The Plan by Michael Schmelling / Platz Ist Wo's Hinkommt by Jacob Kirch

As you can see I am doing some Spring cleaning with the Photobook Exchange so I thought two book reviews along those lines were in order. Michael Schmelling's The Plan from J&L Books and Platz Ist Wo's Hinkommt by Jacob Kirch from the Institute for Book Arts in Leipzig will help with some tidying up and making a few home improvements.

In 1992 I moved into a tenement railroad style apartment on 35th street and 9th avenue in Manhattan. The elderly woman who occupied the place before me was a compulsive hoarder of cloth swatches and scraps that she would gather from the dumpsters of dozens of garment sweatshops that lined my street. I heard from neighbors that she had filled the front room of the apartment which was about 10' x 12' to a depth of about 5 feet deep with the swatches. It took two days to cart all of the material to the street and when the workers made substantial progress, they uncovered a full dining room set and various pieces of furniture that hadn't seen daylight for years. When I moved in I had one milk-crate of books, another full of clothing. The space echoed for about a year.

Michael Schmelling has been photographing the results of compulsive hoarding by tagging along with a New York-based agency called Disaster Masters as they venture into the homes and apartments which are filled to the threshold with clutter. His new book The Plan could be seen as not only documentation, but an extension of the mindset of someone suffering from pathological hoarding. At approximately 600 pages, the amount of material is as overwhelming as a room full of useless possessions.

The Plan opens with a small polaroid photo of a washbowl within which sits an arrangement of beer tabs found in Walker Evans's home in Old Lyme, Connecticut. The lip of the sink is cluttered with other found objects rendering the basin unusable; not to mention the sign that rests just above the beer tabs that reads, "Please do not disturb the arrangement of tin beer caps in this washbowl." A still-life to be photographed to one day? or ready-made sculpture that has taken over a bathroom?

Schmelling finds hundreds of small still-lifes to describe and much of The Plan is concerned with those that follow in the spirit of Evans's beer tab arrangement. Setting about looking through this book is as unsettling as what the photos describe. It is bulky yet as unwieldy as a small phonebook. Its thin pages make it nearly impossible to grab just one. Its ink comes off on your fingers and smudges the white covers. Its construction leads to some confusion with a section of green pages (why?). In short, it is probably the perfect representation of a book about the disgust and repulsion of out of control filthy and clutter. Would you expect a book about such a subject to be clean? Why the green pages? Perhaps because venturing into one of these rooms piled high with junk is about as unpredictable as a book that suddenly reproduces its last pages in monochrome green.

There is a method to the madness but you need to decipher just what that is.



Once your home is cleaned and everything carted away by Disaster Masters, you can start repairing the damage. Jakob Kirch's Platz Ist Wo's Hinkommt could be the guide you are looking for.

Platz Ist Wo's Hinkommt is an artist book/ graphic design thesis that compiles various illustrations that were common to home improvement magazines from 1975-1990 in the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). Initially interested in Claude Lévi-Strausse's distinction between the "engineer" and the "amateur handyman" (an engineer makes use of objects made for a particular project, the handyman uses whatever is available to him) Kirch set up some formal rules in the creation of his book. The illustrations were chosen for their formal qualities yet Kirch arranges them into compositions on each page according to their original positions as they appeared in the handyman's magazines, making editing into a subtractive act to avoid overlapping images. Moves between subjective and an objective sets of rules, Kirch's new guide to home improvement force the formerly step-by-step illustrations into new associations that are puzzling yet hint at a deeper pool of knowledge beyond the rational.

The design of Platz is brilliant. It is comprised of 13 staple-bound booklets glued together to form one book. Each "section" provides illustrations from individual magazines and the last booklet - reproduced in bright yellow - provides a legend to provide each photo's caption and determine which magazine the illustration came from. This section folds out just beyond the main book block so it can remain open while the reader flips through the book, making access to the captions easy. Platz was published in only 150 copies by the Institut fur Buchkunst Leipzig in 2006 and is available for 30 euros.

The similarities to Schmelling's The Plan make these quite the pair. They are remarkably close in trim size, quality of reproduction (very rough), type of materials (thin paper) as well their tenor of what human activity creates and what it looks like when reinforced by a logic that might escape most people's understanding.

Denver by Robert Adams

This year sees two re-releases of Robert Adams' books, Denver and What We Bought: The New World from the Yale University Art Gallery.

Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area 1970-1974, the second book, in what could be seen as a trilogy starting with The New West and ending with What We Bought: The New World, was originally released in 1977. In Adams' words he "wanted to explore whether a romantic view of Denver and the American West was entirely wrong." In 93 photographs he presented his critique of America's poor stewardship of the land with rapid expansion of housing and obsessive consumption.

John Szarkowski's "suggestion of redeeming value" in regard to the buildings, homes and roads as he wrote in his introduction to The New West three years prior, is questioned in this body of work starting with the first chapter and its almost sinister heading Land Surrounded; To Be Developed. The promise of expansion to provide better way of life, a new start, is dashed with the trampling of the landscape. Motorbikes carve pathways into prairie land and an impotent fire hydrant stands comically within foot high scrub while smoke from a fire is seen miles away on the horizon. Man acting on his folly has identifiable consequences but within the historical flow of action, those consequences are sometimes difficult to determine in advance. It is this selfish behavior which comes under Adams' gaze throughout the book while the paradox of a love for people "who are, although they participate in urban chaos, admirable and deserving of our thought and care." That romantic western view of John Ford and the like isn't so much a lie or entirely wrong but that of a much smaller scale.

Adams describes exteriors and interiors of homes which, although complete with the amenities of convenience, seem sapped of any spiritual character. His are descriptions of the superficial. A room crowded with furniture of competing styles or a relatively empty one whose long expanse of couch seems metaphor for a desiree for endless comfort over all else.

Although mostly unpeopled but for distant figures dwarfed by the landscape, Denver does contain a few images that resemble portraiture. More indirect in approach, they describe a factory workers toiling over their repetitive work and a few shoppers wandering among aisles of brightly lit products. A couple of photographs which show their subjects in profile and perhaps in a moment of reflection might serve as self-portraits of the artist. Both subjects seem to represent visually the only conscience in the whole book.



This edition of Denver strays from the original in picture count and design. These changes are significant and notable since Adams himself has been said to have disliked the final book. He called it a "compromised fragment," which may be in reference to the words of his introduction where he states being taken by Yasunari Kawabata's phrase, "My life, a fragment in the landscape." The original is also very poorly printed. Although that lightness of the printing may accentuate the sense of "perpetual noon" as Lewis Baltz described the quality of light in these pictures, this edition's tritone plates with separations by Thomas Palmer are beautifully mastered.

The change in design brings this volume down to the same trim size as What We Bought: The New World. The plates however are slightly larger accounting for the vast amounts of white that surrounded the photographs in the original. Gone also are the blank white pages that appeared occasionally breaking the sequence and rhythm. This new edition presents a long train of images broken only by the chapter headings.

