts towards such contrived work years ago was to question why I should invest myself in further thought towards images that are so contrived. Playacting demands a certain talent to entice and suspend bias in favor of exploration and discovery. In both of these books I find Schorr achieves a method which I am more open to even when she is pushing my limits. With Blumen she has done so with flowers, a subject which in the furthest reaches of my mind I wouldn't have believed possible.

Collier Schorr will be signing copies of Blumen at Dashwood Books at 33 Bond Street in New York City tomorrow Tuesday March 9th from 6-8pm. Sorry I previously listed the incorrect date!!

A Pile of Good Books

2010-02-28T23:58:00.003-05:00

I receive many books in the mail, both ones I have requested and many that I hadn't. Some are revelatory which inspire words and others don't. I even receive many which I like but they don't inspire many words beyond a couple sentences. I usually keep those close by for a few extra weeks, hoping for more thoughts to brew and words to form - most times that doesn't happen and I move on to an easier subject. This post is a list of books that fall into that latter category.

If you are lucky enough to live in Berlin you might discover an issue of Bertrand Fleuret's Remora hanging on a light post or garbage pile. 16 pages of Bertrand's idiosyncratic photographs xeroxed for the masses to enjoy, ignore, tear apart or mistakenly piss on. Each is like a hand in the water signaling where the ship has sunk.

Mike Slack's High Tide was published in a very limited number (75 copies) by The Ice Plant in 2006. Mike's brilliant trilogy of books OKOKOK, Scorpio, and Pyramids feature his quirky polaroids of small details which fill the world with meaning. High Tide is a small catalog of polaroids made off TV screens of actors in close-up and with eyes closed. More like meditating than acting, each seems to have momentarily dropped their profession and found a personal truth.

Ed Templeton's Coming to Grips was released in an edition of 500 by the Japanese publisher Super Labo in 2009. Coming to Grips is a small 28 page booklet/'zine of portraits of Templeton's friends looking like they hit life head on. The physically damage is metaphor for the psychological within a community where innocence is lost quickly. Not so much a warning but a celebration of lives lived mostly on their own terms.

Lucia Nimcova's Unofficial published by Zoneattive Edizioni, 2008 (ISBN: 88-89303-08-5) is two books in a cardboard box which question the legacy of socialism in Nimcova's hometown of Humenné, Slovakia. One book is of mostly black and white photographs made throughout the 1980s by Juraj Kammer - a contracted professional photographer who documented social and political events.

The other book is made of contemporary color photographs taken by Lucia Nimcova, some of which comment on the imagined political power and lack of credible influence indicative of the town's leaders.

Guadalupe Gaona's Pozo de Aire (Well of Air) published by Vox in 2009 (ISBN: 978-987-1073-24-5) is a small hardcover book of image and poetry about memory, loss, and family. The elephant in the room is the disappearance of Gaona's father to the hand's of the military junta of Argentina in 1977 but Pozo de Aire isn't saturated with the overdramatic which could so easily taint such a project. Instead, the family summer villa on a lake in the mountains provides a meditative setting where old family photos flashback and present photos question the tranquility of the surroundings.

Terri Weifenbach's Another Summer sits in interesting relation to Pozo de Aire. Published by The Thunderstorm Press in 2009 (ISBN: 0-9841944-0-1) Another Summer is a small book of Weifenbach's recent work, directly personal it is centered around a summer holiday and discoveries made by a couple of bleach blond children. One gets the sense of Weifenbach trying to use photography to stave off time and remain in what seems to be an idyllic setting for growth and learning for these two children. For me, it achieves a melancholy increased by nostalgia that is hard to take - what does that say about me?

Thomas Manneke's Vilnius was published in 2006 by Artimo (ISBN: 90-8546-050-6). For 4 months Manneke lived in the Lithuanian city of Vilnius, photographing without a plan and "wherever people would take me." The result is a partial portrait of a city and its youth culture in transition now that the state has become a part of the European Union. As with Manneke's other book Odessa (Schaden, 2008), many of the portraits are of young women - most seem to have become his muses.

Wout Berger's Like Birds was published in 2009 by Galerie van Kranendonk (ISBN: 978-90-72697-09-7). In Like Birds Berger drops his view camera to the ground for often exquisitely beautiful, spatially confusing photographs of plant life. I find the book oddly inconsistent with half of the photographs inspired and surprising and the other half familiar and ordinary. A brief suite of pictures made of cityscapes might be introducing the notion of man's negative impact on nature but the vibrancy of color and wealth of the plant life belies such a reading.

On sending books for review: I really appreciate people's generosity but I would rather not receive books without request. I respect too much the passion, money and effort involved in making any book that it makes me feel bad when something shows up unannounced and doesn't appeal to my fickle tastes. You are welcome to send an email introduction but realize that the chances something will inspire a posting are very slim and I would rather save you the expense and waste of a book. Thank you for your understanding.

Errata Editions Limited Edition Sets

2010-02-26T23:29:00.005-05:00

The newest limited edition sets of our Books on Books series arrived safely to our studio a few weeks ago. We shipped out all of the pre-orders the day after they arrived and want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who is supporting this publishing project.

This set which are numbers 5 to 8 include William Klein: Life is Good & Good for You in New York, Yutaka Takanashi: Toshi-e, David Goldblatt: In Boksburg and Koen Wessing: Chili, September 1973.

To order a set of all four please visit the Errata Editions website and click on the 'SHOP' page to purchase using our convenient Paypal buttons.

A very limited number of sets of numbers 1 to 4 are still available. This set includes; Eugene Atget: Photograph de Paris, Walker Evans: American Photographs, Sophie Ristelhueber: Fait, and Chris Killip: In Flagrante.

