Malick Sidibe: Fondation Zinsou catalog

I have written before about Malick Sidibe and his now famous studio in Mali and his documentation of the youthful nightlife of Bamako. Sidibe has recently been a subject of a major exhibition in Cotonou, Bénin at the Fondation Zinsou and they have published a great book of his work that I highly recommend.

Titled simply Malick Sidibe, it is a 190+ page hardcover catalog that covers most all of his known subjects such as the portraits along the Niger River, Feast days and ceremonies, portraits on motorbikes, boxers, the various studio portraits, musicians, DJ nightclubs, fashion and an interesting series of people photographed from behind called Morning Back View.

This catalog has very interesting production values unlike most. The rich black cover boards feature silver debossed foil stamping and a reproduction tipped in. The inner pages are coated with a very high glossy varnish over the entire page except for a quarter inch margin at the very page edges. The reproductions are in duotone and look good under the heavy varnish. At two points in the book, small booklets of photographs on thin matte paper are sewn between signatures. These are little books within the larger book that are a pleasant surprising break from the flow of the rest of the sections. Also the designer has images in the studio portraits sections flow off the page and continuing on the verso like a filmstrip.

What I am drawn to since I mostly know Sidibe's work is the design of this book. It is unexpected and I do not think undeserved or over-designed. Its handsome presentation invites me to sit longer with work that in other books I passed by in haste.

There are three downsides I can find. One is that the varnish is so glossy that it sticks the pages together and they need to be pulled apart as if stuck by electrostatic. The noise of the whole ordeal is a bit disconcerting and even after they are separated, they tend to become stuck again after the book is closed for a while. The second is that with the smaller booklets sewn in between signatures I have seen several copies where the bind separates at those spots causing the signatures to loosen. It is a book you'll want to be careful with handling. The third is that the essays needed better proof-reading as there are typos in the English translations that are surprisingly easy to spot.

If you do not have a book on Sidibe then search out a copy of this one. Even with the few flaws, it is one of my favorites discoveries that I brought back from Paris.

www.fondation-zinsou.org

Photography to Mid-Century: The Technical History: A Sale

Need to own one of the most comprehensive technical collections on photography? See below:

PHOTOGRAPHY TO MID-CENTURY: THE TECHNICAL HISTORY

In this, my 32nd year as an antiquarian bookseller, specializing in the
literature of photography, I am pleased to present for sale this most
comprehensive collection of journals, manuals, and trade catalogues that
chart the technical history of photography and photomechanical
reproduction. There are three pdf files on our website that constitute the complete catalogue of
the collection, with representative illustrations. These files can be
downloaded or printed, and viewed at www.cahanbooks.com  Please note that
the search function of this website does not apply to these pdf
files. This collection is being offered as a single unit for $1,200,000.00
and inquiries should be directed to Andrew Cahan.

acahan@cahanbooks.com

ANDREW CAHAN: BOOKSELLER, LTD.
Specializing in Rare and Out-of-Print Photographic Literature
PO BOX 1531
Durham, North Carolina 27702
USA
Tel:  919-688-1054
Web:  http://www.cahanbooks.com
Members of ABAA and ILAB

The Last Days of W. by Alec Soth

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show made an interesting observation in the days after Barack Obama was voted President-elect. He mentioned that walking in the streets of New York he noticed everyone was making eye contact with each other and silently nodding. It was my experience as well, loads of strangers engaging in secret handshakes of a 'job well done.' Here we are counting down the days until the blue light appears on the horizon.

Without revisiting the litany of problems this country faces, as we know them all too well, it is as if she is emerging with divorce papers from an abusive marriage. Hopefully the restraining order will be granted for there will be no jail time served.

Alec Soth's latest venture on the printed page is a self-published newspaper with the gothic-script title of The Last Days of W. 36 photographs within which even the inanimate objects look simply worn out and exhausted. With many of us down on our luck, this is supposed to only cost you a fiver.

A crumbling empire? or one just running out of gas. The fuzzy dice draped on the dear skull have turned up snake eyes and the bank moves in. A painting has Jesus closing a business deal (In Greenspan We Tru$t). A young soldier stares blankly, waiting for us to help patch his peanut butter and jelly wounds. Pawn shops and Osama Bin Laden pinatas are the New Order. Take a tissue if you feel your eyes well up.



