In the tradition of the photographer's day book, this newly published journal for 2012 is the first in a series of annual Photographer's Journals. Use it to record a year's worth of project notes, road trip details, and assorted accomplishments and failures. The journal is divided into twelve monthly sections, with four weeks of double page note space per month. You can see the entire book in the preview below. Less than ten dollars in paperback!
Showing posts with label Photo Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Photo Books. Show all posts
Poetry of Nowhere
I just finished the second issue in my series of five dollar photobooks. I've got the full book open on the Blurb preview so you can see it from beginning to end... (no teaser setting)
Random Ghosts
A little paperback book I made in 2009... I am in the process of making another book in the same style. 5" X 8" paperback books in the format of text based pulp novels. All images are black & white versions of my color photographs from various projects, and the books include short quotes and poetry associated with the context of my photography. Small art at small prices. These are priced at $4.95 through Blurb with the intention of creating the lowest cost photobook possible. Pulp Photobooks for the masses !
Recent Acquisition
Visible Library
Sam Falls
2011
Published by Lay Flat
Edition of 750
ISBN 978-0-9842973-3-7
Signed by the photographer
Lay Flat
Recent Acquisition
Less Is More
Robert Rutoed
2011
ISBN 978-3-8391-8846-0
Signed by the photographer
Wonderfully edited collection of images. I am fascinated by the narrative of these photographs again and again. Bravo! Check out the video trailer...
Added to Library Thing
Zine Fair II
The Second Annual
Zine and Self-Published Photo Book Fair
July 16-17th
The Camera Club of New York
The Arts Building
336 West 37th Street, Suite 206
New York, NY 10018-4212
CCNY presents the Second Annual Zine and Self-Published Photo Book Fair on July 16-17th at CCNY.The zine and self-published photo book is a contemporary approach to photography in its published form, celebrating the book as well as offering artists a vehicle to spread their art and ideas.The public will be invited to come, browse, purchase and meet the people involved with the burgeoning zine and self-published art world.
CALL FOR ENTRY DETAILS
Artists and small publishers are welcome to submit up to 3 different books or zines (limited to 3 copies of each). There is no fee to submit, and all proceeds will be returned to the artist or small publisher. To submit your zine or self-published book please mail or drop off your book during our gallery hours, Monday-Saturday, 12-6pm.
To submit your zines or self-published books please mail or drop off your book to:
The Camera Club of New York
Attn: Zine Fair
336 West 37th Street, Suite 206
New York, NY 10018-4212
Full Details
Recent Acquisition
Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before
by Michael Fried
Yale University Press
2008
ISBN 9780300136845
Hardcover 409 Pages
From the late 1970s onward, serious art photography began to be made at large scale and for the wall. Michael Fried argues that this immediately compelled photographers to grapple with issues centering on the relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it that until then had been the province only of painting. Fried further demonstrates that certain philosophically deep problems—associated with notions of theatricality, literalness, and objecthood, and touching on the role of original intention in artistic production, first discussed in his controversial essay “Art and Objecthood” (1967)—have come to the fore once again in recent photography. This means that the photographic “ghetto” no longer exists; instead photography is at the cutting edge of contemporary art as never before.
Among the photographers and video-makers whose work receives serious attention in this powerfully argued book are Jeff Wall, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Luc Delahaye, Rineke Dijkstra, Patrick Faigenbaum, Roland Fischer, Thomas Demand, Candida Höfer, Beat Streuli, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, James Welling, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Future discussions of the new art photography will have no choice but to take a stand for or against Fried’s conclusions.
The Future of Photobooks
The Future of Photobooks: Panel Discussion
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Flash Forward Festival Boston
Panelists:
Andy Adams, Editor + Publisher, FlakPhoto.com
Miki Johnson, Consultant + Writer, MikiJohnson.com
Shane Lavalette, Publisher, Lay Flat, LayFlat.org
Michael Itkoff, Daylight Magazine, DaylightMagazine.org
Bruno Ceschel, SelfPublishBeHappy.com
Alan Rapp, Book Designer, AlanRappStudio.com
Moderated by: Stephen Mayes, Managing Director, VII Photo Agency, viiphoto.com
Harper's Books.... Lonely Boy Magazine
If it wasn't a four hour drive out to the end of Long Island, I'd be there today for this opening. I'm hoping this exhibit will travel somewhere closer to Philly at some point. But for those in the Hamptons, do not miss this.