The other change is with adding 26 photographs. A few fill in the previously blank pages which faced the chapter titles in the 1977 edition while others make for new pairings within the sequence. It is interesting to note that What We Bought: The New World arose from the Denver project as that book came from a box of images which didn't make the original Denver edit and had been stored away for years. Now 26 previously unpublished images have made their way back into the book proving that photographic editing is an on-going process of evaluation which shifts with time.

None of the changes draw any complaint from me only praise. It may have taken 31 years to do so, but this new volume is now more beautifully realized than the original and no longer a compromised fragment.

Visible World by Fischli & Weiss

Seeing the foot thick book dummy at the Fotobook Festival in Kassel by Katharina Gaenssler has me looking at books which challenge the viewer with a bulk of imagery. That dummy must have had thousands of images, many of which on their own wouldn't hold water but that obviously isn't part of the artist's mindset. Gerhard Richter with his Atlas explored bulk images as reference points to culture and I would even point to Gilles Peress' Farewell to Bosnia which is in his words, is an "unedited book" of the Balkans wars. Fischli and Weiss' Visible World (Sichtbare Weld) published in 2001 by Walther Konig is another worthwhile exploration of the book as mass of information.

No text and with 8 photographs per page, Visible World is a globetrotting description of landscape and cityscape contained in a few hundred pages. Their approach seems to be from a tourist perspective. A great deal of what they describe would have drawn any passerby to lift a camera to the eye. Horizons are straight and the depth of focus sharp. They are seductive in beauty from the light to the color in the same way that postcards describe "good" representations. They point towards the exotic and the familiar with equal distance both formally and emotionally.

Seeing them arranged as grids, time is stunted. Repetition with only slight variance to framing brings to mind contact sheets but as long as we may linger on one vista, an entire continent can be spanned within one page. It is a catalog starts and pauses and I would draw momentary comparison to their video The Way Things Go in how these often disparate images link up and push the flow of the book.

What seems to be missing is any sense of how one would perceive the world through the daily media or human experience. War, famine, terrorism, disease, poverty, pollution, natural disasters are all distant concepts from what is described here. It is a pure world where harmony and a sense of calm persists. I think it is fitting that this book was published in the year of 9/11 since that disconnect is so strong. Theirs is essentially, as the title suggests, the superficial world as we may pass through it disregarding deeper thought. The hippo emerging from the water is only seen as he breaks the surface, the rest is not visible.



The sequencing jumps from continent to continent and since this is presented as one venture in continuum, the comparison of one landscape with another weaves the world into a tighter, neater package. History is also present where the primordial (crocodilles and hippos) and unblemished horizons mix with man's modern presence (billboards and inner city traffic).

The longest pause is on airports. Near the 2/3rds mark, they spend several pages of grids describing the planes and terminals that made their adventure possible. I raise this because it was their book Airports that first made me recognize that whoever was behind the camera (Fischli or Weiss or both), they actually craft wonderful individual pictures. That section departs slightly from the traditional tourist view (although many amateur's make pictures of the planes they are about to enter at the start of their trip, most are not as obsessive as is observed here).

As much as most of these pictures already exist in our mind's eye (they are so common to guides about how to take "good" photos), and can be considered cliches of tourist confirmations rather than discoveries, they have a sense of banality but also are compellingly beautiful beyond expectation. Because of this one might get the sense of a parody at work; a dissection of tourist views thrown into a conceptual mass of photographs.

The task of describing the totality of the visible world is, of course, impossible. This fragmentary view which spans so much distance and appears cyclical, provides a pleasure in taking in only a small portion of truth and with willing participation we follow in tow, embracing blissful ignorance.

Wald by Gerhard Richter

It seems one can't move within a bookstore now a days without risk of knocking a new Gerhard Richter book off the shelf. One however caught my attention, Wald published this year by Walther Konig is more artist book than catalog and due to its smaller size you might not have noticed it.

For a few years, Richter has been photographing in a forest near his home in Cologne, Germany. 35mm in format the first impression might be that these are paintings. They follow some of his formal traits and the color palette and range of tone will seem familiar as well. A dense book of 285 photographs, all verticals, he loosely groups them into categories of form. Horizontal branches, vertical groupings, logs and fallen growth are framed into compositions where the line of branches reminds one of his swipes of the palette knife across his paintings.

What amazes me is that the vast number of images does not diminish their individual attraction over the course of the book. Interspersed are short texts which are, as I have read elsewhere, nonsensical passages chosen from forestry magazines and compiled via a random text generator. The text, perhaps like the forest itself, becomes most dense in the middle of the book and from start to end, it has a presence that fades in and fades out.

I wrote before about Richter's experiments with overpainting photographs and the idea of a ready-made artwork that is dependent on one action guided by instinct. That of course is photography itself and for the seeming casualness of these photographs, they actually reveal a maker so skilled and informed that each holds a unique appeal. Each solid yet testing different combination of form that risk repetition and failure.

Beautifully printed and in my opinion, the perfect size, Wald is a pleasant break from the many Richter books which I find so unsatisfying. Finally a return to examining an artist in full exploration relating to the world rather than just another catalog touting his greatness.

School by Raimond Wouda

I have mentioned many times my fascination with photography is mainly due to those rare moments when a camera in the hands of a skilled practitioner can achieve the miraculous. That is, when a photograph contains so much information, reordered to perfection where every element within the frame keeps adding surprise and revelation. It does not happen often.

This is why I am so envious in some ways of painters because they can control each element or figure. Brueghel's dancing peasants, Ingres' Turkish bath, or Poussin's ordered chaos of The Rape of the Sabines deal with multiple human figures which all find their place within a deep space. Those paintings hold so much descriptive force that new discoveries upon repeated viewings are a part of their draw. For me, in photography, the image first must keep me engaged even after hundreds of viewings and this is why 'ideas' behind images are much less compelling when the execution of the work does not master the thought. This is one reason the work in schools and colleges of Raimond Wouda is so compelling to me.

Wouda started to observe the relationships among groups of teenagers while they were on the school playground across the street from his studio. Something about those observations drew him to approaching the institutions in order to gain access to their hallways and common areas with his view camera and strobes. It wasn't the classroom he was interested in but what was happening when the students were on their own and what that might reveal if photographed. His newest book School from Nazraeli published this year brings together a tight edit of 35 of these images.

School is often less about learning the classroom lessons but learning about your place in societal structures. Groups or cliques and those desires to be accepted often form confidence or devastate it. Finding your place was a form of recognizing something of yourself in others. Being in school was often about being obsessively aware of your body, each movement and what it might reveal about you. Clothing, hair and accessories merge into your identity within fads that have little to do with you as an individual. What is so amazing about Wouda's work is that with all of this self-awareness present in such an environment, he and his cumbersome view camera and strobes could somehow go about their tasks relatively unnoticed. Photographers do not tend to tread lightly.

