A Particular World.

A Particular World. Photographs by William Clift. Printed by Christopher Benson. Designed by Eleanor Caponigro. Hand bound by Priscilla Spitler. Pearmain Press, 2008. Unpaged, illustrated throughout, 8¾x11". View more here.

This limited edition of 'A Particular World' with photographs by William Clift is "illustrated throughout with digital inkjet prints from scans of the original color Polaroid Spectra film".

The inkjet prints are done in ultrachrome k3 ink on Hanhnemuhle photo rag paper. It's limited to 50 signed and numbered copies.


The edition is described as:

"Exquisitely printed and bound 'A Particular World' contains twenty-four pigment ink prints of William Clift photographs made between 1987-2007 and includes a mixture of portraits and still lifes. It is as richly subtle as those familiar with Clift's work would expect.

The book, quarter-bound in leather and housed in a cloth-covered slipcased, is full of remarkable and quiet little masterworks, beautifully seen and detailed, rendered in the lovely Polaroid color palette."


I've written about books by William Clift before here and here.


Both quotes from publisher's description.

Your Chance Encounter.

Your Chance Encounter. Photographs by Olafür Eliasson. Lars Müller Publishers, 2010. 216 pp., 200 illustrations, 9½x7¾".

"The acclaimed Danish-Icelandic artist Olafür Eliasson developed a sequence of spatial experiments for his 'Your Chance Encounter' exhibition in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. His piece challenges visitors to move around and get their bearings, and stimulates them to see the museum as a public space for addressing art and reality critically.

The installations were developed especially for the exhibition. They are arranged in a tight context with the spatial structure of the museum and extend the concept of architecture by the Japanese architecture practice SANAA. Olafür Eliasson does not work only in the museum galleries, but also in the corridors in between and the adjacent courtyards, thus linking the indoor and outdoor areas closely and examining this museum’s unique qualities.

The artist’s book was created in close co-operation with Olafür Eliasson’s studio. Its elaborate design with an extensive pictorial section offers a comprehensive record of the exhibition and an important analysis of this successful artist’s work. An essay by art historian Eve Blau interprets the exhibition in relation to its surroundings and contrasts the experimental approaches of Olafür Eliasson and SANAA, while curator Hiromi Kurosawa introduces the history and context of the museum in Kanazawa."

-- publisher's description

Read more about and view more images from inside the book here, or read more about the exhibition here.

Down Country.

Down Country. The Tano of the Galisteo Basin, 1250–1782. Photographs by Edward Ranney. By Lucy R. Lippard. Museum Of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 2010. 388 pp., 80 duotone and 30 black & white illustrations, 8½x10".

I love the beauty and quiet tranquility of these photographs.

'Down Country' described:

"The Galisteo Basin is an ancient seabed, site of volcanic upheaval. The fertile basin provided temporary hunting and farming grounds for wanderers, and then became the home of Pueblo peoples who survived drought, warfare, disease, and invasion for almost a thousand years before the arrival of the Spanish.

'Down Country' is the history of five centuries of the Southern Tewa Pueblo Indian culture that rose, faltered, reasserted itself, and ultimately, perished in the Galisteo.

[...]

Renowned writer and Galisteo resident Lucy R. Lippard synthesizes archaeological and historical research to create this landmark study ten years in the making, weaving together the many viewpoints of a century of study and research.

Acclaimed New Mexico photographer Edward Ranney contributes a portfolio of eighty documentary images of the Galisteo Basin’s ancient sites, shrines, rock art, and striking landscape."

The Sound of Two Songs.

The Sound of Two Songs. Photographs by Mark Power. Photoworks, 2010. 168 pp., 73 colour illustrations, 10x12¼".

'The Sound of Two Songs' is a monograph by British photographer Mark Power examining the country of Poland.

"Power became transfixed by Poland whilst making a one-month project in the country for a 2004 Magnum commission, but he believed his initial investigations only scraped the surface of a country approximately the same physical size as the other nine new EU members added together. Consequently, he made approximately twenty further visits over five years. The archive now consists of 2000 large format, 5x4 negatives.

The result is a beautiful series of photographs, eloquently describing the changing social values of a country caught between the past, the present and the future, both in terms of attitudes and of the contradictions in its landscape.

As Power says, ‘Poland is a beautiful country. Poland is an ugly country.’


This beautiful book moves effortlessly between images of the urban and the rural, the old and the new, setting the crumbling inner city housing estates of the communist era against the new developments of colourful apartments and gleaming shopping centres.

Power’s project also explores the effect of global capitalism on the Polish landscape with advertising hoardings dominating the cityscape, setting a sharp contrast between the decay and aspiration of the country."


Quote from publisher's description.

Joyous

SERIGRAFIA #3 . SCREENPRINT #3. By Ana Ventura. Signed and numbered 50 edition. 52cm x 52cm [19,7 x 19,7 inches]. 300gr fabriano paper.