Exhibit details
Less is More.... Robert Rutoed
A few weeks ago when I was browsing the books on display in the Indie Photobook Library at NYPH11, I happened upon Robert Rutoed's Less is More. I knew some of Rutoed's work via the Flak Photo Network on Facebook, and I like it quite a bit. Having a chance to hold the work in my hands and spend some time with the images is totally different than seeing them over the internet. I don't care how far we go with electronic media (and I do love it), the internet will never replace the experience of seeing and holding a book or print in real time. Do I need to compare the difference between sitting in front of a screen versus curling up on the couch with a good photo book? Sorry, curling up with an ipad doesn't count.
Robert Rutoed's work is subtle and connected in unique ways that become evident with each new viewing. This is work that can be returned to over and over, receiving a fresh perspective at each visit. Well worth checking out and a great book for the collector.
Less is More by Robert Rutoed
Robert Rutoed website
Robert Rutoed bio
Robert Rutoed's work is subtle and connected in unique ways that become evident with each new viewing. This is work that can be returned to over and over, receiving a fresh perspective at each visit. Well worth checking out and a great book for the collector.
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| Robert Rutoed. Less Is More. (2010) |
Less is More by Robert Rutoed
Robert Rutoed website
Robert Rutoed bio
Recent Acquisition
Words Without Pictures
Edited by Alex Klein
Aperture Books
2010
Paperback, 510 pages
ISBN 978-1-59711-142-3
500 + pages of photo theory, pure text. I've already read a couple of them online... Jason Evan's Online Photographic Thinking, and Sze Tsung Leong's A Picture You Already Know... and I can't wait to dig into the rest of them. This book originated as a year long web based project consisting of monthly themes. An essay for the monthly theme was published on the web site, and then solicited and unsolicited responses were collected. An editorial team complied the year long results first into a print on demand book, and then it was published by Aperture for this edition.
Newly added to my Library Thing catalog
You can buy it from Photo-Eye
Recent Acquisition
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Lonely Boy Mag. (No. A-1)
Alec Soth's "Midwestern Exotica"
Little Brown Mushroom (2011)
Edition of 1000
Alec Soth's first venture into erotic publishing, issue number 1 of Lonely Boy is a men's magazine nicely fashioned in the format of vintage 70's style. Funky and different and worth collecting.
Available from...
Photo Eye
Little Brown Mushroom
Towards The City
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| Toshi-e (Towards the City) Yutaka Takanashi |
My goal for 2011 is to buy a significant photo book each month. (I would love to buy ten a month! but I've set a budget for one) This means careful consideration and research goes into each monthly selection. One of the best ways I have found over the years to select choices is to look at the Best Of photo book selections on the Photo Eye web site. Each December a number of top photographers, critics & curators provide their list of the best photo books for the previous year. I spend quite a bit of time looking through these lists and developing wish lists for my future collection. My book purchase for March came from Alec Soth's list, Yutaka Takanashi's Toshi-e (Towards the City). Published by Errata Editions.
Yutaka Takanashi’s Toshi-e (Towards the City) is a landmark two-volume set of books from one one of the founders of the avant-garde Japanese magazine Provoke. Published in 1974 and considered the most luxurious of all of the Provoke era publications, its brooding, pessimistic tone describes the state of contemporary life in an unnamed city in Japan undergoing economic and industrial change. Books on Books 6 reproduces all one hundred sixteen black and white photographs that make up the two volumes. Photographer, writer and book historian Gerry Badger, contributes an essay called Image of the City - Yutaka Takanashi's Toshi-e.