His camera is the omniscient observer. The height, beyond normal human perspective, describes from above and allows for renderings of a deeper and more complex space. We do not experience just a foreground and background but a full field of view which is made more intense with the amount of characters he juggles. Massimo Vitali would be a natural comparison but for me his images are too wide angle and he treats the characters as minor players within the large expanse of landscape. Here Wouda gives equal treatment to both people and environment. There is no hierarchy but a complete merging of form between the two.

Like a painter, Wouda is able to choose moments within a chaotic environment where each element and character finds their own space in which to be described clearly. It is within these moments that small individual one-act plays are caught, cliques formed and individual personas perceived. An image of a school dance shows a clear divide of male and female while each group eyes the other with desire stifled by hesitancy to breech the divide alone.

My fascination with these images extends to the edges of the frame. Wouda's other strength is his ability to fill the frame even to the very edge and somehow the world cooperates to introduce more interesting elements. Page 17, a boy in a red shirt with an angled black stripe across his chest near the left side of the frame pauses against a slice of a brick wall while on the opposite right side a young woman in white looks left and a boy seated at a table nearby clasps his hands in front of him, elbow at the very frame edge and angled to mimic the black stripe of the boy on the opposite side. All of these small elements hold the tightness of the frame while in between a frieze of faces and gestures.

Add to the complexity, color. Once within the already difficult task of creating a new order from chaos, the introduction of color can either break or enhance compositions. A distracting color could grab attention from the rest of the frame destroying its integrity. The cover image of school was shot within a locker area - a space that Wouda works often. Within this image, reds become important signifiers of holding the frame together. The bottom left, a young woman's shirt starts a line of red shirts that continues to the back of the space, meanwhile the balance on the right side is achieved by a couple of flower ponytail holders and a last minute product placement of a Coke bottle sitting within a locker at the very frame edge. You could go on and on noticing the arrangements of blues, yellows and blacks as forms within forms.



As formalism itself is only interesting to a point, the real pay off is in the stillness of revealing moments. Among the juice boxes and backpacks, it is the expressions and readings of body language that are important. One exudes confidence while another awkwardness. Two boys flirt with a woman while others look on with curiosity. A few boys hang around a vending machine fronting toughness within the candy-colored safety of a hallway. These pictures show the building of our inner foundations which can sometimes seem formed from the painfully trivial.

As a book School follows Nazraeli's usual clean design and choice of materials. It gives fine treatment to the photos in scale and printing. It is handsome but I have to say, after experiencing some of the great design talents from The Netherlands I wonder what this would have looked like in the hands of a different designer. The edit is very tight and although I do not know what was left out, every photo included is worth its weight.

This is the 4th in Martin Parr's selection of ten bodies of work. His tastes and mine tend to differ a bit but with the selection of Wouda, we couldn't agree more. This work is THE reason why this medium is unlike any other and to me, these photos are clear examples of why I will never tire of its surprise.

Novemberrejse by Krass Clement

Krass Clement is known for his great book Drum from 1996 but did you know that he is a seasoned book maker with 17 other publications under his belt? While at the Fotobook Festival in Kassel I was able to get a hold of two as well as see a few of the others and this larger exposure has me begging the question - Why is Krass Clement not more well known?

Krass's approach can seem traditional at first - it's black and white, small camera, etc - it uses a language which I think people immediately pigeon-hole as old-fashioned or not 'contemporary' and this is a shame because it merits much further attention than it obviously gets.

His book Drum was rumored to have been made with 'three rolls of film and five pints of Guinness' while in a small pub in Drum, Ireland. It is a book which on first glance looks very traditional in regard to its design and format until you start to follow the sequence. People have spoken of its filmic quality due to the repetition of images and concentration on a small amount of time (a few hours? an hour? 30 minutes?) as one character in the bar slowly moves off to drink alone and it is within these subtle (often very subtle) shifts in the pictures that minor changes in body language become all the more meaningful. What is most difficult, is that being filmic wouldn't be enough without each image standing on its own.

A few of Krass's books employ this implied sequential method and his newest book from Gyldendal, Novemberrejse does so beautifully.

The book opens with a prelude of sorts. We enter a town, it is dark and the air is hazy with fog, the interior of a barber shop shows signs of life and we watch from the window a few men finishing their days work. Quickly Clement establishes through just a few photos that we are looking through someone else's eyes. This is not photography as a fly on the wall omniscient observer, whoever this protagonist is, they're made of flesh and blood and like us, they are exploring unfamiliar territory.

Novemberrejse, or November Journey, is an implied narrative of a stranger visiting a small town (Rubjerg in Denmark). You get the feeling he is a stranger first from the general tenor which is a bit dark, lonely and melancholy but also because he (it seems like a man to me) doesn't seem to be able to connect with the natural rhythms of the town. He wanders observing and re-observing the lay of the land and some of the repetition of the images act as a way of establishing landmarks - familiar territory - tracing and re-tracing steps. The white building on the book's cover is seen within the sequence twice as if passed multiple times on the street.

He seems out of sync with life. The stores are mostly shuddered and for a short while the only human connection is observing a few people waiting at a bus stop across from his rooming-house window. When he is invited into the parlors or kitchens of the local's homes the warmth of new connections only lasts as far as the door's threshold before the mist and grey skies dampen spirits.



Towards the end of his stay he is met with different servants or guides; a man in a bowtie, the hotel staff, and finally a haunting image of a ferry worker directing us onto the ship. It is dark and after the implied stasis of the previous sequence, we may be entering a boat that will either provide escape or further loneliness. The tenor is not offering much in the way of promise.

As I mentioned before, the sequence alone would not hold water if it weren't for the prowess of the photographer in making great individual images. They are graceful and finely constructed frames, full of information and tonality that extends into the deep shadows.

Vertical in format, Novemberejse is fairly traditional in design but elegant none the less with fine choices of material. The printing is well done although perhaps the choice of a finer printing screen might have been wise on the part of the publisher. A very minor criticism for this book but I think a finer screen would better serve the grace of his print tonalities. I know I have already pointed out a few books which are my "best of's" for the year but Novemberrejse has secured a slot very high on the list. This is a new favorite. Perhaps because I find a connection in image making similar to my own or maybe simply because I like being within his photographs



Another of Krass's books I was able to get a hold of is Hvor Ingen Talte. This is an entire body of work shot on one day during a state funeral in Moscow on August 24, 1991.

Again, on first glance the 38 photographs that make up Hvor Ingen Talte will seem to follow in the traditions of a street documentary-style genre except the repetition of form to each image hints at an almost conceptual frame reigning over the whole body of work. Each image describes a few figures within the frame, some aware of the photographer and some not. Photographed from a relatively close distance, they are direct but not confrontational like Klein or Winogrand. These are calmer images that contain a grace common to Clement's images.