Fireworks play second act to Arby's and Chevron while the political scenery kills the foliage it uses for realism. Camp Purgatory flies an inverted flag (have those messy socialist hippies no pride?). A grandmother, who should be staring with wide-eyed pride over a newborn, becomes a walking billboard for the housing crisis. The gate is left open after the Oval office is hastily emptied and we awake, without the shirt on our backs, wondering what just hit us. Did a natural disaster sweep our house away leaving us untouched and in bed? An epilogue of 'Either dusk or dawn'? Only time will tell.

All of this presented without the reactionary high blood pressure and boiling rage? How dare his description have a soothing effect. I want to knee-jerk someone in the groin! Who the hell is Soth's therapist? Better yet, do they have an opening for Monday?

Available at Dashwood Books

Oxbow Archive by Joel Sternfeld

Joel Sternfeld's new book Oxbow Archive seems to takes its point of departure from the Thomas Cole painting completed in 1836, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm - The Oxbow. The view described, looks over a landscape that is split into quadrants. A patch of foliage sits in the bottom left corner nearest to where we 'stand' while to the right overlooks the distant u-turn of the Connecticut River - the Oxbow. The sky is divided in tone as a thunderstorm recedes moving out of frame to the left. From the elevated vantage point and dramatic view from the Mount Holyoke Range it may, at first glance, look to be a God's eye view - that is until we discover the tiny figure just below and almost out of sight, standing in front of an easel painting but looking at us from over his shoulder. On the cliff edge, a small travel stool and a closed umbrella sits where - we might suspect - the artist sought refuge during the storm.

The proximity of this area to where Sternfeld resides allowed almost daily trips to wander and photograph. Equipped with his trademark 8 x 10 and color film Sternfeld first made a photograph in this region in October of 1978 - a photograph of a thinning stand of trees that competes for the viewers attention from the distant meadows. Unlike Cole's seemingly floating vantage point, Sternfeld plants us firmly on the ground and in the shoes of the artist we discovered quickly painting the sun breaking after the storm. It is a strictly human vantage point he provides. The amount of foreground he includes is easily imagined extending directly under our feet. As Sternfeld trudges over fallen corn stalks or onto soft sand he extends that tangible feeling to us.

Like Cole's painter may have experienced after the thunder receded, Sternfeld takes in the silence of this landscape, only breaking it with his boots. The views are still and quiet - even the geese found in late November have stopped for a rest amongst corn stalks. With so much emphasis on the perceived silence and the foreground terrain, these pictures remind me less of the painting that that inspired them than the sounds the explorer made with his footfalls.

Sternfeld dates his photographs and the 77 plates run the course of a year. Sequenced, they chronologically describe the shift of season and color temperature much like Cole's painting with its shift from storm to sunlight. Sternfeld commits to film this variation which Emerson alludes in the quote that starts the journey; "To the attentive eye, each movement of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again."

Oxbow Archive is consistent with Sternfeld's book format of the slightly oversized coffee-table book that allows for large plate reproductions. The clean design leaves one image per page oriented on the right-hand side. There is no text other than the Emerson quote, a good decision as none is needed. The printing is simply beautiful, capturing the subtle variations of hue that are part of his palette.

This is a book about a walk, a year's worth of day trips into nature. There is no fear of the unknown or of the wilds of nature. We will not get lost as there are constant signs of past exploration and paths to lead our way home. To me it serves as a reminder of tranquility, grace and beauty - all things too easily forgotten in a world struggling to right itself.

Joel Sternfeld Oxbow Archive is published by Steidl.

Early Color by Saul Leiter - Reprint

Quick note for those of you who missed out on the first edition of Saul Leiter's wonderful book Early Color, the reprint is available for order. It specifies FIRST EDITION but it is actually a second printing of the first. Who cares. It's a really good one and they go quickly.