I chose the book primarily because of it's connections to my own interests in New Topographics photography of the late sixties to mid-seventies.(New Topographics was my first photo book purchase of 2011) Takanashi's book was published in 1974, the "year of the oil crisis", and the images are about economics, consumption, urban society, and the tensions between free flung consumerism and the resulting price to be paid down the road. Many of the images were in fact taken by Takanashi through the open sunroof of his car while speeding down the road. In his essay for the book, Gerry Badger describes the images as "Robert Frank or William Klein on speed." These are not the careful, quiet studies of Lewis Baltz, Frank Gohlke, Robert Adams, or the other New Topographers who were photographing the man-altered landscapes of America during the same period that Takanashi was recording urban Japan. I like the subtle similarities versus differences that involve the Japanese and American responses to urban landscapes during a time period when both countries were still deeply enmeshed in a post-war economic and political relationship, what Badger describes as schizophrenic (from Japan's point of view).
One really interesting thing about this book... I ordered it from Photo-Eye earlier this week and it arrived in my mailbox on the day of the Japan earthquake and tsunami. I sat in the safety and comfort of my living room paging through this book on a day of terror and sadness for many Japanese. I was amazed by the images below from the book in light of the events that had taken place on that very day.
At times like this we want to reach out and help in our own individual ways. I was pleased to learn that some quick thinking photographers on Facebook have organized an online photo auction to benefit victims in Japan. Photographers can donate a print to be auctioned in a limited edition of ten 8" X 10" prints to be sold for $50 each with 100% of proceeds going to Japanese quake relief efforts. The group is called Life Support Japan, and I will post more details as they develop. I am donating Curtains (Rhawn Street) which was chosen by Larry Fink for ONWARD 11, and will be traveling in a group show to Ring Cube gallery in Tokyo, Japan this coming May. I thought it was an appropriate selection. My thoughts and prayers go out to those who are suffering in Japan.
Photo Eye Best Books of 2010
Errata Editions
Life Support Japan
I'm working on a book for the Poetry of Nowhere series. Three years of images which began as a documentation of the recession, (In These Hard Times), has evolved into a statement that moves beyond temporal economic conditions. The Poetry of Nowhere is a study of the nuances and subtle connections between beauty and repulsion in the ordinary landscape.
Poetry of Nowhere
His certainty of judgment is what came across in the architecture: the right treatment for that window, the right way to put the door in the walls, the right colors; the opposition to the gaudy. The architecture not being the thing championed, but the purpose whether it was a loft or a gallery or a museum. It always felt so good being in his spaces.
- Agnes Gund, president emerita, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
New York – A new book, Architect for Art: Max Gordon (Marquand Books, 146 pp, hardcover, $40, ISBN: 978-0-615-39579-1) presents a rare opportunity to enter the art world of the 1970s and 1980s and witness firsthand how a master of architectural simplicity set the standard for the relationship between art and architecture. Max Gordon (1931–1990) became the go-to architect for spaces for contemporary art following the opening of his first major commission in 1985 – the Saatchi Gallery at 98a Boundary Road. Architect for Art: Max Gordon will be published on May 1, 2011.
The book is authored by Max Gordon’s brother David Gordon, the former director of the Milwaukee Art Museum and secretary (director) of the Royal Academy of Arts in London; Nicholas Serota, director of Tate; Kenneth Frampton, Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University; Jonathan Marvel, an architect and friend of Max Gordon;as well as an excerpt from a text by Max Gordon entitled New Museum Architecture and Contemporary Art.
Seven of Max Gordon’s major works are featured including the Saatchi Gallery and the Fisher Landau Center for Art, the homes of several art collectors, as well as Gordon’s own home at 120 Mount Street in London. Gordon’s sketches and professional drawings illustrate his major plans; and lavish photographs of the completed works provide an excellent record of his accomplishment. The projects are introduced by statements from clients: Doris Lockhart Saatchi, Charles Saatchi, Emily Fisher Landau, Lewis and Susan Manilow, Keith and Kathy Sachs, Jackie Brody and David Juda. Gordon’s own apartment is described by Doris Lockhart Saatchi. A detailed chronology incorporates quotations from friends and collaborators: Richard Serra, Carmen Gimenez, Alanna Heiss, Lawrence Luhring, Bob Holman, Jasper Johns, Jennifer Bartlett, and Richard Gluckman.