One improvement for the trade edition of the Books on Books series has been a redesign of the dustjackets. Although we liked the way the older belly-band style jackets looked initially, in the actual stores they were very problematic. The belly band often slipped to the bottom of the cover throwing off the entire design of the book, got torn frequently, and due to the paper choice - they attracted dirt like a vacuum. Although we had carefully chosen a nicer and more expensive paper stock for the jackets, it just didn't survive well in the retail environment.

So, after careful consideration we have created a new design which is a full jacket on a matte laminate paper which will last longer and can be cleaned.

Since this is a series we are concerned for buyers who purchased a couple of the first books and would be bothered that the next have a different look. So to address this we have printed up a few hundred newly designed jackets for the older books so all of your Books on Books can have the same look. These will be available through our website as a courtesy, with the only charge being to cover shipping costs. See the 'SHOP' page for ordering details.

The newest trade editions seen above should be in stores in the next couple weeks. As always, thank you for the support. Meanwhile I am at work on editions 9 to 12...

Distance and Slow Boat by Onaka Koji

2010-02-23T23:58:00.000-05:00

Yutaka Takanashi in an interview once described his approach while working on Toshi-e as, "...two conflicting creatures settled into my body. One is a 'hunter of images', aiming exclusively to shoot down the invisible, and the other is a 'scrap picker' who can only believe in what is visible." Onaka Koji, a contemporary scrap picker to Takanashi has produced several books over the past ten years, of which, Slow Boat and Distance are my favorites.

In Distance, a book published in 1996 by Mole, Koji wanders to the outskirts of an unspecified city and into its industrial wastelands. His photos rejoice in the weighty infrastructure of rail lines, roadways, and finally the worn down port where ships sit awaiting the next economic boom.

Aptly named, Distance feels like the eyes of a wanderer who is alone and wishes to remain to his own discoveries. Whether that be lines of oil drums on a deserted path or a view of a bus station and telephone lines made through a filthy window. There is a connection with place but not with the population. people are seen but they are reduced to gestures - a reminder that this isn't a beautiful apocalypse but a functioning, living city.

His black and white tonalities are rich and dense - at moments Koudelka might be lurking in the heavy shadows. The printing of Distance accentuates the heaviness and in general, is not a great book beyond the stunning photos. Its cover is atrociously designed with heavy-handed silver foil typography and a textured stock but don't let that spoil the photographs.

Distance is long out-of-print and way overpriced on the secondary book market so I recommend Slow Boat as a fine alternative. Published originally in 2003 and re-published by Schaden in 2008, Slow Boat would have made my 'best of' list for that year if I had known about it.

Again, Koji is a distanced observer of life both within and at the margins of another unspecified city. Much of this work was rediscovered by Koji and appealed to his sense that he had no recognition or memory of making them. He also makes mention of assembling the sequence not with a logical framework in mind but "just in accordance with my own feelings at the time."

Compared to Distance, the complicated framing remains but his tonal scale in Slow Boat has shifted slightly to an overall greyish cast. This veil of flatness creates a calmer mood suited to what appear to be lazy days within the city. There doesn't seem to be work being done (none is directly shown) and when pedestrians are in the streets, they tranquilly stroll along under tangles of electric and phone lines.

I see a kinship between Yutaka Takanashi and Onaka Koji in both practice and descriptions of contemporary life in Japan. Takanashi raced toward Tokyo in a sports car describing the landscape as a fleeting moment blurring at the edges, while in a couple of Koji's images a blimp can be seen, drifting over the city - its airy flight setting a different pace towards the city.

Three books from Willem Van Zoetendaal

2010-02-14T23:51:00.001-05:00

Willem Van Zoetendaal is a publisher, gallerist and designer from Amsterdam who is responsible for releasing an interesting roster of books of contemporary Dutch photography. He came to my attention because of his elegant design skills and book production. Some of you may already have some of his book titles in your collections as he has published a couple of Paul Kooiker and Arno Nolan's artist books.

My favorite of Paul Kooiker's to date is Room Service released in 2008. Kooiker has published a few books in a series which take on full bodied nudes as a subject and Room Service does so with them posing in front of what I gather is his personal book collection. His approach is tight framings of torsos, legs and breasts that are at times reminiscent of Brandt - that is, if Brandt had just completed a workshop with Elmer Batters or G.P. Fieret.

Their charm is locked in the technically rough descriptions which allow flare, unnatural color fading, and ultra roughly screened print reproductions. For book lovers, there is a tension between which gains the most attention, the nudes, or our inherent interest in scanning bookcases for recognizable titles.

The third aspect of the work is the printing. Many of these seem to be rescanned images from offset prints as the dot patterns are huge, often reveling their four color matrix. For those who enjoy the quirks and superficial qualities of ink laying on paper, this one is a must see.

Another interesting title although entirely in Dutch with no English translations is Salto Mortale. Salto Mortale means a "dangerous undertaking" and charts the life of the Dutch owned airline company Fokker which dominated civil aviation from 1912 to 1996, the year they went bankrupt.

Using around 150 archive photos mostly from the 20s and 30s (and a lot of text), Salto Mortale explores the earliest plane designs and adaptations which led the company into producing many military aircraft used in World War 1 including the Fokker Dr.1 which was made famous by the German pilot Manfred von Richthofen, commonly known as the Red Baron.

Again, the lack of my ability to read the text is the downside of this book as it is very text heavy, but the beautiful archive photos make it an interesting find.

One last title to mention, Das Prinzip by Johannes Schwartz has me at a slight loss for explanation. The first publication from Schwartz, it presents one image each from several of his series. As a selection, I am drawn to his individual photographs but the larger relationship implied by the title is purposely confusing. The curator Moritz Kung mentions in his essay that accompanies the book, "Das Prinzip (The Principle) suggests a truth or a dogma, which is however not present in the various works... Unless of course one were to define 'deceptiveness' as a principle."