Steidlville
Book Available Here

Keine Experimente by Dirk Alvermann

The name of the photographer Dirk Alvermann has only been familiar to me for about a year. Surprised by the photographs, design and layout of his book L'Algerie - his account of the Algerian war for independence published in 1960 - he is definitely worth knowing although it isn't easy to find the books nor information on him. While in Paris I found his second book Keine Experimente published in 1961.

Keine Experimente: Pictures of Basic Law is a book about the general attitude of the West German population towards the changes brought about in West Germany with the election of the CDU party. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany ushered in an era of rapid economic growth for post-war Germany that was essentially a free-market economy that spurred upwards of 8 percent growth per year. Adenauer's "Keine Experimente" (No Experiments) slogan symbolized a more practical approach to politics for people who had just years prior experienced the ideologies and economic upheavals of the war period. Although living standards did improve for most Germans, it was a policy that would have a similar effect to "trickle-down" economics of Reagan in the United States where large gaps between the rich and poor would be created and where wages for workers stagnated.

Alvermann's photographs made between 1956 and 1961 are juxtaposed against the first 9 articles of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany and in part acts as a critique of the consumerism and the attitudes that the free-market brought. The book opens with a page spread of a crowd locked behind a gate reminiscent of a concentration camp. A reminder of a difficult history that many of the population wished to disappear -- something the new economic policies made easier. When the gates open into this new society we are faced with billboards offering the Ten Commandments and bottles of Coca-Cola. The faces of the workers on the following spread seem confused and uncertain.

Much of the work is festive in tenor with many images of carnivals and gaiety. Brass bands and parades of uniformed soldiers march announcing the new era in stark contrast to an attitude of reducing militarism. When he shows similar scenes of workers shuffling along, their lack of energy and despondence is a point of focus.

Alvermann's design and image juxtaposition is full of experiment. He clips and crops images into graphics to make his point. He reminds readers of the Nazi past while the people in the images seem to be more willing to turn away. He focusses on the young children playing in the streets, the young generation which will return to confront the past with more introspection than any since. In many images Alvermann seems to be passing the torch to them, reminding us that they will be the ones to suffer for the populace's will to turn from its history. In one telling image Alvermann photographs a child aiming his toy gun at his own head in mock suicide while a line of saints in a store window stand over him.



Keine Experimente's construction and, again, Alvermann's use of design is most effective. Like with his book on Algeria, he creates a kind of photojournalist's Klein's New York utilizing slivers of photos and graphic pairings that are visually exciting creating new meanings from disparate images -- a kind of assemblage of history and commentary.

Keine Experimente is a pocket-sized book with glossy illustrated hardcovers and is not much larger than a common novel. The printing is on rather cheap paper but the low-fi production is very seductive and adds a gritty edge to a supposed bright reality.


Editor's note: I really need a copy of Dirk Alvermann's Algeria book. If I have a reader out there that has more than one copy and would be willing to sell it to me, please contact me through the Errata Editions website. www.errataeditions.com. Surely someone out there can help me out.

Beaufort West by Mikhael Subotzky

Fear is a huge driving factor in 21st century life as evidenced by recent political acts of desperation. Terrorism, crime and illegal immigration have kept the media busy with threatening sounding stories and "what might happen" scenarios that appeal to isolationism and make people comfortable with their natural tendency towards xenophobia and racism. Division created by infecting viewers with enough anxiety that they imagine the barbarians are at the gate and those entering are less than human. This is one of the many underlying themes in Mikhael Subotzky's new book from Chris Boot called Beaufort West.

Beaufort West is a small town in South Africa -- a transit point for food or sleep that sits on the long road between Cape Town and Johannesburg. As described by Subotzky, it is trapped in its own "victim/perpetrator divide" due to unemployment, crime and domestic violence. As Subotzky describes, "The problem is that so much of the way crime is represented in the popular media polarizes victim and perpetrator, us and them, the law-abiding citizens and those who the law-abiding citizens have to fear. I almost see this as a new kind of apartheid - between those that fear and those that are feared."

The town radiates out from a large traffic circle within which lies the town's prison. Subotzky uses this metaphor as the starting point for an exploration into the town's post-apartheid reality. Perhaps in proportion to the economic reality of Beaufort West, Subotzky spends more time among the lesser fortunate black residents. Trusted to work freely, he describes their lives with surprising intimacy that at times even surprised him. "Major and I were hanging out with a group of gangsters, and they were talking about going off to rob someone's house... To my surprise they asked if I wanted to come along."