Architect for Art: Max Gordon is the first book on this master of architectural simplicity in the service of contemporary art. Gordon was an art collector himself, a friend of the most influential artists of the 1970s and 1980s, a champion of the art of the times, and the inventor of Tate’s famed Turner Prize. He created an architectural legacy in New York and London that remains an ever-present influence on the display of contemporary art.
Gordon’s architectural maxim can be best summed up by the phrase “no trim.” Make everything as simple and functional as possible; highlight the art not the architecture; use light to create space.
Background
Gordon studied architecture at Cambridge University, the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He worked under Gordon Bunshaft in the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and was a partner in two architectural practices in England. He was the design partner for New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London’s Metropolitan Police Service.
In 1981, he set up his own firm, Max Gordon Associates. Following the opening of the Saatchi Gallery, he became a sought after architect for spaces for contemporary art, including museums, galleries, collectors’ homes, and artists’ lofts. He died prematurely at age 59 in 1990.
Nicholas Serota has written a special essay for the book that traces a direct link between the Saatchi Gallery and the hugely successful Tate Modern of 2000, and, in assessing Gordon’s role in the art world, credits him for the suggestion for an annual art prize to be awarded by Tate that became the Turner Prize. Kenneth Frampton has written about Gordon’s architecture. Jonathan Marvel analyzes Gordon’s particular stylistic vocabulary. Gordon’s brother David has written a biographical essay.
Gordon had an enormous circle of friends, admirers and acquaintances in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Europe who sought his advice, came to his famous parties, and were encouraged to get things to happen. He was a founding member of Tate’s Patrons of New Art. He was on the Museum of Modern Art’s prestigious International Council and was the only non-American to serve on the Museum’s trustee committee on architecture and design.
As David Gordon notes, “Max was a creator of beautiful and functional spaces and an inspiration to artists, designers, museum curators, and lovers of contemporary art. This is a personal book that includes Max’s sketches and humorous cartoons. He was a much-loved figure, and this is reflected in the warmth with which he is written about and described.”
The Authors
Nicholas Serota has been director of Tate since 1988. He was previously director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery and of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. As a curator, his most recent exhibitions have been Donald Judd and Cy Twombly at Tate Modern and Howard Hodgkin at Tate Britain. Serota has been a trustee of the Architecture Foundation and a commissioner on the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. He is currently a member of the Olympic Delivery Authority, which is responsible for building sporting and cultural facilities for the 2012 London Olympics.
Kenneth Frampton was trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He has taught at a number of leading institutions including the Royal College of Art, ETH Zurich, EPFL Lansanne, the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio, and the Berlage Institute in The Netherlands. He is currently Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of Modern Architecture and the Critical Present (1980), Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995), American Masterworks (1995), Le Corbusier (2001), Labour, Work & Architecture (2005), and an updated fourth edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History (2007).
David Gordon is Max Gordon’s youngest brother. His firm, Gordon Advisory, consults on strategy to nonprofits in culture, the arts, and publishing. He was director of the Milwaukee Art Museum after the opening of its Santiago Calatrava-designed addition following a period as secretary of London’s Royal Academy of Arts. He started his career as a journalist at The Economist and subsequently became its chief executive. He has served on boards in England of the Contemporary Arts Society, Southbank Centre, Architecture Foundation, British Film Institute, and Tate, and in the U.S. of the Association of Art Museum Directors. He lives in New York.
Jonathan Marvel, AIA, is a principal at Rogers Marvel Architects in New York. He has taught for over 19 years at schools including Columbia University, Harvard University, and Parsons, and was recently a visiting critic at Syracuse University. He is a former board member of the New York Chapter of the AIA, and currently serves on committees for the Municipal Art Society and the Art Commission of the City of New York, and the boards of the Van Alen Institute and Buckminster Fuller Institute. He has been a member of the New York State Council on the Arts’ Architecture, Planning and Design panel since 2006.