Schwartz turns his lens to still lifes which may be constructions in some cases, and others 'found' encounters with objects in others. I am reminded of some of Jeff Wall's non-personed compositions but Schwartz draws out their narrative and potential complexity through the titles of each work. Overgrown weeds and dirt might be alluding to floral patterns found in carpets in his work Scattered Rug (2005). His photos of children's playhouses lose their innocent qualities and take on a darker edge from their rough and makeshift appearances. In Das Meer (The Lake, 2004) pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are scattered on an aqua surface, within the chaos several rectangles of completed sections sit turned upside down.

What each adds up to or connects them is ambiguous and that is obviously Schwartz's strategy. On the surface this might appear to be a simple exhibition catalog with its cool and somewhat detached presentation but turning from page to page, we strive to search out those connections. What we are left with are a series of detached realities which accomplish what many books don't - Das Prinzip compels me to think.

Lost Boy Mountain by Lester B. Morrison

2010-02-08T23:36:00.006-05:00

Phone call recorded by Mr. Whiskets to Lester B. Morrison on 1/29/2010.

Whiskets: Les, the tape is rolling. Can you still hear me? I can barely hear you now.

LBM: Yeah, loud and clear. What do you want to know?

Whiskets: OK, so I got your new book in the mail. Is there any background about yourself you want to fill me in on?

LBM: Well, maybe it makes sense... (tape inaudible) ...I dropped out of the University of Rochester in 1991. I was sort of a local pariah in Rochester so I decided to move back to Minnesota. In my spare time I started to write my novel Lost Boy Mountain. I've been working on it for the last 19 years.

Whiskets: Is that how you met Alec? In Minnesota?

LBM: Soth? Yeah, I knew him a long time ago. I was a few years ahead of him in high school. We reconnected when I moved back.

Whiskets: What do you do for work? Are you an artist?

LBM: Not really. When I moved back I desperately needed some work and as I'd had some bio lab experience in college, I figured I might try to land a something at the teaching hospital but unfortunately my sketchy past came back to haunt me.

Whiskets: Sketchy past?

LBM: In college I designed an experiment that proposed to attenuate a certain strain of bacteria using gibberellin, a plant growth hormone. I didn't know much about the biochemistry, but I figured that, bacteria being simple plants, this stuff might do weird things to other organisms. It sure grew big fuckin' watermelons! Only problem was, I picked an organism called Pasturella Avicida for my test case - its common name is fowl cholera but I didn't know that. If it had gotten loose, it could easily have wasted all of Rochester's bird populace. Thanks to the superior wisdom of the lab director, that didn't happen, but for a long time afterwards, every time I'd see a dead bird I'd weep like a newborn. I did manage to smuggle out five grams of pharmaceutically pure gibberelic acid. I guess I could have grown some killer tomatoes, but I finally lost the stuff. Message to self: Check pockets before doing laundry.

Whiskets: Can you repeat why you dropped out of college? I think the tape didn't record that.

LBM: In my sophomore year I started doing psychedelics in a rather serious way. Some friends got hold of a bunch of Sandoz tabs. Sandoz was the only pharmaceutical outfit ever to produce pure lysergic acid diethylamide-25 and ergotamine in a form that looked like Pop-Rocks. Ergotamine comes from a fungal rust that grows on certain cereal grains. In high doses can cause vascular stasis, thrombosis and gangrene. That's how my buddy Ben lost his foot and resulted in me having extreme panic attacks that forced me to drop out of school. Well, that and the foul cholera episode. When it isn't turning you into a leper, the ergotamine slots so perfectly into the complex serotonin metabolism of the primate cortex. Brings about some random stochastic happenstance, some entropic slippage where - although you have the taste of cat piss in your mouth - you also find yourself trying to poke out the eyes of god. The morning after my first trip, I finally understood colors.

Whiskets: Ergotamine Pop Rocks?

LBM:Yeah, that shit's crazy, I haven't touched it after Ben lost his foot. Last year I got my hands on an entire pint of liquid LSD. This was the stuff that freaks in California were using to make blotter acid back in the 60s. But I had to be different, blotter acid and tie-dye isn't my speed. I decided to bottle the stuff mixed with dimethyl sulfoxide. That way, just touching will start you on the way to squeegeeing your third eye. I decided to make some quick cash so I crafted my own burette out of the tube of a Bic pen and marked up graduations up the side indicating how much liquid is in the thing. I attached a stopcock arrangement at the bottom so I could portion out small quantities into these tiny amber bottles.

Whiskets: You were selling liquid LSD mixed with DMSO?

LBM: It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. But damn, it was painstaking work filling those hundreds of tiny bottles. Turn the stopcock just a little, drizzle one full, cap it, next. There did get to be a rhythm to it after a while. But nothing is perfect because each time, a little bit would dribble down the side of the vial, and pretty soon my fingers were drenched. I couldn't wipe it off - this stuff was precious - so I just let it build up into a sticky goo, eventually it completely covered my hands. With the DMSO mixed in, I was tripping pretty much 24 hours a day.

Skin is porous you know. It actually breathes, which is why you will die if you paint yourself all over. I wasn't dying exactly, but my hands were starting to breathe. And I mean like, BREATHING. It was fascinating just watching them, but I had a hundred vials left to fill and I needed all my concentration. Without it, I knew there was a high probability I'd be counting the molecules in the tabletop inside of a couple minutes. But oh man, it was getting difficult. Little peripheral flashes at first, you know? Those darters you get? And then there was that optic nerve thing. I could close my eyes, sort of bear down on the muscles behind my forehead and an electric purple Major Fifth chord would arc across the inside of my skull.

I got nearly all the bottles filled before I started floating out of my body. The tension was incredible. Like before a storm. Big thunderheads rolling in, the temperature is dropping and the wind comes up, turning the leaves over the way it does, rustling through your hair and clothes. I couldn't stand it any longer. I licked my hands all over, drank what was left in the burette, then knocked back a couple vials just to make sure I'd be good and dosed. I still have super-power acid night vision, cognitive invisibility and... (phone disconnects) (tape ends)

Editor's note: Lester's book Lost Boy Mountain comes in a baggie filled with what looks like floor sweepings. I do not advise you handle it for prolonged periods of time.