Subotzky structures Beaufort West as if we were airdropped into town and left to wander. Quickly we get swept up in the lives of the marginalized; the trashpickers at the local dump, the white citizens at a livestock show, households that set up makeshift taverns in their homes, a prostitute as she engages in sex with truckers, and finally, Subotzky leads us to prison - the final stop for many of the residents.

Subotzky's photographs are more in the camp of greats like David Goldblatt, whose In Boksburg Mikhail cites as an early influence. His medium format camera and color film frames both the spontaneity of action and the stillness of portraiture with well made compositions. These photographs owe much to the different qualities of light to add another seductive element. Whether natural or artificial, the scenes are bathed in light that falls gracefully onto the grit and grime of interiors and exteriors alike.



Beaufort West is a tight edit of 45 photographs and the book's dimensions at approximately 11" x 14" allow for a nice large plate size. The design is very clean down to the spare blue fabric coverboards. In the rear of the book, after the plates, Subotzky provides a bit of text about each image which reads as a running commentary about his process and his discoveries made during the course of his exploration.

Beauford West sits in the middle of the South African desert as a kind of real life purgatory. As Jonny Steinberg writes in his afterword, "These photographs thus represent a place in which far too many people do not possess the basic structure of what we regard as an inhabitable life; a sense of life as a project, or at any rate some sort of progression; the notion that one might leave a legacy, or build something that survives one's own death." It is that state of lethargy and punishment contrasted with a purifying grace that radiates from the subjects that Subotzky skillfully brings to our attention. In short, this is a remarkable first book from a young photographer.

Berenice Abbott two-volume slipcase set from Steidl

I find it interesting when a book makes you sit up and reassess an artist that you may have not been interested in before. For me, Berenice Abbott was important because of her recognition of Eugene Atget as one of the greatest artists of his time and her work to preserve his archive. Her photography, mostly of old New York, always took a backseat. Turns out Steidl and Commerce Graphics have just published a two-volume, slipcased retrospective that is so well done I can't believe I could have so easily averted me eyes before.

Volume I is dedicated to Abbott's early work, portraits and scientific photographs while Volume II covers the 27 years of work that made up her monumental Changing New York project.

In 1924, Abbott, who had left the United States for Paris three years earlier, met Man Ray who was looking for a photo assistant for his successful commercial studio -- someone with as little photo experience as possible so he could train them to his specific process without resistance. This was her entre into a seventy year career as a photographer. She worked under Man Ray for a few years until breaking off on her own as a portrait photographer and it was during these years as an assistant that she discovered the photographs of Eugene Atget. Turned out that Atget's studio was very close to Man Ray's and Abbott would rapidly become fascinated with the older photographer's studies of Paris at the turn of that century. Later, it would be Abbott that would find a publisher for the first book of Atget published three years after his death, Photographe de Paris.

In 1929, Abbott returned to New York and under the influence of the scope of Atget's Paris work, she embarked on her now famous project documenting New York City's energy and evolution. For me, it is the second volume of this slipcased set, concentrating on the New York work, that is most interesting.

Using a Century Universal 8x10 with a 9.5 inch Goertz Dagor lens she described the storefronts, streets, signage, residential neighborhoods and in some cases, the people of NYC. Working out the technical concerns on the ground while working, she later found funding through the Federal Arts Project for a few years. To Abbott, she was not just photographing buildings but analyzing each element of an urban environ, including its history. "The tempo of the metropolis is not of an eternity, or even time, but of the vanishing instant."

It is this quote that for me takes on such significance, for if it were not for artists like Abbott, or Atget before her, who describe these cities with such eloquence and exhaustiveness, then we wouldn't have the same understandings of transformation and history as we do now. The spirit of the ages reflected in their photographs is part of what defines those images -- part of why it is so important that they exist. Modern urban photographers, even those working in the stylistic footsteps of others, are, in the least, providing visual statements that work in similar ways.