Whereas Weegee famously turned from the event towards the crowd for a more human expression of event, Clement keeps from providing much in the way of information regarding the significance of this event rather his are mostly unguarded moments fully implying a gauge of the inner thoughts of the individuals. Small gestures as simple as the clasp of hands or twist of the shoulders while leaning on a fence - the rewards of each image reveal themselves seductively.

The repetitive form invites perception of the pictures as an on-going train much like the long pan of a newsreel camera. In fact, the observant will notice individuals at the edge of one frame sometimes appear in the next. Only occasionally is this line broken with a vertical or an image that completely breaks from the rest through approach but all add up to a group portrait during a collective moment.

Hvor Ingen Talte isn't the best example of fine bookmaking as the materials and design are so ubiquitous of so many photobooks from the late 1980s early 90s it seems generic, which is a real missed opportunity. It isn't going to be the package that draws you to discover these pictures but take my word for it, it is a fine body of work that again amazes me that this was from one day's worth of film.

Health and Efficiency by Dr. Lakra

Dr. Lakra, Jeronimo Lopez Ramirez, is an artist from Mexico known for the embellishing of various surfaces ranging from magazine pin-ups to dolls to human skin. A tattoo artist by trade his series of irreverent etchings over images torn from vintage nudist magazines is now contained in a book called Health and Efficiency from Editorial RM from Mexico City.

The nudist magazines he used as the starting point for his art were purchased from an outdoor market in London. Cloaked in appreciation for nudist values, the upbeat tone of these soft-core mags is despoiled by his cast of devilish characters and surrealist fantasy.

Dr Lakra gives image to the transformation of man into beast or demon unlocked by a lapse of sexual repression. Demons that surround the women with lascivious craving are literally etched onto the page with tattoo needles and ink. Where as porn has a natural way of sneaking past critical evaluation and slipping into the id, Lakra's images by design depict the id in all of its drooling self-gratification.

Lakra turns the Eden-like gardens of the nudists into a post-apple opening of Pandora's box. The amphibians, serpents, bats and plethora of genitalia that escape turn the idyllic innocence into a gang-bang tinged with sado-masochism. Lakra pencils in tattoos of the tribal and prison variety on the women's bodies partly empowering them with a protective skin that seems to ward off the acts of rape and defilement.

These are violent images pierced with humor, the embellishment of the reproduction offers angry fantasy that borders into misogyny. Lakra's parade of creatures prey on the women while at the same time expose humiliating masturbatory desire. Many of his phantoms are left simply watching, unable to participate beyond launching their seed in from the margins.

Lending to the tradition of the depiction of death like Jose Guadalupe Posada or Manuel Manilla, Lakra's skeletons possess their senses and desires. These beings return to drink, eat, (fuck), taking part in earthly pleasures. The Kamasutra meets the Tijuana Bible.

Health and Efficiency (the name of the magazines the source material was gathered from) is covered in sensual black felt with Dr. Lakra written in a silver debossed flowing script. It gathers 41 of Lakra's guilty pleasures and although it invites reading in one sitting, it is better in small doses. Abraham Cruzvillegas, Lakra's partner in crime pens a fine introductory essay. If you aren't a Spanish speaker, be sure to order the English edition.



A precedence could be found by way of Dr Lakra's father who is the great Mexican artist from Oaxaca, Francisco Toledo. Toledo's own watercolors and drawings often feature a mix of man and nature with his own odd twist of sexuality and preoccupation with imaginative couplings.

In 2004 while walking down the street in Oaxaca with my wife I spotted the maestro himself approaching us on the same sidewalk. Shyly introducing myself in my broken Spanish, I mentioned we had just see an exhibition of his and bought the catalog. Being such a moment of synchronicity, he inscribed it to us before sliding back into the anonymity of the crowd where he seemed more comfortable. Francisco Toledo: Libreta de apuntes (Sketchbook) is a facsimile of one of his sketchbooks from New York in the 1980s (it even has a green Pearl Paint price sticker on the cover) published in 2003 by the Fondo de Cultura Economica and the Galeria Arvil.

Toledo's world is populated with a fantastic zoology of beings. Coyotes, turtles, crickets, fish, deer, rabbits become symbols of animism without shedding a bit of their horny nature. A deer screws a turtle who's head is kissing another within a doubly-penetrated woman. Others copulate like puzzle pieces finding a new form of hybrid species. Shocking and provocative, his seems to be a desire to twist traditional depictions of man and nature while creating new implied fables.

Hierarchal structures upset, man is not at the top of the pecking order but an equal among the smallest of beings. His animals possess sleek bodies of muscle and tone while his humans are obese and sluggish looking. His color palette earthy and liquid. This sketchbook, as expected, reveals intuitive action in combination with more fully realized works but all add to his forever morphing mythology.

Nicely produced except I would have liked a nicer paper choice, mine is an edition which comes housed in a slipcase which has an original work affixed to the cover. There is a regular edition without the limited slipcase.

Three books of found photographs...

Michael Abrams' book from Loosestrife a couple years ago, Strange & Singular, raised the bar on collections of found photographs and just when I thought there was no need for another book of them, no less than three have crossed my doorstep in the past few weeks that have been refreshing in approach and presentation.

The first two books Lesen and #01-105: Anonyme Fotografien aus Deutschland come from the same author, Gunther Karl Bose and the Institut fur Buchkunst in Leipzig.

Lesen, which means "read" in German is my favorite. Credited with Bose and Julia Blume as the authors, the book opens with several pages of spotty xerox black which seem more appropriate to open a Dirk Braeckman book than one of found photographs. The concept seems to become clear as we come upon the first plates which are family snapshot-type photos of people reading while on the opposite facing page is a xerox image of a page from an open book. Is it supposed to be the page the person is reading at the moment the photo was snapped? This conceptual implication is belied by close examination which reveals inconsistencies but still, the presence of the pages greatly expands our own imaginative fancy.

Lesen has a great design and that in itself makes this book one step above the norm. The contrast of the well-printed photographs to the xerox images is visually dynamic as is the gap of time between images clearly made in the distant past sitting opposite modern reproduction.

Published in 2005 by the Institut, Lesen is only 300 copies. ISBN: 3-932865-40-5. According to the Institute's PDF catalog this book is only 13 euros which makes it certainly the cheapest and most enjoyable books I have had the pleasure of viewing so far this year.



#01-105: Anonyme Fotografien aus Deutschland is an earlier book from Bose published in 2003. Also very inexpensive (13 euros) it has the production values that most 40 euro books do not. This a collection of 105 anonymous photographs from Germany run in a linear fashion across the bottom of the book pages. The design, like in Lesen, makes itself felt early on and encourages reading the links between each photograph.