Blackout New York by Rene Burri

2010-01-31T23:33:00.000-05:00

On November 9th, 1965, a Northeast power failure effected, New York State, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey and even parts of Ontario, Canada. It was said that over 25 million people were caught in the early evening blackout which lasted until the morning hours of the following day. The cause was a wrongly inserted relay switch in a power station near Niagara Falls. Rene Burri ventured out into the darkness with a handful of films to photograph and the resulting images have been published in a limited edition, Blackout New York from Moser books.

Photographing only by flashlight, candle light, or car light, Burri pointed his camera at the stranded commuters as they try to deal with the situation. Some gather in Grand Central to wait it out while others pack onto buses and cabs to find their way home. There is the suggestion of nervousness but panic isn't present.

Looking through Blackout New York, one starts to notice how small amounts of light - providing the minimum amount of information - spur the mind to fill in the bigger picture. Burri's slow black and white films, push-processed to build density in any middle-tone and highlight in the exposure results in super contrasty images that are often abstract. In one only a hand holding a lighter to the dial of a phone is recorded surrounded by vast amounts of black. The opening image features several people barely registered on the film, mostly described by flashes of white from their shirt collars. It takes us a few moments to adjust to these pictures. In a funny way this book is also partly about photography's technical limitations under these extreme conditions.

There is a fine line between underexposed images that succeed despite their flaw and those that succumb to it. In this edit there are a few images that just aren't resolved enough to merit inclusion - the aforementioned opening image for instance. When there is enough of a record made, the images glow from various light sources and people appear like apparitions out of the velvety black.

Nicely printed, Blackout New York reproduces the images as mostly double page spreads which means they run across the gutter. This design choice is distracting as the images, due to their limited detail, need fewer hurdles for us to jump over to decipher them.

At Arles last year I heard that Burri had an installation in a blackened room where the viewers were given flashlights to view these photographs. I didn't see the show but I can guess that would be an interesting way to experience these photos. In the dark with a slight sensation of unease resting on your shoulders. Your flashlight in front of you darting here and there, trying to pick up what little there is to see.

Errata Editions Limited Edition Sets

2010-01-24T18:32:00.005-05:00

For everyone who is asking themselves "Where are the new Errata books?," they will be arriving into NY in the next week. There was a three week delay in our shipment from China due to new freighting regulations concerning Homeland Security and our shipment was held in port before we could secure clearance. We had originally expected the books to arrive for packing and delivery to our pre-order customers in the last week of December but they are just arriving to us in this next week.

Please accept our apology, as soon as they arrive to our New York studio we will be immediately shipping them out to those that have pre-ordered. Believe me, we are as excited and impatient to get them in your hands as anyone.

We appreciate your patience and know that once they arrive to your home, you won't be disappointed.

Thank you again for the support. Jeff, Valerie and Ed.

Wonderland: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith (Reprint) by Jason Eskenazi

2010-01-23T23:03:00.001-05:00

Originally Wonderland: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith was published by De.MO but only half the print run was realized so it sold out quickly and disappeared from everyone's radar far too quickly. Jason has taken on the task of reprinting another run so that those who missed out on the first round can easily acquire a copy now through his publishing company Red Hook Editions. Ordering info can be found here. Below is my original review from July of 2008.

Jason Eskenazi's Wonderland, A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith is the culmination of ten years worth of work describing aspects of contemporary life behind the Iron Curtain. Taking a page from literary fairy tales and children's stories, Wonderland is structured - less as a documentary project - and more as a metaphoric journey into the quirky landscape of the former super power as it shifts from a communist empire to a wild mix of deeply rooted traditions holding out against creeping influence of the west.

Eskenazi, a Guggenheim fellow, opens the book with an image of a woman's back as she pensively looks out an apartment window overlooking Red Square. The flowery patterns of lace curtains hang over our protagonist as a reminder of innocence or perhaps idealism as the real world outside draws her attention. The sequence quickly evolves into the traditional storyline of a fairy tale - a young child is thrust into the world to fend for herself in an almost hallucinatory state, losing her innocence in an unsheltered world.

As the photographer, Eskenazi steers her journey to reflect the changes taking place within the empire. The agrarian culture seems to be far outdated while the more modern industrial infrastructure collapses. The women change from timid peasants covered head to toe in traditional worker garb into miniskirt wearing, hyper-sexualized beings. The only structure that seems to remain strong is with the military where men exercise and wear crisp uniforms but to defend what? An ideology or an empire now split into individual states?

Lingering remnants of statues, now headless, the slaughtering of a goat, and a barber shaving a man's neck are brilliantly sequenced to remind us that the head is now coming off and the state is dissolving into the fantastic. Our protagonist experiences war, poverty, drug addiction and rape while ballerinas and princesses appear in working in factories or wandering through dingy stairwells.

The style of Eskenazi's photography follows the lead of the likes of Gilles Peress -- an accomplishment considering the plethora of bad photojournalism that is far too wrapped up in visual geometry and gymnastics at the expense of deeper content. Eskenazi has learned to make compelling photographs that have the strength of both form and content.

Although my description may make it seem like a complete downer, Wonderland isn't a harsh book on the surface a'la Nachtwey or Richards. The deeper meaning may be dark but like a children's story, it is delivered with the rhythm of adventure into a landscape of the mysterious.

Funded in part by the Joy of Giving Something Foundation, Wonderland has a handcrafted feel to the design with an uncovered book-board cover and exposed spine. My only real criticism would lie with the trim size. At only around 5X7 inches, it seems like larger work forced into too small of a package. A small criticism but noteworthy.