As a set, this is the definitive collection of 268 tritone reproductions. Richly printed, everything from the paper stock to the tip-on reproductions on the book covers is elegant and seductive. The images sit on the right-hand side of the page spreads and are often accompanied by short texts from Abbott regarding the making of the individual images. Hank O'Neal provides a fine essay on Abbott life and practice in Volume I.

Abbott lived to 93 and pursued several projects until around the 1980's, still, it is the New York work that stands out as her finest achievement. One of the the most sobering lessons to be learned from Atget is one of ambition. Perhaps his dismissal of traditional concerns of creating "art" or of being an "artist" ("these are documents I make for artists"), the most liberating. Fueled by both, Abbott shifted Atget's lament of the past towards the optimism of a progressive, post-depression future filled with modernist marvels. Both were intoxicated with cities and, after great effort, left behind their documents for artists and historians alike.





PS: This is my Atget print that hangs at the front door of my apartment. It is the first thing I see when coming in from the world and last thing before venturing out into it. In that location, it seems to pose more of a challenge than inspiration. Maybe I should move it.

A Television Notebook by Robert Weaver

The most exciting discovery that came from Andy French's photobooks sale was a small illustrated datebook published in 1960 from the CBS Television Network. Titled, A Television Notebook, it contains pencil drawings by Robert Weaver that allow us a behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a '60s TV studio.

Weaver sought to join illustration with journalism much in the way it existed before photography replaced it as the more acceptable medium for journalists. Although I never met him, Weaver taught at my art school SVA in the '80's.

Weaver's sketches in this notebook are fascinating. His compositions are complex - bringing both the chaos and control of production into each drawing. A couple of technicians with hidden faces stand behind some large lighting reflectors. A mass of cables from a lighting rig hangs over a cameraman at his post. Four men stand with their shadowed backs to us holding cable from a huge television camera. Make-up tables, extras, stage sets, props, editing rooms all are the center of attention rather than the "stars." If forced to make a comparison to another artist, I would say he is like Robert Frank with a pencil. Many of these had instantly reminded me of the few published Robert Frank photos made on television sets in Burbank.



Each drawing is reproduced over lined pages of a datebook giving the sense of looking through an artist's sketchbook. Laid into each copy is a calendar bookmark with an introduction by then CBS President James Aubrey. He writes, "If, like Alice in Wonderland, you could walk through the looking glass of your television set, you would find that for every performer you see on the screen there are ten more behind the screen, performing their tasks with equal dedication and split-second precision."

This datebook was one of a series published each year by CBS. The others feature other illustrators known and obscure. Out of the few that I have seen, this was by far my favorite. It is hardcover with the CBS "eye" logo debossed into the cover. The trim size measures only 6.5 x 6.5 inches square.

Ceau by Christophe Buchel and Giovanni Carmine

Many years ago I sat around a table drinking rakia with a handful of Bosnian Serbs and one was expounding on how he felt sorry for the fate of Nicolai Ceausescu, the dictator of Romania whose 24 year hold on power was cut short by firing squad in 1989. This particular Serb's argument had much to do with the memory of Ceausescu's virtues being erased by masses of Romanians "rewriting him into a villian" (his words). When he asked what I thought I was afraid to say anything because the little I knew about Ceausescu - the outlawing of abortion, the prevention of AIDS testing, crippling the economy, strong police responses to any opposition, and all of the tv appearances around food while his country was rationing (à la Haile Selassie) - wouldn't really have gone over well. My Serbian friend kept citing the quick trial and execution that followed the coup overthrow of Ceausescu's regime condemned him to infamy and slander. My opinion around that table was not popular -- you rule inspired by Stalinist dictum then you die by Stalinist inspired firing squad.

Like Stalin, Ceausescu created a cult of personality around himself and his wife Elena. The self-proclaimed "Genius of the Carpathians" and his wife, the "Mother of the Nation," commissioned thousands of painted portraits that would keep their heroic status an ever-present part of daily life among Romanians. The new title by Steidl, Ceau, presents almost 350 of these paintings in a handsome new book.