Most of the photographs do not have dates but those that do seem to have been made between the early 1900s and the late 50s. One interesting design characteristic is the sporadic inclusion of any numeral or identifying marks that appeared on the original print. For instance one reads: Stealit - Magnesia - AG Bln. - Pankow Florastr. 8 Weihnachten 1933, which seems to indicate the type of photo process, the company address and the photo's caption which for this was Christmas Day 1933. Many of these markings are cryptic and nonsensical while others indicate dates or location. They float in the large white space on the page due to the bottom alignment of the images.

If you get a copy, be sure to peek under the dust jacket for an interesting design of debossing into the cover board. There must be something in the water at the Institut fur Buchkunst in Leipzig because I have now acquired several books from their catalog which I will be mentioning in the future. Great stuff and wonderfully inexpensive!!



The last I will mention is another offering from Paul Shiek's publishing company These Birds Walk. Away by Abner Nolan starts on the road with a couple speeding down the highway with the top down, the tones of the print fading almost to oblivion. The following images take us on a short tour of family and place, intimacy and detachment.

His choice of images reflect a fascination with deterioration and technical flaw which interrupt much like the hazy veil of memory. These become open ended fragments which when pleasantly paired can achieve interesting dynamics but I feel the book is either too short or too sporadic for it to lead up to a larger understanding of why these images, in this order, etc. Fragmentation can be interesting as memory itself is not a continuum but bits and pieces often shuffled and fleeting much like the opening and closing images.

Away follows the format of the TWS Subscription Series #2 that are a bit larger in size and have the fun repetition of the author's name and red title stamping on the cover.

The Spoils from Germany and Holland

One great thing about traveling for me is the discovery of many books that are hard to find in the States. This trip was particularly fruitful and by the time I arrived back home I had two large boxes waiting for me. Here are a few things that caught my attention in no order of importance.

When in Germany, look for German books. I found a great copy of a book I passed on buying twenty years ago and have regretted it for the past ten. Michael Schmidt's Waffenruhe has now made its way onto my shelf. I paid a bit for it but a very good price considering thanks to getting it from a friend of a friend. Thanks Egbert and Sebastian.

I also found a small catalog from the Kunsthalle Bremen, Michael Schmidt Fotografien. Published in 1999, it is a good selection that seems to be a mini-retrospective but the printing suffers a bit. Solely for Schmidt obsessives and in Germany they can be found for just a few euros.

I found three super cheap Christian Boltanski books: Zeit, Les Suisses Morts, and Sterblich.



I have always wanted a copy of Fischli and Weiss's Visible World and found the German edition readily available at regular prices. There is no text so it reading Sichtbare Welt as the title is something I can live with.

I met Krass Clement at the Fotobook Festival so I bought his new book Novemberrejse (November Journey). This is a really good one which I will spend more words about soon. Highly recommended. Krass also gave me one of his older titles Hvor Ingen Talte which is another fine book of photos he made at a state funeral in Moscow. This will also be covered here at a later date.

My fascination with Russian works was sated by the discovery of a reprint/study of Mayakovsky and Rodchenko's Pro Eto which was published in 1994 by Ars Nicolai. This starts with a facsimile edition in the front (black and white illustrations of the Rodchenko collages) followed by essays and additional plates that show the same collages in full color. The texts luckily are in Russian, German AND English.

Following closely in excitement was finding the reprint/facsimile of El Lissitzky's About Two Squares which was released as a two book set by MIT. Now out of print, these facsimiles themselves command some expense. What I found is only one of the books but it was only around 10 euros.

In the "books on books" department I found 'remainder' copies of Russian Book Art 1904-2005 available for 14 euros. This is a book I saw first through Ursus in New York with a large price-tag of $90.00 dollars. Funny how that happens right?



John Baldessari: National City from the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego is now a remainder in Germany of all places so I picked up a very cheap copy.

For rarities, my other discovery besides Waffenruhe was Ed van der Elsken's Sweet Life (German edition) for a mere 75 euros. That is a very good price but this same book can be found in varying conditions actually starting fairly cheaply at around 140 dollars plus shipping. This copy is virtually unread interior with only very slight chipping on the dustjacket at the edges. My luck was in force as this copy had literally just been bought from a person selling books to the store and the bookseller had just started to clean the cover when he asked me, "Do you know this book by Ed van der Elsken?"

Eva Leitof's Rostock Ritz published in 2005 made it back to NYC. I reviewed her book Deutsche Bilder eine Spurensuche 1992-2008 last year. This book is one title I couldn't buy at PhotoLA just because I had no way of actually getting it home.

Raimond Wouda - who's book School from Nazraeli is going to get full treatment here soon because it is a new favorite of mine - made two other books that made their way home with me, Sandien and A'dam Doc.k. Sandien is a brilliant book which was recommended to me by no less than 6 people within a week so it was imperative that I get a hold of one while in Amsterdam.

Ever since the inaugural issue of PA magazine from David Campany that featured Patrick Faigenbaum along with Jeff Wall, I was compelled to get a copy of Faigenbaum's Tulle. I may tackle that book at some point.

One of the most exciting discoveries was a book by the Russian artist Ilya Kabakov, My Mother's Album published in 1995. My initial impression was that this book has a similar seductive quality as Boris Mikhailov's Unfinished Dissertation with its ephemeral quality. I can't wait to spend some time with this one and see what its all about. This will get some space featured here soon as well.



I found two books by Koen Wessing the author of Chili September 1973. O Mundo de Koen Wessing is a good hardcover exhibition retrospective from Portugal on this fine Dutch photojournalist. The second is a copy of Koen Wessing's Flashes from South Africa an oversized 36 page booklet published in 1993.

An interesting artist book made from found images called I Want to Eat by Mariken Wessels was irresistible and will get some coverage too.

Marijaana Kella's book which was in Parr/Badger Vol. II has a body of work I like very much, the Reversed portraits. This was the sole deciding force to bring this one home.

I was able to get home safely a copy of Jens Liebchen's oversized Playing Fields published in 2005 by J.J. Heckenhauer. I hope Jens gets to work on a new book because he has a habit of challenging perception.

Vija Celmens' intricately detailed drawings are a favorite of mine but few books published of her work do it justice. A hardcover catalog from the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt features larger illustrations and the best I have seen so far, so it has found a new home.

In the "who the hell is that" department, Jutka Rona's 1975 conceptual artist book Wolvenstraat was a great suggestion from Yannick Bouillis of Shashin Art Books in Amsterdam. This book will be covered further later.

And lastly, one book that I was extremely critical of but did not have has finally broken my resistance will power. Empty Bottles by Wassinklundgren is now in my house. I am tempted to write a re-evaluation of this book to more clearly express my views.

I think that's all...any more would just be the work of madness.

The Second Kasseler Photobook-Festival

That was the longest stretch of silence yet from 5B4. For those unaware I was in Germany and Holland for about ten days. I had the honor of being invited to do a lecture at the second annual Kassler Fotofrühling (Photobook Festival) in Kassel, Germany. My initial intention was to do like I did at Paris Photo, occasionally taking a moment to post about the proceedings, but due to limited time, sketchy internet connections, beer, cigarettes and a general lethargy brought on by one too many döner kababs, it proved unlikely. So here is a recap of the last week and a half...