Stalin had once said "We were born to make fairy tales come true." When the wall finally fell it was clear that the fantasy had not been realized to what was promised. As he writes, Eskenazi explored through its remnants "searching for metaphors but realizing, too late, that I had brought my own when I first arrived. And now that it's time to leave, I sit for a few moments on the edge of the bed to assure safe travel, as the Russians do, just before I lock the door, unable to return to what perhaps never was."

Long Live the Large Family by Carl Johan de Geer

2010-01-19T23:56:00.003-05:00

The accomplishments of Carl Johan de Geer are far and wide. Photographer, filmmaker, painter, musician, television show creator, novelist, silk screen artist, textile designer, editor of the counter-cultural mag Puss (Kiss) and general outspoken critic of political and social elites. Never heard of him? That isn't uncommon apparently. A week ago I hadn't either.

Geer's book of photographs from 1980 Med Kameran Som Tröst (The Camera as Consolation) looks like one of the undiscovered greats of Scandinavian photography. Four photos to a page - life laid out in quadrants. A new 'zine-style publication from Dashwood Books and the Boo-Hooray Gallery called Long Live the Large Family gives a sense of his extended family from the mid-60s and the early 70s with a similar flavor.

Geer was born into one of Sweden's most powerful families but in the late-50s he started to work against his privilege within the subculture of Sweden's underground art community. His bohemian friends in Stockholm became his camera's subject as they rallied against the status quo with political critiques and sexual openness.

His "style" is that of a quick-handed snapshot. I wouldn't go as far as saying these are great photos individually but together they weave a tone as free and pleasurable as the idea of youth itself. This is not the bitter tears of Nan Goldin twenty years before with the needle and the damage done but a Leftist romp embracing creativity and exuberance among friends. It all has the spirit of change about to happen instead of the capitulation of self medication.

Long Live the Family is a 40 page, staple bound 'zine printed on heavy paper. Its printing isn't perfect but that would be missing the point. It remains as immediate and non-conformist as the subject requires. The reproductions were made from four image panels which make up photo collages he created for a 1979 exhibition at the MoMA in Stockholm. Long Live the Large Family was published in an edition of 250 copies.

For those of you in NYC, check out the exhibition at Boo-Hooray c/o Steven Kasher Gallery at 521 West 23rd street between 10th and 11th avenues. There will be a closing party this Saturday from 6-8pm. Go and check out Carl Johan's books on display, a small archive from Puss magazine, material from the Galleri Karlsson, and the great political silk screen posters that line the walls. Beer and sandwiches have been mentioned.

Photobook Exchange Sale

2010-01-17T19:16:00.002-05:00

For a limited time all books on the 5B4 Photobook Exchange are now being offered at 20% off. This discount applies for purchase only. Please contact me at jeffladd99(at)hotmail(dot)com first to make sure the books you are interested in are still available.

Maps by Nicholas Calcott

2010-01-15T23:25:00.001-05:00

The 12th Press is a Paris-based publisher which is focusing on small edition photobooks and 'zines. Recently I picked up a copy of their newest publication Maps from Nicholas Calcott, the owner of 12th Press.

Calcott is the author of Maps but his name doesn't appear in or on the book at all - call him an archivist hidden well from view. Maps consists of 10 aerial photographs made over Poland and Eastern Germany by the Luftwaffe just before World War II.

Like satellite surveillance images or those from moon exploration, these photos become abstractions which with the overlying grid and imposition of city names, becomes a fascinating mix of image, text and line.

Farmlands - I assume (or forests maybe) - from this vantage point, are described as varying shades of grey butted against one another like planks of wood. Each photo must represent hundreds of miles worth of area and an interesting aspect for me is seeing how man effects the landscape. In some, chaos reigns from this god's eye view, while in others, man somehow managed to create a beautiful tapestry.

Introducing the information (at the end) that these images were shot by the Luftwaffe obviously taints how we look at these images and the thoughts that follow. German planes effectively bombed many cities in Poland into submission in September 1939. Bombing sorties and the lay of the land were determined by these same maps. Calcott gathered this material from the German Federal Archives.

Maps is handmade with rich inkjet printed 12" square plates on very heavy paper. It is screwpost bound and issued in an edition of 100. More info can be found at the 12th Press website.

Fallen Books by Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson

2010-01-12T23:25:00.001-05:00

A few years ago I was in Mexico enjoying a great jalapeno-induced mindfuck when I awoke to my bed rocking violently back and forth for a couple seconds. I wasn't sure I hadn't dreamt it until I saw through the darkness of the room the ceiling light slowing from a wide sway. In the morning I asked my wife if she felt the quake since, at the time, her gentle snore hadn't skipped a breath. She said anything she could sleep through wasn't a "real" earthquake even if the earth done quaketh. She's from Mexico City. For her, anything under 6 point 5 is either your imagination or gas.

For those living in areas with heavy seismic activity a common experience might be reshelving books that have toppled from bookcases. A new artist book from Aaron S. Davidson and Melissa Dubbin called Fallen Books explores images taken in libraries after earthquakes have done their worst to the Dewey Decimal System.

Davidson and Dubbin have organized their archive according to a modified Mercalli Scale, a graphic alternative to the Richter Scale that quantifies how strongly an earthquake effects the surface of the earth. Its color code indicates the intensity of the quake as it ripples out from the epicenter. Each photo is accompanied by basic information of date, place and library name. The back of each page is printed with the color as each episode corresponds to the Mercalli Scale.

In their statement, Davidson and Dubbin start by saying that "Books are earthquake proof." A seemingly confusing sentence that leaves me uncertain about what they mean. Many books are damaged to the point of being unusable - spines broken and book blocks wrenched from their cover-boards after great falls. They are hardly "earthquake proof," but I won't dwell on that.

What I will dwell upon is the way the artists chose to reproduce the photographs in what would otherwise be a fascinating book. The images, culled from various sources, are snapshots. They were made a straight documentation of the damage. Bookcases listing heavily off center and piles of books flowing into the aisles described with the passionless eye of an insurance agent. That to me is interesting but the oversized line screen and dot patterns in the reproductions reduce the quality too much for my tastes. Certainly this was a conscious choice and not simply a technical factor.