Political paintings such as these are almost predictable. They mostly portray the subject as an everyman who is inspired to lead -- conveying the idea that he is just another Romanian "Joe Sixpack" if you will, working hard and dedicating his life to bettering his country. From that startingpoint they evolve, elevating his everyday man status into god and savior. That in itself is probably not enough to sustain a 350 page book but what sets this collection apart is the variety of painting styles that describes that elevation.

The artists seem students of everyone from Ben Shahn to Lucien Freud. Page 23 drops Ceausescu's visage into a Rauschenberg-like collage. Several resemble a Diego Rivera inspired mash-up of industry and hero worship. On page 69, Ceausescu is surrounded by a group of Henry Darger's "Vivian" girls turned into "pioneers." Page 125 describes three scenes involving Nicolai and Elena overlaid by the monochrome colors of the Romanian flag in a style so close in draftsmanship and color palette to Mark Tansey it is almost unbelievable to discover the artist is Eugen Palade. So many portraits were painted that Salvador Dali was said to have once sent a tongue-in-cheek "letter of admiration" to Ceausescu.

Edited by Christophe Buchel and Giovanni Carmine, Ceau as a book is a tight elegant package. The gold debossed title on a white leather flex-bound cover sets the proper mood for hero worship. The end of the book provides a transcript of the December 25th, 1989 tribunal in which Ceausescu and his wife are tried and sentenced to death by firing squad.

The effect of Ceausescu's policies are still being felt with tens of thousands of children born under the strict abortion laws that wound up on the streets homeless. What my Serbian friend was referring to that was good about Ceausescu's rule I am still not sure. Perhaps I should send him this book so he can remind us of all that was good in Nicholai's utopia that was Romania for almost a quarter decade.

CDG / JHE by J H Engstrom

The bright orange bookcloth of J H Engstrom's new book from Steidl CDG/JHE gives an impression that it may hold promise of something light and cheerful. The internal content however is another story.

In this body of work, Engstrom sets us in the midst of Charles de Gaulle airport and, like a traveller who somehow can't seem to make it into the terminal or the exit, we wander a no man's land heavy with concrete barriers and odd bits of technology. There is a sense of stillness (in a place where everything always seems full of movement) that is almost apocalyptic.

Engstrom distresses his prints somehow and the resulting haze of greyness acts as a veil suppressing tone, color, saturation and light. While the parking lot may be full, there are no people save for one driving a baggage cart, seen only after close inspection. The stillness, in combination with the ashen air, seems daunting and inhospitable.



What we are to make of this I am not entirely sure. The photographs, with their tones of greyish blue and desaturated color are oddly beautiful. What they describe is territory that has a structure and machinery but it has all been left in dust. We pause in front of various objects: a baggage cart piled with wood, a swirl of tar on a patch of roadway, a pair of rubber boots half buried in the dry soil, the stilled luggage return and a maze of overpasses. We may wonder at their existence or use but their form is what is engaging and seductive.

After 46 images, Engstrom finishes the book with 7 images that are stills shot of a video of a man and a woman meeting and embracing. (In an airport?). That is certainly implied but uncertain. Brightly colored without the distressed look of the previous work, these few images as the final act of the book, distract from the initial tone and rhythm that we have settled into. Their inclusion seems to hint at a conceptual framework or meaning that is unclear and ultimately bothersome. The contrast between the two is not enlightening nor necessary.

Overlooking the last few pages, CDG/JHE is an compelling if enigmatic work. Due to the seductive tonalities and the cleanliness of the design, I don't mind lingering in this world of airport still lifes. But in such an environment where movement is the preoccupation, those that get left behind might risk absorbing the melancholy involved in standing still.

The Printed Picture by Richard Benson

Today we are so accustomed to seeing printed imagery on every available surface that it might be hard to imagine a time when mechanical reproduction did not exist. Apart from text reproduction through movable type and the like, the first images reproduced in multiple copies were from woodblock prints in the fifteenth century. It is arguable that the advancement in technologies of reproduction are the most valuable contributions to communication since the development of language itself.

Take for instance an example that dates back as far as the first century where Greek botanists understood the need for visual statements to make their verbal statements intelligible. Problem being that there were no means available to reproduce exact copies of images so there was distortion from image to image caused by the hand of the copyists. The poor results caused the botanists abandoned images for words alone but those descriptions could not suffice in making the plants recognizable to other botanists, especially ones from other regions. In short, there was a complete breakdown of scientific analysis due to the absence of repeatable pictures.

