On Reading.

On Reading. Photographs by André Kertész. W W Norton & Company Inc, New York, 2008. 80 pp., 68 duotone illustrations., 6x8".

"André Kertész (1894–1985) was one of the most inventive, influential, and prolific photographers in the medium’s history.

This small volume, first published in 1971, became one of his signature works. Taken between 1920 and 1970, these photographs capture people reading in many parts of the world. Readers in every conceivable place - on rooftops, in public parks, on crowded streets, waiting in the wings of the school play - are caught in a deeply personal, yet universal, moment.

Kertész’s images celebrate the absorptive power and pleasure of this solitary activity and speak to readers everywhere."

What more can you say than this is magical! "deeply personal, yet universal, moment" indeed.

It's Beautiful Here, Isn't It...

It's Beautiful Here, Isn't It... Photographs by Luigi Ghirri. Text by Germano Celant. Preface by William Eggleston. Notes by Paola Ghirri. Aperture, New York, 2008. 152 pp., 95 color and 30 b&w illustrations, 11x8½".

"Luigi Ghirri was an extraordinary photographer, as well as a writer and curator whose career was so rich and varied that it seems like a lesson in the contemporary history of the medium.

[...]

Uncannily prescient, Ghirri shared the sensibility of what became known in the U.S. as the New Color and the New Topographics movements before they had even been named. Like his counterparts in Italian cinema, Ghirri believed that the local and the universal were inseparable and that life’s polarities - love and hate, present and past - were equally compelling.

Not surprisingly, his interests encompassed all the arts: he worked in Giorgio Morandi’s studio and with architect Aldo Rossi, while influencing a generation of photographers, including Olivo Barbieri and Martin Parr.

This dynamic new book includes a selection of Ghirri’s essays published in English for the first time, as well as a selected chronology."

The Antarctic. From the Circle to the Pole.

The Antarctic. From the Circle to the Pole. Photographs by Stuart Klipper. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2008. 176 pp., 120 color illustrations., 15x9".

"Antarctica remains largely unknown and infinitely fascinating. Stuart Klipper has traveled to Antarctica six times in twenty years to photograph this astounding body of work, offering a sweeping look at this majestic continent, which has lately become central to global climate change concerns.

Shot in panoramic format - the only way to encompass a landscape that seems to stretch on forever - Klipper’s work captures major features and surprising details: ships suspended in the frozen sea, glowing blue icebergs, vistas of endless snow, and troops of penguins.

This volume’s substantial size, panoramic shape, and unique vertical-opening case emphasize the grandeur of these austere and lovely photographs from the bottom of the world."

Gotta Love Adam West

Lookwell - pilot episode. With Adam West, et al. Audio and video, 22min 40sec, July 1991. (To view full pilot episode go here).

"Lookwell was a television pilot written and produced by Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel. It starred Adam West as a washed-up TV action hero - who at the peak of his career was ceremonially deputized by local law enforcement - who falsely believes he can solve crimes in real life. His student, Jason, becomes his sidekick and is played by Todd Field.

The pilot was broadcast on NBC in July 1991 but was not picked up as a series despite being a "personal favorite" of NBC chairman Brandon Tartikoff as well as comedian Bill Maher."


You just gotta love Adam West - the man's a genious! (not so much Conan O'Brien though...) How sensational is he in Family Guy for example and on a side note...

So sad that this show didn't get picked up - it's just absolutely brilliant! I mean the amount of quote-wordy lines: incredible!


UPDATE: changed the unsightly video for a still so please go here to watch the full pilot episode. You'll love it!

Moons of the Iapetus Ocean.

Moons of the Iapetus Ocean. Photographs by Darren Almond. White Cube, London, 2008. 96 pp., 52 color illustrations, 11¾x9½".

"Bathed in an eerie brightness, Almond's photographs were taken at night using moonlight and an extremely long exposure, with the result that night is seemingly transformed into day.

Waterfalls and gushing lakes become pools of steam, a pounding sea is calmed into a thick fog and a mossy, ferny landscape returns the viewer to the landscapes of bygone folklore.

Reminding the viewer of the temporality of geography and the individual's insignificance in the greater scheme of things, the 50 colour photographs presented here, one to a page, are bound to be appreciated."

A Certain Alchemy.

A Certain Alchemy. Photographs by Keith Carter, introduction by Bill Wittliff, afterword by Pat Carter. University Of Texas Press, Austin, 2008. 184 pp., 102 illustrations., 12x12".

"Lauded as 'a transcendent realist' and 'a poet of the ordinary,' Keith Carter is an internationally acclaimed photographer whose work has been shown in over one hundred solo exhibitions in thirteen countries. At first finding his subjects in the familiar, yet exotic, places and people of his native East Texas, Carter has since expanded his range not only geographically, but also into realms of dreams and imagination, where objects of the mundane world open glimpses into ineffable realities.

In A Certain Alchemy, his tenth book, Keith Carter explores relationships that are timeless, enigmatic, and mythological. Drawing from the animal world, popular culture, folklore, and religion, Carter presents photographs that attempt to reflect hidden meanings in the real world.