Fallen Books was published in an edition of 500 copies by Onestar Press. For those who know the publisher, they have put out mostly print-on-demand style books which conform in size and general quality but cover a large artistic range. Interestingly this title (and the recent book from Monica Haller, Riley's Story) departs with an inventive design by Francesca Grassi. Bound with metal screwposts and using uncoated paper stock, my disappointment with the image quality is abated somewhat by the form.

I want to like Fallen Books partly because of the subject but also because it allows a freak like me to take a perverse, vicarious pleasure in thinking of the horror I'd face of finding my own library in piles on the floor. It works on both counts to a point, but the faults leave this hardly earth-shattering.

Nothing But Home by Sebastien Girard

2010-01-10T23:40:00.002-05:00

In addition to Alec Soth's Allowing Flowers, the second book about home I'd like to mention is the Toulouse-based photographer Sebastien Girard's new Nothing But Home. Self-published in November of 2009, this made my best of the year list and was one of the only books that I brought home from Paris Photo.

Nothing But Home opens with wall-paper patterned endpages and the quote: "The simplest way is to take up everything again from the beginning, lie down on the grass, and start over, as if one knew nothing." What follows is an almost clinical examination of small details made while Girard's home was being renovated. His style is at times cool and detached and very claustrophobic. He describes with the eye of a building inspector, examining each imperfection which will need attending to during the construction; a paint drip on old faded wallpaper, dangerous bent nails sticking out of a wall joist, loose and wild wiring sprouting from a light socket.

Girard allows no breathing room in these photos. Perhaps metaphor for the extreme personal attention one gives to rebuilding of home, he keeps his framing tight. The artificial lighting gives the perception that all of the handy work is happening at night - a clandestine operation of transformation.

He provides no "before and after" photographs - we don't know the lay of the land at all. The closest to such an establishing shot is a photo of a stove top with rusty burners upon which sits a photo of a man's den complete with leather bound books, a brandy bottle and a roaring fireplace. If that photo represents the desired end-point then we have a very long journey clouded in spackle dust ahead.

Nothing But Home has the feel of many wonderful spare books coming from Amsterdam. Clean in design , it was bound in Holland but finely printed in Girard's hometown of Toulouse. It is in a first edition of 500 and also comes in a special edition of 100 copies with a print.

Allowing Flowers by Alec Soth

2010-01-05T23:02:00.006-05:00

With the economic crisis and the toll on the housing market we saw and heard hundreds of stories about families facing foreclosure, eviction and/or homelessness. Photographers tried to tell many of those stories through their pictures - to put the human face to the catchphrase of "main street." A noble thing to do, but those stories do little to put people back in their houses or help with the difficultly of such a rapid change to people's lives. Finding a way to give back to your community through your photography is something few have been able to achieve, but Alec Soth has found one.

Alec has teamed up with a Minnesota-based non-profit housing developer called CommonBond Communities with the goal of providing 4000 affordable apartments and townhouses to needy residents of the Upper Midwest. Alec photographed some of the residents of the CommonBond homes and produced a beautiful book called Allowing Flowers that is given away as a gift to people who donate significant sums to the effort.

Soth uses flowers as a motif as they appear in one form or another in each photograph. The metaphor is obvious but appropriate. These homes are grounds to grow and brighten lives.

The few portraits that are taken where we can see some of the interior spaces also seem to be describing lives in transition - they start to ask when a "house" becomes a "home." In one photograph a man at the far left edge watches his sleeping child laying on the floor, in the background, framed photos rest on the floor instead of hanging on the wall. In another, a woman sits at the table in her dining room which is so pristine and tidy, the lack of signs of wear is almost a little sad.

Other photos feature portraits made outside in the communities - a family lays on a perfect patch of green grass in one where Alec is channeling the best qualities of Nicholas Nixon. In another, a woman partly obscured by a tree walks a pure white cat.

I feel odd "reviewing" this book when the real accomplishment is in the funds it will raise for this housing project. The book is available to those who donate $5000.00 to CommonBond (a $25,000 donation gets you a book and a print). Each copy is unique due to the screen printed cover boards and the interior printing is finely done by Trifolio in Verona. The ultra-clean design is by Catherine Mills.

Most of us probably won't have the money to put towards this fine effort. At least not enough to get the book as a gift, but for the few that might - it's not about the book, it's about a home.

Sanatorium by Rob Hornstra & Arnold van Bruggen

2009-12-31T23:55:00.001-05:00

Due to my general laziness after the holidays I see that Andrew Phelps, the fine photographer and blogger of the booksite Buffet, has beaten me to the punch by mentioning Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen's newest publication Sanatorium.

Hornstra's book 101 Billionaires was one of my favorites of the year from 2008 so I was excited to see his endeavors with the Sochi Project were paying off and he had published this new title with help from donors.

Sanatorium is offered only to people who donate to help fund his version of slow journalism documenting the changes taking place to Sochi, a town in Russia, which is preparing for the arrival of the 2014 Olympics. Working alongside the writer Arnold van Bruggen, Hornstra plans to photograph in the area over the next five years, and along the way, publish magazine articles and books to get the multitude of stories out. Sanatorium is the first.

In 1919, Lenin decreed that localities with curative properties should be property of the people and used for curative purposes. Accordingly, many sanatoriums sprung up along Sochi's 90 miles of coastline.

Hornstra's description is clean, large format portraits and interiors lit with flash. The environment seems filled with out dated machinery that looks as if it would do more harm than good. In one, a boy sits in a bathtub which is lined with tubes and spouts that look more for torture than healing. In others, the curative machinery Hornstra photographs look like left over props from science fiction films with their arm-like protrusions and incomprehensible purpose.