Architect for Art: Max Gordon is published by Marquand Books and distributed in the United States by Distributed Art Publishers (DAP). The hardcover book is fully illustrated and will be available in e-book form. The project editor is Holly LaDue and the designer is Matthew Egan.
This has got to be the best web site ever created for art book lovers. I could spend hours browsing through the titles, and I love their curated libraries. Fantastic site.
Art Book's Curated Libraries
ArtBook.com
The Big Three
Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand
Masterworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Malcolm Daniel
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Yale University Press (2010)
This is the companion publication to the current exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand runs through April 10, 2011). The book contains all of the plates from the exhibit and a well written essay by Malcolm Daniel, curator in charge of photographs for the museum.
While this book is beautifully printed with high quality image reproductions, it confirms for me the most resonating aspect of the exhibit, and that is the pictorial nature of Steichen's work. The work of Stieglitz and Strand can for the most part be fully appreciated in a high quality book. It is always best to see an actual print on the wall, but I don't believe the difference in visual appreciation is anywhere near as great for Stieglitz and Strand as it is for Steichen. I had never seen actual prints of Steichen's work before I went to this exhibit, and they blew me away. It was as if I was seeing his work for the very first time, and yet I had seen it in books many times.
The images involving Rodin are remarkable. Steichen visited Rodin's studio every weekend for a year before he asked to take portraits of the artist. The images Steichen made of Rodin's Balzac sculpture in the moonlight, using exposure times ranging from fifteen minutes to one hour are superb beyond words, and the image Rodin, Le Penseur is as close to a renaissance painting as a photograph can get.
Edward Steichen. Rodin,Le Penseur.(1902)There are three versions of The Flatiron Building in the exhibit, hung side by side in a commanding display. They are each slightly different in color toning, and were printed in 1904, 1905, and 1909. Again, I have seen this image in books dozens of times, but realize now that I have never truly seen it.
Edward Steichen.The Flatiron Building, (1905)The works in this exhibit are all from the Met’s own collection, which began with a gift of photographs from Stieglitz in 1928. Stieglitz considered the acceptance of his gift by the museum’s board of trustees to be nothing short of miraculous in opening “its sacred halls to Photography”, and this exhibit provides a look at the building blocks of photography’s now accepted place among traditional fine art institutions. Masterpieces from each photographer are shown in separate galleries, with works spanning from Stieglitz’s 1893 Winter, Fifth Avenue to a portrait of Stieglitz taken by Strand in 1939. The exhibit clearly separates the distinct style and professional careers of each photographer, and at the same time tells the interwoven story that connects them.
While I'm on the subject of books, I am a huge fan of self made and small edition photo books and zine formats. I have been to several independent book fairs and wish I could attend more of them. Internet viewing of these types of publications is troublesome because it is very difficult to get an idea of what an artist book is like just from seeing a photo of its cover, or a couple of page views. Thats why book fairs are so much fun... the tactile experience of seeing and feeling these small art projects. A web site I discovered today makes a really nice bridge that attempts to cross over to that tactile experience via the internet. Antenne Books is a distributor of small edition artist books and their web site features really excellent short videos of every book currently for sale. These little clips are shown from a vantage point as if you were holding the book in your hands and turning the pages yourself. Very nice idea! Check them out...
Antenne Books
Another recent Amazon purchase, an ex-library book for a couple dollars. It's a bit worn and dirty on the outside, but the interior is perfect and the print quality is incredible in this series from Aperture published in 1978. I own a few issues from the 1990's Aperture series Masters of Photography, but this Steichen book is from a 1970's series Aperture did called The History of Photography. There are 15 books in the series, and this is number 9.
I bought this as part of a personal exploration I am doing after seeing the Stieglitz Steichen Strand exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few weeks ago. I've never really paid close attention to Steichen's work, but it left the strongest impact on me after seeing the exhibit and I have started reading as much as I can about him and look very closely at his images.
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