[...]

In Keith Carter's own words, 'A Certain Alchemy is a collection of imperfect observations of the relationship we have to our ideas of place, time, memory, desire, and regret. It is an anthology of oblique angles and awkward pauses that examines the history of photography and our own shared natural histories.' "

MiniBoosts

'Long Live the City'. With designer Satyendra Pakhale. Part of a series of MiniBoosts conducted during the Milan Design Week, April 2009.

"Knowledge company Designboost was interested to explore the personal viewpoint on sustainable cities from some of the worlds most acknowledged designers.

To find out Designboost went to Milan Design Week and made a MiniBoost. The MiniBoost resulted in thirteen unique interviews with personalities like Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Ilse Crawford, Tom Dixon, Kristina Dryza, Konstantin Grcic, Richard Hutten, James Irvine, Arik Levy, Ross Lovegrove, Katrin Olina, Tim Power, Satyendra Pakhale and Patricia Urquiola.

The questions asked looked at sustainable cities from a holistic point of view and touched among other subjects sustainability according to cultural life, emotional amplification and the personal stories of the inhabitants. The questions are written by different Boosters at the DesignBoost 2008 key event “Long Live the City” in Malmö, Sweden."

I discovered these 'MiniBoosts' via poppytalk and I find the premises extremely interesting and the subject of "sustainable cities from a holistic point of view" immensely important. The questions are very hit and miss though from "Can a bus ever be as hip as an iphone?" (miss) to "How can cities emotionally amplify life?" (very interesting indeed), but overall a positive initiative I think.

for every step you take I take a thousand.

for every step you take I take a thousand. Duncan Speakman, 2007. 16pp., art work, 14.8x10.5cm. Unlimited edition, with accompanying soundtrack. Images from the exhibition website.

I'm very annoyed I missed this wonderfully titled exhibition - 'The Cover of a Book is the Beginning of a Journey' - earlier this year at Arnolfini in Bristol, UK.

As part of the exhibition Duncan Speakman's book 'for every step you take I take a thousand' was, and still is, available to download and assemble yourself (it's accompanied with a 'how to' video and soundtrack to be played whilst making it).

I thought I'd post it for those of you who might've also missed it. Hope you'll enjoy it!

Over and Over: A Catalog of Hand-Drawn Patterns.

Over and Over: A Catalog of Hand-Drawn Patterns. By Mike Perry. Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. 256pp., 250 colour illustrations, 8 x 10". Found via pocko.

"Pattern can be derived from many sources, if we remember to look closely. While patterns have been around forever, there's a recent movement, a tendency among designers, to allow patterns to animate their work with colorful and exuberant complexity.

Over and Over: A Catalog of Hand-Drawn Patterns collects groundbreaking work from fifty of today's most talented designers who create patterns by hand and use them in their work in inventive and innovative ways. From Deanne Cheuk's patterns that adorn current fashion to those of Robin Cameron that explore her interest in art to Garrett Morin's patterns that arose from an exercise for a character called Eloie, the examples in this book push the boundaries of the traditional concept of what a pattern is.

The selected works are often not an end result but the beginning of something else, of something bigger and broader. While the computer is sometimes involved in the production of patterns, the hand-drawn element is always evident in the uniqueness of these works."

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. Notes on Tourism. Edited by Delphine Bedel. Episode Publishers, The Netherlands, 2008. 56 pp., 20 black & white illustrations., 6¾x9½".

This is very possibly the most beautiful title I've ever heard - or at least one that sparks a flood of imagination and inspiration.

Making allowances for how immensely high the bar therefore is set for my expectations of this book, its' premises are unfortunately still a disappointment.

The images themselves are pretty poetic and surely beautiful, but with a title such as 'All That Is Solid Melts Into Air' I do not want to be reading a book about tourism.

(A quick google search shows that there are several other books / articles with the same name, making more promising use of this wonderful phrase. I will investigate further.)

Beauty of Soul: Oscar Wilde.

Oscar Wilde's Short Stories - trailer. With Stephen Fry. Audio and video, 6min, Dec 2008. Image: still from the trailer.

"Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales continue to exert the same pull over the imagination and emotions as they did when he first read them to his children in the 1880."

This is the trailer (unfortunately I couldn't make it embed so please click the link) for the audiobooks series of Oscar Wilde's short stories that Stephen Fry has recorded (read more here).

I got it as a podcast (podgram) called 'Beauty of Soul: Oscar Wilde', and found it just wonderfully inspiring (as is the phrase 'Beauty of Soul').

I very much hope you enjoyed it as much as I have.

(in)visible by Ana Ventura

(in)visíveis . (in)visible I digital prints I. By Ana Ventura. 40cm x 26,5cm and 50cm x 33cm.

This feel like sort of a departure for Ana, but I really love it.

I really like the feeling of layering and texture you get, even though it's digital prints (I would really love to see the process behind the work). I must say it's a very interesting and intriguing development indeed.

(I've written about Ana and her work several times before).

Hideki Nakajima Monograph.