The metaphor of wish fulfillment is in the air. Wish fulfillment not just for the healing powers of the machinery, mud baths or mineral waters in the sanatorium pictured but also in the face lift that Sochi is getting for the 2014 Olympics. What will be the outcome of the world's eyes falling on Sochi and the years after it is all over.

Book-wise, Sanatorium is short (21 photos over 42 pages) but its sexy design and production values deserve attention. Designed by Kummer & Herman out of Utrecht, they employed an interesting double stitch binding that achieves a squared off spine and a division of text from the photographs which were printed on different paper stocks from one another. Sanatorium was printed in 350 copies.

To donate to Hornstra and van Bruggen's check their website here.

Errata Editions On-Press: Day Four

2009-12-18T23:30:00.001-05:00

The last of this set of Books on Books to be printed is Yutaka Takanashi's Toshi-e. Takanashi was one of the founders of the avant-garde magazine Provoke and of all of the Provoke era publications, Toshi-e is most impressive not only due to the photography but also because of its elegant presentation. Takanashi worked with the designer Kohei Sugiura. In fact, Takanashi entrusted Sugiura with the design, edit and decision to include the second "notebook" booklet of Takanashi's Tokyo-jin series. Most people know Toshi-e as "that large Japanese book with the shiny metal disk on the cover," well now you'll see that it's a bit more complicated than that.

The first order of business after learning Mr. Takanashi was open to the idea of featuring Toshi-e was to put together a rough layout for him to see how the book would work in our format. This meant I needed to quickly find a copy to photograph since this isn't a book that many people would comfortably lend out - it usually goes for anywhere from 4000-7000 dollars in the used book world. I knew John Gossage in DC had a one since that is where I first saw it last year. Thankfully he agreed that I could come photograph the book. It was a make-shift set up but with his help I got the results needed for a layout to send to Mr. Takanashi. I sent it off to Yoko Sawada (who was acting on my behalf since Mr. Takanashi doesn't speak English and my Japanese is a little rusty) and I held my breath for about five days. Finally I received an email saying Yoko had printed out the entire PDF document and shown it to Mr. Takanashi in person. Turned out, he was extremely pleased with how it all looked and gave his final approval.

With every book we do, Robert Hennessey figures out how best to approach the scanning or photographing of each book. As I have mentioned before, each book presents its own possible problems due to the type of printing the original book employed. Books printed in gravure pose fewer possible problems due to that process not having a set, linear dot pattern. If you look at gravure under a loupe you'll see it is much more like film grain than straight lines of dots. This means that when you rephotograph a gravure book and create a line screen over that image to print offset, there is no chance of a moiré pattern appearing.

The two books in Toshi-e were printed in gravure but on different paper stocks. For Toshi-e, Sugiura used a beautiful thick stock while for the Notes: Tokyo-jin booklet, he used a cheap newsprint paper. Robert and I spoke at length about how to reproduce the Notes: Tokyo-jin booklet since the images lacked the tonal range that the larger Toshi-e book achieved, plus, the newsprint paper had a yellowish tone. I thought we'd have to print the booklet in four color as opposed to duotone to match the paper tone but Robert suggested we print in duotone but add a second varnish layer. That second varnish would create the paper tone while we'd be able to control the exact print quality without the chance of color shifts etc.

In order to closely match the newsprint paper tone with the second varnish layer I went to a paint store and picked up dozens of paint chip sample cards within the range of tan to yellow. Finding a close match, I then sent the chip off to C+C Offset along with a few of the files and a test forme and told them to match the sample as closely as possible. A couple weeks later the sample arrived and all looked great.

The first sheets off the press looked good. Since we had done machine proofs a few months ago, C+C was able to quickly get to good starting points with all of the books this time. Although things are going smoothly, this book is 176 pages long (11 signatures of 16 pages) which means I'm in for 22 press checks. We'll be printing into tomorrow morning and then the new dustjackets for my fifth and final day.

Portfolio: 40 Photos 1941/1946 by Robert Frank

2009-12-14T23:25:00.004-05:00

Before arriving to New York, Robert Frank prepared a portfolio of 40 photographs in order to introduce his work to magazine editors. Upon close inspection, Frank's work from the time treads a fine line between the older school pictorialists with Aldolf Herz at its center and the New Vision advocates which included Frank's teacher Gotthard Schuh. The New Vision shows through with his experimenting with angles and pairing images sans text or caption while the pictorialist in him finds an attraction to beautiful vistas and architecture as well as the rural farm life outside of Zurich.

Opening to the first page of Frank's Portfolio just published by Steidl, we are faced with an open phone book, brightly lit and lying on a field of black. I can't help but to think this is Frank's sly nod to the difficulty he may face upon breaking into the field of commercial photography. An open phone book, full of names, it is as if Frank is saying 'find me, pick me' among thousands of competitors.

It is also an image of weight as the book seems to be surrendering under its own heaviness. This is followed by two images which are weightless - the first of a snow scene and the facing page, a ray of sunlight described from a vantage point where we feel as if we are hovering over a small mountain village.

The 'weightless' and the 'grounded' are two opposing themes that Frank repeatedly uses to move us through this sequence. Three radio transistors in a product shot float into the sky while a music conductor, his band and a church steeple succumb to gravity on the facing page. Even in this image Frank shifts focus to the sky and beyond - the weightless. When he photographs rural life, the farmers heft whole pigs into the air and another carries a huge bale of freshly cut grain which seems featherlight but for the woman trailing behind with hands ready to assist.

Considering this work was made while fascism was on the move through Europe, external politics is felt through metaphor. A painted portrait of men in uniform among a display of pots and pans for sale faces a brightly polished cog from a machine - its teeth sharp and precise. In another pairing, demonstrators waving flags in the streets of Zurich face a street sign covered with snow and frost, a Swiss flag blows in the background. in yet another of a crowd of spectators face the illuminated march of a piece of machinery - its illusory shadow filling in the ranks. These pairings feel under the influence of Jakob Tuggener, whose work Frank certainly knew. Like Tuggener, Frank tackles the task of seemingly incongruous subject matter and finds a harmony through edit and assembly.