After catching a quick train to Köln to meet up with the Schaden crew a day before the festival, they quickly introduced me to the local beer, Kölsch which helped to put me on local time. I have felt a bit burned out on books lately and before I this trip I thought if I saw another photobook I would puke blood, yet one minute into Markus's new shop browsing all the titles that are slow to make it to the States, the disease showed full force. I'll tell you about things I found over the next few postings.

Friday morning I caught a train to the home of the "Becher School," the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, to meet up with Katja Stuke (Suits review here) and Oliver Seiber who generously offered to drive me to Kassel. Katja and Oliver where scheduled to be the very first lecture of the festival and I was a bit jealous of their calm and the fact that they had each other for support while lecturing. I haven't done much public speaking and those that know me know that I would rather hide behind my camera or computer so I was nervous and unsure of what to expect come my time at the podium. The festival took place in a school for photography and graphic design, the Kunsthochschule Kassel and it was almost completely empty but for a few workers preparing and setting up. Right when I thought the attendance would be minimal, the auditorium filled with over a hundred people for the first lecture. I suddenly became very nervous because from what I had been told, Friday is normally the slowest day of the festival and I was scheduled to speak on Sunday.

Between the lectures with Jessica Backhaus, Joakim Eskildsen, Andreas Magdanz, Dayanita Singh, WassinkLundgren, Gerry Badger, Krass Clement, Markus Schaden and myself, the festival offered portfolio reviews, a couple exhibitions - one of Stephen Gill's books, library tours, a show of book dummies, and a special exhibition from Nina Poppe and Verena Loewenhaupt's Marks of Honor project in which 13 contemporary photographers pay homage to their artistic role models. They invited the artists to pick a book and create a new work of art in response to that work. Harvey Benge, Chris Coekin, Peter Granser, Pieter Hugo, Tiina Itkonen, Onaka Koji, Jens Liebchen, Michael Light, Mark Power, Matthew Sleeth, Alec Soth, Jules Spinatsch, and Raimond Wouda all took part and an exhibition of these books will be on display at FOAM in Amsterdam starting this week on the 28th.



The book dummy show had a few interesting books but the most impressive / obnoxious, completely impossible to operate and somehow incredibly compelling book Rumanien by Katharina Gaenssler was my favorite. The book was one foot thick, hundreds - if not over one thousand pages - and each double page spread had eighteen photos.



It appeared to be shot entirely from the car during a road trip through Romania and my immediate reaction was to recoil at the pretentiousness of someone making a book a foot thick that is nearly physically impossible to look through (one really has to pick up this 30 pound beast and operate it on your lap, moving your legs as if you were playing with a giant slinky). But after giving it a little time which no one else seemed willing to do (it doesn't offer much invitation), it really does pay off. I can't imagine it ever being published and certainly the scale alone doesn't merit its production but I do applaud the maker for her attempt and for many great page spreads. Benedict Taschen watch out, you've been out sized.



I had the great pleasure of meeting Dayanita Singh who proved to be as mischievous as charming. She did a fine lecture on Saturday and also created a 'secret exhibition' of her photos by selecting a few people to slip a small print into the plastic holder of their name badges. Some attendees noticed and many didn't, but people who did came away with a smile.

A few antiquarian book dealers showed on Saturday and Sunday and my big find of the day was a copy of the reprint of Moi Ver's Ci Contre done beautifully by Anne and Jurgen Wilde, the couple responsible for the great Germaine Krull Metal reprint from 2002. For those that do not know, the Wilde's were big collector's of Blossfelt, Krull and others and over the years have done exquisite but somewhat pricey reprints of a few books. The Moi Ver book they issued in 2005, is a facsimile of an unpblished book dummy which they own. For those that know the Steidl reprint of Moi Ver's Paris and like that work should look into this book. I'll be featuring it on 5B4 soon. The frustrating thing about their books is simply tracking down where to get them. They have no website, no email and not surprisingly, almost no distribution. The Germaine Krull reprint goes for around 300-400 dollars and I have seen the Moi Ver Ci Contre for around 175-300. My copy was gotten for 90 euros ($125.00).

Kassel is somewhat small and although beautiful, let's just say it is a little quiet. So after each day's events at the festival, since all participants where housed in the same hotel, the hotel bar was the place for extended drinks and talk. It was there that I met many great people but I also realized how insane we must all be. After talking all day about photography and books you know you're among the infected when its 2:00 am, you're drunk in a hotel bar, lungs choked with smoke and you're still talking about fucking photobooks.



Sunday arrived and my lecture was looming close. I felt extra nervous for a while after seeing how anxious Markus was about his own talk. I figured if everyone knows Markus and he's done these things many times before then I was in for a real nerve wracking experience. Oddly, after Krass Clement and Gery Badger, I felt calm once it was time for me to start. I had everything written out in case I lost my train of thought which happens under normal circumstances for me just in my day to day, but my thoughts seemed to flow better than expected and I was able to just do the talk without much reading at all. I shuffled my notes and got lost a couple times and forgot whole parts which I had intended to say but everyone said I seemed natural. Huge relief I didn't self-destruct as I had imagined doing many times in preparation.

The day ended up in the library where Thomas Weigand had put together a small exhibition of books. Since Krass Clement was there and has published 18 books besides Drum - his best known of all - Thomas had him sign a few from his own collection. It was in one of his small exhibitions that I had a chance to look through a few of Hans-Peter Feldmann's small artist books from the Bilder series.

Afterwards I drove back to Köln with the Schadens, stopping along autobahn 44 at a rest area for some Frikadelle (meatloaf burgers), potatoes, beer and chocolate covered ice cream cubes. Oh...it isn't the daily menu that you want to know but what books I found?? Wait damn you...

There I Was by Collier Schorr

The basis for Collier Schorr's newest book There I Was is almost a cinematic cliche. A friend of her father's who was the local champion muscle car driver of Ditmars Avenue gets drafted into the Vietnam war and killed within the first month of his tour. Every war film has one, a Brooklyn or Queens eighteen year old straight from central casting with an endearing accent who's hometown pride is worn on his sleeve. Always a bit player, they usually wind up dead by the third act.

For Schorr, Charlie Synder aka Astoria Chas, was that bit player. His story is a subject ripe with ideas about masculinity - a teenager already engaging death before war via his passion for racing, going to war ("No one wanted to go, but if you were from Astoria, you just plain went.") and transformed into a "man," and after his death, neighborhood legend. The dramatic change that usually follows one's return from war as seen in films like The Deer Hunter, haunted by their own brutality or that of others, would not be witnessed. No evidence of that damage to tarnish his image compounded by the legend of his car, which would later be raced by friends and set track records.