Much of the art I have experienced has been by way of reproductions. I have said before that out of all of the arts, photography is the most suited to the printed form - thus, why I covet books so much. I would actually argue that with very few exceptions, we absorb more from a photograph when we look one in a book than when we are facing one on a museum wall. Whether it be the power dynamic of a museum where one navigates art among museum guards and in wealthy institutions that "tell" you this is important whether you respond to it or not.

Books are as John Gossage describes, a "lap medium." You operate a book with an intimacy and at your own pace (in the comfort of your own environment). The pages act as natural breaks to where, in a museum, seeing the next photograph on the wall out of the corner of your eye, might encourage you to move through an exhibition faster than you normally would. It is said that on average a person spends about 3 seconds in front of any work of art before moving on. Whether that is due to crowds or the attitude of somewhat unwelcoming galleries, we are being influenced. Books provide a personal comfort zone that allows a more direct experience. Go to museums and galleries for sculpture and paintings.

In the celebration of printed matter, the Museum of Modern Art has just launched an exhibition and book entitled The Printed Picture by the former Dean of the Yale Art School and photographic printing guru Richard Benson.

Over the years, discussion to the importance and interpretation of printing techniques is not new, one can point directly to William M. Ivins' Prints and Visual Communication (to which I owe the example of the Greek botanists) as a prime source, but Benson's text traces the history of printmaking through very accessible texts set alongside a rich array of printed material from his personal collection. Where the Ivins text is first rate, the examples offered through illustrations are basic and the details limited to black and white. Benson's The Printed Picture is a flush with enlarged details and full color illustrations that are as beautifully printed as the originals.

In each chapter, different techniques are described leading up to and through the evolution of modern photographic reproduction. For those interested in such techniques this book is as valuable a text as you will find. Benson tested these waters before with the book and exhibition from the Yale gallery in New Haven, The Physical Print (see 5B4 here). As he did in that book, he describes each process here using well known images from photographers but it is the examples of more commonplace ephemera that provide the richer understanding and deeper interest for me -- seed catalog illustrations, a section of a piano roll, punch cards, advertisements and even a DHL bar-coded delivery sticker on cardboard all find their way into his collection.

Admittedly after having just spent several days on-press overseeing the printing of the first titles in my own book series, I am the captive audience for the subject of this book. At its most basic level, it is about the pleasure of the printed page and the microscopic dots that spur that pleasure. Those dots and their structures are the various dialects of language that visual artists use. What could be a more fascinating subject for anyone interested in art books?

Sonne, Mond und Sterne by Peter Fischli and David Weiss

Seeing as North America's rampant unregulated free market-style of capitalism is collapsing in on itself, Fischili and Weiss' Sonne, Mond und Sterne (Sun, Moon and Stars) may serve as exhibit A when we finally step back and sift through the wreckage.

Sonne, Mond und Sterne is an 800 page artist book comprised of hundreds of magazine advertisements arranged loosely into a narrative of 20th and 21st century temptations. Unrelenting in its scale, their barrage approach is perfect for a subject as obnoxious as the continual bombardment we face to advertising. Originally conceived as a corporate annual report from Ringier AG for 2007, this volume was edited by Beatrix Ruf of the Kunsthalle Zurich.

I take this as proof of a society gone mad but I imagine Fischili and Weiss are too smart for such a simplistic reading. Their's seems to be an art of embracing the nature of the societies we have made, and I could guess that this collection is their scrapbook of pleasurable "ready-mades" that for them induce more of a wide grin than a grimace of horror. Deadly sins such as gluttony and greed can be both disgusting and desirable after all.

Sonne, Mond und Sterne is paperback and the size feels like a super heavy phone book. There are no accompanying texts or explanations of what it is or why it exists. It was published by JRP/Ringier of Zurich.

The promise of fulfilling needs (and creating new ones) is what advertising does best -- offering the idea of a more manageable life where convenience is a given and happiness is available right off the shelf. In short, promising the Sun, Moon and Stars at a good price.