Hideki Nakajima Monograph. Photographs and artwork by Hideki Nakajima. Dalian University of Technology Press, 2005. 1484pp., numerous illustrations, numerous paper types and folding techniques, 265×200mm. Found via pocko, images from for print only.

"This front-to-back, back-to-front monograph for Japanese designer Hideki Nakajima is a behemoth in both size and production values. 1,484 pages, Japanese stab binding (side stitch), Paper folding technique and usage of multiple paper types."

"The bilingual book is divided into ten categories and can be read from back to front and vice versa — the book has no front or back. One side of the book is provided with a hardcover (dutch-board), The other cover is formed by ten separate semi-transparent layers."

(-- designer Nivard Thoes).

How I would love to get my hands on this book!

Over 1400 pages, different paper quality, perfectly hand-bound together using Japanese stab binding. That in itself is a feat, but the fact that such a thick book looks innovate, delicate, and intriguing (rather than like a phone book) is so impressive to me.

Very well done indeed! I'm hoping for more collaborations like this.

Analog (flickr set)

Analog (flickr set). Found via Elsa Billgren's blog.

Today (starting last night) it's gloomy outside after a long bout of glorious sunshine. I've decided to console myself with these wonderful photographs...

UPDATE: yeay, good choice: now the suns back! (even if fickle)

Artists’ Publishing Part I.

Artists’ Publishing Part I. Artists’ Books by various contributors. Exhibition at Bower Ashton Library, UWE, Bristol, UK. Images from the exhibition website.

"A selection of books which will form part of the larger New Wave exhibition of artists’ publishing later this year (at Impact Printmaking Conference in September).

These books have been chosen to demonstrate some of the areas of interest in our AHRC supported research project see www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/canon.htm.

We are not concerned with categorising books by format, these publications are concerned with content; a small mirror of the world, books that are political, observational, reflective, humorous, calls to action, treatises, books that talk to each other, books that question our relationship with both the word and the world."


Please also help out with their Artists’ Books Survey (2008-2009), which is open until the end of July. The survey can be done online (or by posting it in) and sits alongside the ABTREE diagram. Your altered ABTREE diagram will be included on the exhibition wall at CFPR's conference in July and at the Impact conference in September.

Pictures by Jeff Bridges.

Pictures by Jeff Bridges. By Jeff Bridges, with a foreword by Peter Bogdanovich. powerHouse Books, 2003. 192pp., numerous illustrations, 12.4 x 9.8". Images from FILE.

"For more than twenty years, on dozens of film sets, Bridges has perfected his own photography, shooting between takes and behind-the-scenes with a Widelux F8 camera. This fascinating, surprisingly candid body of work began as a personal project, as he recorded the arduous, emotionally intense, evanescent work of the film shoot in books that were privately printed and given as gifts to cast and crew. These are not traditional “Hollywood” pictures, but rather—despite the costumes and lighting, the crowds of extras, the stardom of the subjects—pictures of friends at work. Taken together, the pictures act as Bridges’ personal and professional diary, with actors, directors, and crew appearing as coworkers, all equal participants in the job at hand.

With a foreword by Peter Bogdanovich and Jeff Bridges’ hand-written commentary and captions throughout, Pictures promises to be a rare and exciting publishing event, offering a vision of Hollywood that is both intimately human and formally beautiful.

Jeff Bridges’ proceeds from Pictures will be donated to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, a non-profit organization that offers charitable care and support to film-industry workers."

I came across this wonderful book when I happened to catch the Actors Studio with Jeff Bridges the other day. I'm a little bit confused as to how I didn't know about it since I'm a huge fan of Jeff Bridges website, which I visit frequently, as well as FILE magazine - a collection of unexpected photography (not to be confused with this FILE magazine I've written about before), who's showcasing his work.

Anyway I'm so glad I finally found it, and got to learn about the widelux camera - how I would love to own one! (unfortunately no flash though = not so good in the darkness of Sweden).

I especially find this so incredibly intriguing (from the introduction of the book 'Pictures by Jeff Bridges'): "The first time I came across one was in high school. We had been gathered together to take our class photo. The photographer had a Wide-Lux. He explained how it worked. Some kids figured if they ran very quickly, they could beat the panning lens and be in the picture twice. They were right. Years later, I started using this technique to take pictures of actors creating the theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy. The result was someone frowning and smiling at himself - all on one negative."


FILE magazine has some wonderful projects on (including outtakes from 'Pictures by Jeff Bridges') and if you haven't visited the site you really should! If you're interested in Jeff Bridges work outside the movie industry visit his truly wonderful website.

The Solitude of Ravens.

The Solitude of Ravens. Photographs by Masahisa Fukase. Hysteric Glamour, 2008. 136 pp., Numerous black & white illustrations., 10¼x10¼". Comes in a slipcase.

"[...] Renowned photographer Masahisa Fukase explores the world of the raven, a constant presence in the landscape of his native Japan.

He photographs ravens, singly and in groups, in every conceivable setting, both natural and manmade.

His images are spiritually and emotionally powerful, endowing the raven with meanings that are sometimes exhilarating, at other times terrifying."


A little bit creepy, a little bit beautiful