Schorr is often engaging in ideas of masculinity and There I Was explores those notions through drawings, photographs, and ephemera from this story. Schorr's father has known Astoria Chas and had written a few feature stories about him for muscle car mags in the late 60s. Where her father had mainly concentrated on the '67 Corvette Chas raced, Schorr uses the story to create a portrait of youth in transition.

Her drawings of young soldiers bring to mind (and are often revisionings of) famous war-time photos by the likes of Burrows or David Douglas Duncan. Vulnerability is read on the faces and in body language of her minimalist sketches. One soldier curls into a ball and another covers his face with his arm while his mouth reveals distress. Before the weakness shows, a photo of a silhouetted figure, bare chested and wearing a helmet fills the mind's image of a silver screen hero projecting sex appeal.

Schorr has in the past explored the real and the imagined with her work in Southern Germany. Here, it is the shift in mediums which initiates ideas of artifice. Her sketches from war reportage mixed with the staged photographs point to a gulf between both medium's ability to describe past history let alone provide a complex portrait of its players.

There I Was is handsome down to the heavyweight matte paper and clean, simple design. The whole endeavor has a lightness that adds an interesting contradiction to the weight of the subject. The title There I Was could be coming from the mouth of either Schorr or Chas and if from Schorr, it reads as a memorial - a remembrance of a time long ago. Or perhaps, with this current conflict, it is not about the past at all.

Scrapbook by Donovan Wylie

For the past few years Timothy Prus and The Archive of Modern Conflict have been responsible for publishing and co-publishing some of the more interesting photobooks being made. They* had a hand in Stephen Gill's Hackney Wick, Hackney Flowers and A Series of Disappointments. They co-published Henryk Ross' Lodz Ghetto and Larry Towell's The World From My Front Porch with Chris Boot. They produced Nein, Unkel the scrapbook of Nazi snapshots. They published Thijs Groot Wassink's Don't Smile Now. Currently along with Steidl they have co-published Donovan Wylie's newest offering, Scrapbook.

The sectarian violence in Northern Ireland permeated households and extended into personal albums which held family photos sitting alongside clipping from newspapers that kept a gauge of daily life. These scrapbooks often held an odd timeline of the personal and public while encompassing a range of emotional responses to the situation.

The idea of a non-sectarian version of a scrapbook from Northern Ireland, one that pronounces both "aich and haich," is a curious document. In war, the divide between sides can be so great that communication towards resolve is seemingly impossible. For the conflict in Northern Ireland, the single mindedness of Thatcher in clash with the tactics of the many factions of the Irish Republicans split the country where identification with one side or the other not only made everyone a player but was essential. Wylie and Prus's album is meant not to be the view of one but of many. It is a communication between two opposing forces from a fictitious witness. Decorative yokes from the Orange Order sit in close proximity to hand drawn displays of support for the IRA. The reverend Ian Paisley's doughy face pops up several times making him the ever-ready political opportunist while a recipe for a Christmas plum pudding ends with the directions "Serve with Bogside sauce and Petrol Cocktail."

Each viewer of course will flip through this scrapbook with their own politics extending through their fingertips which makes this object perhaps less of a communication than a dual argument wrapped in the same cloth.

Bookwise, Scrapbook is mostly well done although the cover stock feels a bit on the cheap. I realize that part of the idea is the irony of such a serious subject sitting within a dime store scrapbook but I wish that a little better choice had been made for the cover. The interior page stock is well chosen and conveys a strong sense of handmade craft.



On a similar note, the visual artist Steve McQueen's intense first film Hunger gives study to the lives of Irish political prisoners in the notorious HM "Maze" prison. Centered around the various protests for basic prisoner rights - right not to wear a prison uniform, right not to do prison work, right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits, right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week, full restoration of remission lost through the protest - it depicts vicious beatings and abuse from prison guards reflective of the stubborn no negotiation policies of Margaret Thatcher that cost the lives of many during hunger strikes.

Prison officials took away the toilets in each cell to which the prisoners responded with a "dirty" protest by refusing to wash, cut their hair, and due to the lack of facilities, smeared feces all over the cell's walls and poured their urine under the doors so it flooded the hallways. Since they refused to wear the clothing of criminals the prisoner's sat naked covered in dirty wool blankets. The discomfort and frustration felt by the guards fed the intense beatings and abuse. In the hands of McQueen, there are few portrayals of hell on earth as visceral as this one.



The film is structured in three acts. The first introduces the characters in the prison through an almost dialogue-less half hour portrayal of the abuse and violence. McQueen's camera is poetic while keeping a claustrophobic tenor within the prison. The second act is an exquisitely acted 22 minute unedited conversation between Bobby Sands and a priest talking over the morality of going on a hunger strike. Taking a page from Bela Tarr or perhaps McQueen's countryman Alan Clarke whose long takes defy traditional filmmaking,** this pivot point of the film left me exhilarated from its endurance and grace. The final act follows the last days of Sands' life as his body transforms with agonizing reality. It is an intense depiction that leaves little room for relief. This film is not for the squeamish.

* Who 'they' are beyond Pruss is something of a mystery as the 'Archive' has no website and little information leading to an actual entity from what I can find.

** Bela Tarr's masterpiece Satantango has by my estimate only around 150 cuts/edits to the film over its 7.5 hour running time. Alan Clarke's Elephant used long-take steadycam shots to depict sectarian murders.

Christie's Photobook Auction

In the past I have featured reports on the photobook auctions with a twist. For one I divided the the final gavel price by the number of pictures in each book to determine an artist's average "worth" per image. For another I compared the final gavel price to the Annual Median Income (AMI) for families around the world (example: after a year of work, a family in the Bahamas could afford a copy of August Sander's Antilitz der Zeit). Since this is auction season at a time when very few people have cash on hand and lenders are being tight with credit, I figure we'll have to find alternate ways to pay for these books. I suggest a new kind of bartering system.

How many times has a friend of yours said "I'd give my right arm for that book." Well did you know the loss of an arm according to the workman's comp "Meat Chart" could fetch you 300 weeks of scheduled award payments from your place of employment? That is, a payment of 66% of your income for 300 weeks! Well the Photobook auctions at Christie's South Kensington will take place on Tuesday, May 19th at 2:00pm so I have decided to sharpen up the ol' carving knife and see what I can afford to lose extremities-wise. A pound of flesh could very well equal a Takanashi.

Now in order to make this work I have used the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour as a base. So after a 40 hour work week we would make $262.00 dollars - minus our 33% benefit deduction, leaving us approximately $175.54 per week in workman's comp benefits. That benefit is then multiplied by the number of weeks of award payments to determine which body part will be lost. Ready? Each of the descriptions is followed by recommended "cutting instructions."

Lot #149: Stephen Shore, Uncommon Places: Deluxe edition with a print of Merced River. Estimate of 8,700-13,000. Cutting instructions: 1/2 thumb for the low estimate - Full thumb for the high estimate.