Today two of my favourite people are getting married ♥ ♥ ♥
Let's celebrate with an Ana Ventura screenprint!


I'm a big fan of Ana's work and have written about it before here, here, here, here for example.

Quebec.

Quebec. Photographs by Anonymous. Anonymous, 2010. 48 pp., 20 illustrations, 5½x7½".

A book containing photographs like these can only look this beautiful in the heat of the summer!

Description:

"A poetic view of the Québec winter. Each copy printed and hand-made by the anonymous photographer. Numbered and 'signed' with his thumb-impression.

The book and print combination is accompanied with an outtake image not included in the book. This digital image is roughly 5x7 on an 8x10 sheet."

Detroit Disassembled.

Detroit Disassembled. Photographs by Andrew Moore. Text by Andrew Moore, Philip Levine. Damiani, 2010. 136 pp., 72 colour illustrations, 14x11". Images from Amazon.

In 'Detroit Disassembled' - a book of fine art photography by American photographer Andrew Moore - he "records a territory in which the ordinary flow of time - or the forward march of the assembly line - appears to have been thrown spectacularly into reverse.

For Moore, who throughout his career has been drawn to all that contradicts or seems to threaten America’s postwar self-image (his previous projects include portraits of Cuba and Soviet Russia), Detroit’s decline affirms the carnivorousness of our earth, as it seeps into and overruns the buildings of a city that once epitomized humankind’s supposed supremacy.

In 'Detroit Disassembled' Moore locates both dignity and tragedy in the city’s decline, among postapocalyptic landscapes of windowless grand hotels, vast barren factory floors, collapsing churches, offices carpeted in velvety moss and entire blocks reclaimed by prairie grass. Beyond their jawdropping content, Moore’s photographs inevitably raise the uneasy question of the long-term future of a country in which such extreme degradation can exist unchecked."


There is also a limited edition of 'Detroit Disassembled'. This edition is limited to 50 copies and comes in a linen cloth box and contains a numbered and signed photograph measuring 15 x 12".


Quote part of publisher's description.

The Strangeness of This Idea.

The Strangeness of This Idea. Photographs by Kate Steciw. Hassla, 2010. 28 pp., colour illustrations throughout, 9x11". Images from Hassla.

Photographer Kate Steciw describes 'The Strangeness of This Idea' as:

"I am interested in making a photograph other - juxtaposing or superimposing the mundane or expected with the altered or intangible - allowing (or even forcing) a photograph to move beyond the 2D and exist in 3D and even 4D spaces or implied spaces.

I strive to expose the failure of the photographic object to reflect an increasingly immaterial world and the demands that that world makes on our perceptions.

By returning that 'other' material to a photographic space/surface or juxtaposing it with a 'straight' image, a relationship is drawn between the evolving abstraction of photographic/graphic space and the abstraction inherent in all photography.

It is this perceptual volleying between the solid or tangible and the immaterial or altered that, in my opinion, best characterizes the mutable nature of the contemporary visual experience - solid/static to liquid/dynamic and back again."

For a Language to Come.

For a Language to Come. Photographs by Takuma Nakahira. Osiris, 2010. 160 pp., 100 black & white images 8¼x11¾". Images from Osiris.

Takuma Nakahira is a Japanese writer, photographer, political activist, co-founder of Provoke magazine and author of the influential 'For a Language to Come' (originally published in 1970, and now re-issued in 2010).


'For a Language to Come' was the first photobook by Takuma Nakahira "the photographer who brought about a turning point in contemporary Japanese photography from the late 1960s to the early 1970s by radically breaking away from the existing image aesthetics at that time.

This book consists of one hundred black and white photographs including his work from the legendary photography magazine Provoke.

[...]

The 2010 republication of 'For a Language to Come' with a new cover design is an attempt to engage Nakahira’s photographic point of departure again in the present, to discover this work as one that is more vibrantly resonant today.

For a deeper appreciation of his critical thought and practice, the supplement to the republication presents three essays written by Nakahira in the early 70s."


'For a Language to Come' "marked a distinct turning point in the history of Japanese photography, heavily influencing what subsequently became the stark hallmark aesthetic mostly associated with his contemporaries Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki.

Due to the extreme rarity of the original publication, this work has been largely inaccessible for decades - its republication is a wonderful opportunity to reexamine what has rightly been hailed a masterpiece."

First quote from publisher's description ; second quote from photo-eye.

Daido Moriyama. Cartier Foundation Catalogue.

Daido Moriyama. Cartier Foundation Catalogue. Photographs by Daido Moriyama. Text by Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama. Fondation Cartier, Paris, 2003. Unpaged, numerous black-and-white illustrations, 9x11¼".

Daido Moriyama is a Japanese photographer and writer concerned with depicting the tearing down of traditional values in post-war Japan, drawing attention to the "indigenous world that remained in the shadows of rapid economic growth."