Again and again throughout this portfolio, Frank is not just trying to show his prowess in making images but in pairing them. They define conflicts in life. One boy struggles to climb a rope while a ski jumper is frozen in flight. Fisherman bask in sunlight while two pedestrians are caught in blinding snowfall.

Like the telephone book of self-reference at the beginning, Frank finishes his sequence with a climber reaching the summit of a mountain. He is connected by safety-line to the person making the photograph. The climber looks a little like a young Robert Frank, and if one suspends disbelief for a moment, the bright line of rope caught in the sunlight, leads straight down to a dangling camera lens - tying the young Robert to the medium for which he seemed chosen.

Errata Editions On-Press: Day Three

2009-12-12T23:43:00.000-05:00

I got a record three hours rest while they clean the rollers of the Heidelberg before starting on the Koen Wessing book Chili September 1973. For those that do not know the original book, this is a small body of work that Wessing, a Dutch photojournalist, made over ten days just after Pinochet overthrew Allende by a military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973. It was published just a few months later in Amsterdam.

The book is short and was cheaply produced with rough printing on flimsy newsprint type paper. To reproduce the book in my study I had a hard time finding a copy to borrow and wound up using Koen's last personal copy which he generously loaned.

It is a book that gets easily damaged so I packed it carefully and protected it while matching the prints on press. Last year I had the experience of one of the pressmen grabbing my copy of Sophie Ristelhueber's Fait out of my hands and sweeping its pages like an issue of People magazine so I have been extra cautious on how the books are handled by the pressmen this time. It is embarrassing to freak out because most sane people don't regard books as delicate objects. They are things that are used, read and handled. So what if pages get torn or folded? How do you explain that what they have in their hands sometimes is as valuable as a used car? At one point one of the pressmen grabbed the copy of Chili and I found myself uncontrollably shouting the word 'careful' about 6 times within a half a second like I had Tourette's Syndrome. I sounded like a turkey getting a colonoscopy.

When I have seen spreads from this book reproduced before like in Martin and Gerry's Photobook: A History I noticed that the plates always look more rich than the original. As I mentioned before, this was done with a single pass of black ink on cheap quality paper so my concern was in keeping the tenor of the original and not shifting too much the quality in my book. It is a difficult balance between matching and what might, to those unfamiliar with the original, look to be poor printing. The strategy Robert Hennessey and I came up with after seeing our proofs was to not overdo the black densities - to let the sense of the paper surface show through as a texture. The results were a true representation of the object.

Since the book is short in length the pressmen fired up a different six color press to start printing the last signatures of each book which require color. For the black and white books we have done, we print them in duotone but the last signature or two are always in color so that the bibliography and 'making of' information can feature color book jackets or illustrations when necessary. With two presses now running, the checks are turning out to be staggered so that I am called to check more often. Now the time between is only 20-30 minutes which means I have been just hanging out in the press room which is pushing me to the limits.

In the area with the Heidelbergs, C+C has installed thin pipes in the ceiling which every 15 minutes or so shoot an extremely fine mist of water into the air to keep the dust levels down. I've taken to standing under them instead of showering.

The plates for the Takanashi book are stacked and waiting their turn for tomorrow...

If you'd like to get a real sense of what press checking my books was like this time, you can do the following:

1. Get into bed and set your alarm to wake you in one hour and fifteen minutes from the time you laid down. Important! Don't get undressed or take off your shoes.

2. When alarm sounds, jump out of bed in a daze and stagger around for a few seconds until you recognize where you are.

3. Walk out of your house and head to the nearest deli. My trips to the press room from my guest house would take about 4 minutes of walking time.

4. Once you are in the deli, go to the refrigerator and pick up a carton of milk.

5. Scrutinize the milk carton for any flaws. No scratches, dents nor smudges. Check the print densities and don't forget - clean registration!!

6. When you can't find the perfect carton, ask to see more from the stockroom or just hang around the checkout counter for about 20 minutes looking for loose change that has fallen into the boxes of candy.

7. Pay for the milk. Leave the change you've found in the 'give a penny/take a penny' you cheap bastard.

8. Walk back home and get into bed.

9. Set your alarm for an hour later.

Repeat steps 1-9 for 5 days straight and you'll get the idea.

Sleep deprivation is said to be the worst form of torture. I haven't ever been tortured in the physical sense - no lashings, no stress positions, No waterboarding, no more listening to 24 hour recordings of babies screaming like Springa of SS Decontrol. C+C is no Guantanamo Bay but this can really suck once the fatigue sets in. You lie down for a cat nap - 45 minutes tops - before you're jolted awake mid-dream to the "deedle-leedle-leet" of the press check phone. I have started noticing some abnormal behavior.

* Running to a 4am press check, I got onto the elevator on the 5th floor of my guest house building, punched the 5th floor button several times and stood wondering why the doors weren't closing. It took almost a full minute to figure that one out.

* I accidentally kicked my tea spoon under the bed. Instead of simply retrieving it I am now stirring my instant coffee and ginger tea with the end of my toothbrush.

* I take noticeable pleasure in looking in the tea pot, watching the water, and trying to guess how long it will take before it gets to a full boil. (About two minutes).

* Choosing when to wear one of my plain grey t-shirts and when to wear my plain black t-shirts (all from Uniqlo) has become a major thought expenditure.

* Trying to coordinate which "make ready sheets" I want the paper loading pressman to use in order to get cool double-printed sheets. Not really abnormal behavior for me but to the Chinese pressman this is the oddest request they have ever gotten.

* I haven't shaven with a razor in about three years but I get the idea to do so now with a shitty plastic disposable and no proper shaving cream. Now it feels like there is a swarm of fire ants having an orgy on my chin.

* After three days of press checks I'm starting to fuckin' hate books.