Lot #124: Yutaka Takanashi, Toshi-e (Towards the City). Estimate of 5,100-6,500. Cutting instructions: Full toe (other than big toe) plus 1/4 of your big toe (cut to first knuckle) for the low estimate - Full big toe for the high estimate.

Lot #121: Gordon Matta-Clark, Walls Paper: Presentation copy inscribed by Clark to Carol Gooden. Estimate of 2,200 - 3,200. Cutting instructions: Knee cap for the low estimate - Knee cap plus ACL ligament for the high estimate.

Lot #111: Ed Ruscha, Dutch Details. Estimate of 13,000-17,000. Cutting instructions: Complete loss of hearing in one ear (use ice-pick) for the low estimate - 1/4 leg (cut at ankle) for the high estimate. *Foot reattachment not included in gavel price

Lot # Shomei Tomatsu, OO! Shinjuku. Estimate of 2,200-2,900. Cutting instructions: 1/4 pinkie toe plus 1/4 big toe for the low estimate - full fourth finger (only applicable if you've already cut three other fingers off completely in other auctions) for the high estimate.

Lot #96: Provoke 1, 2, 3 + copy of First Abandon The World of Certainty. Estimate 18,000-26,000. Cutting instructions: 1/2 an eye for the low estimate - Full tongue for the high estimate.

Lot #84: Kikuji Kawada, Chizu (The Map). Estimate 22,000-29,000. Cutting Instructions: Full foot (must include at least three toes) for the low estimate - Full hand (must include all fingers) for the high estimate.

Lot #59: Yoshikazu Suzuki and Shohachi Kimura, Ginza Kaiwai. Ginza Haccho. Estimate of 4,400-7,200. Cutting instructions: 1/4 ear (external) not effecting hearing for the low estimate - Full ear (see Reservoir Dogs) for the high estimate.

Lot #39: Arts et Metiers Graphiques - Complete set of 68 volumes. Estimate 12,000-17,000. Cutting instructions: Full scalp for the low estimate - Full scalp plus 12.5 ounces of cranial matter for the high estimate.

Lot #55: Hans Bellmer, Les Jeux de la Poupee: 15 hand-colored prints by Bellmer. Estimate 58,000-86,000. Cutting instructions: Full leg (with free reattachment of pinkie finger on hand*) for the low estimate - Full arm plus either loss of hearing in one ear or 50% reduction of sight in one eye for the high estimate. * Low estimate disclaimer: Only applicable if one hand still attached. Pending insurance coverage approval for the procedure. Consult your insurer prior to bidding.

Lot #30: Georges Hugnet, La Septieme face du de (The Die's Seventh Face). Estimate 13,000-17,000. Cutting instructions: Full face (topical) for the low estimate - Full face plus 6 ounces of cheeks for the high estimate.

Lot #75: Jack Smith, The Beautiful Book. Estimate 41,000-50,000. Cutting instructions: Complete loss of sight in one eye plus 75% reduction of sight in second eye for the low estimate - Complete loss of sight in both eyes for the high.


Bidding suggestions:

(1) Regulate your bidding and select body parts wisely. Remember you need to retain your hands for as long as possible to cut for other auctions.

(2) Phone-in bidders remember to aim the blood spurts away from your existing book collection.

(3) Dark colored clothing recommended if attending auction in person.

Terms of Agreement:

(a) If there is permanent disability involving the loss, or loss of use, of a member or function of the body or involving disfigurement, the employee is entitled to basic compensation for the disability, as provided by the schedule in subsection (c) of this section, at the rate of 66 2/3 percent of his monthly pay. The basic compensation is - (1) payable regardless of whether the cause of the disability originates in a part of the body other than that member; (2) payable regardless of whether the disability also involves another impairment of the body; and (3) in addition to compensation for temporary total or temporary partial disability.

(b) With respect to any period after payments under subsection (a) of this section have ended, an employee is entitled to compensation as provided by - (1) section 8105 of this title if the disability is total; or (2) section 8106 of this title if the disability is partial.

(c) Medical procedures not included in gavel price.

(d) Knife rental will result in 10% fee added to final gavel price. Bone saw included.

Back to Okinawa 1980/2009 by Keizo Kitajima

Keizo Kitajima's newest publication via PPP Editions Back to Okinawa 1980/2009 is a revisitation of work he shot in clubs and bars in Koza, a red-light district situated near the US Air Force base of Kadena. Kitajima was a student of Daido Moriyama and set about working the nightlife selling prints to his subjects much like Katsumi Watanabe had been known to do in the late 1960s early 70s in Shinjuku.

Kitajima's plan was to self-publish bi-monthly magazines of this work starting in 1980 called Photo Express Okinawa but only four issues were realized. Each of these booklets - probably the equivalent of the low-fi music 'zines of the time with their DYI tenor - covered a specific period of a few weeks (ie: January 1-15). These short visual diaries were about the equivalent of one dollar and Kitajima priced it to be cheap and affordable to anyone who wanted a copy. This book reproduces all of the images that appeared in those four issues but with a new design and arrangement.

Kitajima's subjects reflect the influence of the near by military base with many photographs portraying Westerners getting drunk, dancing and mixing with the locals. Although this book concentrates on the Okinawa work only and includes no New York photographs, a couple years later Kitajima would live in New York where he would scope out a similar territory in the East Village among the now legendary rock clubs CBGB's, A7, Max’s Kansas City and The Mudd Club.

Kitajima ssys of this work: “Affection, hatred, rejection, acceptance: everything was there in Okinawa and nothing was a given. I wanted to make photographs that transcended all that… My generation was profoundly impacted by America. It is impossible to objectify my feelings about it.”

On the surface, this book's first impression is one of quality and elegance. At seventeen inches tall and a foot wide, the heavy silkscreened cardstock cover is beautifully done and the accent of the black thread binding a nice touch. Most of that excitement disappeared for me as soon as it is opened and with the discovery of 36 pages of cheap newsprint that make up the interior. It isn't just that the newsprint is cheap but since there were no negatives or prints to do proper scans the publisher has scanned from the magazines resulting in images that are completely broken up by the original magazine line screen. High contrast and poorly printed, we struggle to make out what is going on in the photos. Many are translated into blotches of black tone where even the most grand of gesture gets abstracted.

One may argue that, like I mentioned above, this could be comparable to 'zines of the time and honestly I like that thought. The quality does bother me but I often like the low-fi when it works. What is not comparable to 'zines is that the starting price of this newspaper booklet was $100.00 (it is signed by Kitajima and only 250 copies). Now, just a couple weeks after release the price has been raised to $135.00 (feel the panic?). I'm going to leave this one for the collectors and wait to see how the planned 900 page book from Rathole Gallery on Kitajima turns out.

Special thanks to Bryan L. for the loaner copy.