A New History of Photography by Ken Schles

"Monkey see, Monkey do, everything I say sticks twice on you."

At the School of Visual Arts, where I was a photo major in the late '80s, I was required to attend a history of photography class taught by William Broecker (1932-2007), the distinguished William Henry Jackson scholar. By the time the class would begin at ten in the morning my sugar high from breakfast would be long gone and Bill's steady soothing voice would lull me into a deep sleep. If I learned anything in his class it was through REM and the two books he assigned, Beaumont Newhall's A History of Photography (MoMA 1982) and Naomi Rosenblum's A World History of Photography (1st edition 1984). The Newhall was still in pristine shape by year's end, while the spine on the Rosenblum was ready to call it quits.

Admittedly, the illustrations in both took precedent over the texts and I would flip those pages lingering over certain images that would stay with me as I ventured out into the world in pursuit of my own work. Those influences are hard to shake - if that's ever completely possible. Instead they served to inspire and challenge, blending and shaping my own interests. After digesting certain descriptions or illusions of human behavior as seen in the best of Winogrand or Levitt, it was inevitable that those would stay on my radar of what was possible to commit onto film. Influence is poisonous and shaping at the same time. Many photographers will go to great lengths to distance themselves (at least in their statements) from being perceived as following too closely in the footsteps of another no matter what the work actually reveals.

Using Beaumont Newhall's Photography: A Short Critical History as a model, Ken Schles has created his own timeline with A New History of Photography - a limited edition book published under Markus Schaden's imprint White Press.

Schles' "new history" includes the likes of August Sander, William Henry Fox Talbot, William Klein, Bruce Davidson, Helen Levitt, Joel Peter Witkin, Man Ray, Robert Capa, Bill Brandt, William Eggleston, Diane Arbus, Michael Schmidt, Berenice Abbott, Paul Outerbridge, Frederick Sommer, Julia Margaret Cameron and around 90 others. The difference is that all of the images were actually made by Schles himself.

Initially asked by Markus Schaden to create a new work based on a book for a show called Marks of Honor, Schles revisited over thirty years worth of his images and assembled 106 images where he seemed to be directly channeling photographers of the past. Subtitled, The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads, Schles explores the basic nature of the human being as sponge.

Based on what I have written so far, this book might seem to be an easy concept to wrap ones mind around...that is, until the viewer sees that at no point does Schles identify the original image-maker he was channeling. The result of which places the steering wheel of this "new history" into the hands of the viewer.



Some are obvious, Schles' Outerbridge and Klein have direct connections to the original but most others blur image-makers into sub-divisions of influence amongst themselves. This all, of course, relies on the viewer's breadth of knowledge to either expand or contract the history itself.

In the first fifty pages of A New History of Photography, Schles writes at length an exhaustive look at all aspects of influence and provides a mind-bendingly complex (and well footnoted) understanding of his medium and practice. Smart and beautifully written, Schles seems to be channelling the great writers on the medium as well. Unlike the Newhall title, there is little hierarchy here between the words an images -- both hold my attention in equal measure.

The construction of each copy was done by hand and is more of an artist book than anything else. The printing actually utilizes a print-on-demand technology that has no evidence of being so at all. On heavyweight paper, the reproductions are very impressive. Whether black and white or color they read as offset printed images -- I was frankly shocked when I was told that this was print-on-demand.

But the fine printing is only one aspect, the book is finished with binding and casing done with an elegant rounded back binding (using three folio signatures that allow the book to open very flat) and hardcovers with debossed titles. The typography of the 50+ pages of essays is beautifully realized complete with stocked columns of footnotes. The finishing touch is the enclosure of a dustjacket, printed to look like a weathered copy of Newhall. My only criticism would be that the type choice for the individual captions is a bit big and clunky.

A New History of Photography by Ken Schles has been published in an edition limited to 350 signed and numbered copies. The production costs of the hand construction obviously makes this a somewhat expensive title retailing for around 198 euros. I hope they will be able to produce a more affordable version at some point because A New History of Photography: The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads is sure to rank high on my list of the Best Photobooks of 2008.

www.schaden.com