This book is a catalogue of Daido Moriyama's work published by the Cartier Foundation in 2003, which includes a conversation between Daido Moriyama and Japanese photographer and artist Nobuyoshi Araki (transcribed in French and English).


I've written about books by Daido Moriyama before here. You can also read more about Daido Moriyama here or here for example.


Quote from here.

Rest In Peace Harvey Pekar

'The Next Door Neighbor I Don't Know' by Harvey Pekar and Rick Veitch - from New York Magazine.

Read: 1, 2, 3, 4

Big Bang Big Boom

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU. Direction and animation by Blu, production and distribution by artsh.it, sountrack by Andrea Martignoni. Via Electric Lit twitter.

Big Bang Big Boom: "an unscientific point of view on the beginning and evolution of life ... and how it could probably end".

Really great stop-motion animation using wall-paintings/murals and more - depicting the History of Evolution (kind of).


Quote is from the film description.

A Thirty Year Retrospective.

A Thirty Year Retrospective. Photographs by Kenro Izu. Nazraeli Press, Portland, 2010. 140 pp., 100 duotone illustrations, 11x15".

Japanese-born and New York-based photographer Kenro Izu is a well-known still-life photographer, who's had a number of books published and exhibited his work frequently.


"A chance viewing of the mammoth plate photographs by the Victorian photographer Francis Frith led Izu to travel to Egypt in 1979, to photograph the pyramids and other sacred monuments.

Thus began the artist’s renowned series 'Sacred Places', which includes work from holy sites in Syria, Jordan, England, Scotland, Mexico, Easter Island and, more recently, Buddhist and Hindu sites in India, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, and China.

Using a custom-made, 300-pound camera, Izu creates negatives that are 14 inches high by 20 inches wide. The resulting platinum palladium prints are widely recognized as being among the most beautiful prints in the history of the medium."


The monograph 'A Thirty Year Retrospective' is a collection of work from this ongoing 'Sacred Places' series - a project that's been going for thirty years.


Quote from the publisher's description / Nazraeli Press.

All My Lies Are True...

All My Lies Are True... Photographs by David J. Carol. Kabloona Press, 2009. Unpaged, black & white illustrations throughout, 9¼x6¼".

'All My Lies Are True...' - a monograph by photographer David J. Carol - is a collection of photographs taken over a period of 25 years. These black and white photographs were taken whilst traveling on other photo assignments or with family and friends.

"The book begins ‘A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving,’ a quotation from Lao Tzu appropriately juxtaposed with an image of a picturesque landscape, a Costa Rican mountain in the distance… accompanied by a statue of a rather large farm animal’s derriere in the foreground.

[...]

The book itself serves more as a vehicle for Carol’s photographs rather than an object produced for the object’s sake. And while there is simplicity in the book’s construction, it further exemplifies the nature of the photographs inside - visual outward appearance is irrelevant, what truly matters is imaginative honesty, along with the acceptance that the journey never quite ceases to end."


David J. Carol photographs and books are part of several permanent collections and he has exhibited his work frequently.


Quote from Antone Dolezal's Picks on the photo-eye blog.

Roma, Citta Di Mezzo.

Roma, Citta Di Mezzo. Photographs by Guy Tillim. punctum, 2009. Unpaged, Numerous color illustrations, 6¾x9".

South African photographer Guy Tillim is "known for his black and white and later digital work, mainly of third world Africa and often of war- and trouble-stricken areas".

'Roma, Citta di Mezzo' - an unusual and I think poignant look at Rome and its urban landscape (almost completely void of people) - was commissioned for FotoGrafia 2009 and published by punctum, with essays by curators Marco Delogu and Nicola-Louise Brandt.


From the afterword by Nicola-Louise Brandt:

"Guy Tillim's images of Rome are of silent, transient moments that blink between one articulated thought and another.
Tillum does not memorialize or claim a sentimental intimacy with his surroundings. He investigates cycles of decay and regeneration in the city with the candour of an outsider and, in the process, he offers another way of feeling and thinking about archetypal and contemporary Rome".


You can also read a review of 'Roma, Citta Di Mezzo' by Charles Dee Mitchell in photo-eye magazine.


First quote wikipedia entry for Guy Tillim ; second quote publisher's description.

West and West. Reimagining the Great Plains.

West and West. Reimagining the Great Plains. Photographs by Joe Deal. Center for American Places, Chicago, 2009. 112 pp., 51 duotone illustrations, 3 maps, 10x11".

"The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 officially opened the Great Plains to westward settlement, and the public survey of 1855 by Charles A. Manners and Joseph Ledlie along the Sixth Principal Meridian established the grid by which the uncharted expanse of the Great Plains was brought into scale.

The mechanical act performed by land surveyors is believed by photographer Joe Deal to be powerfully similar to the artistic act of making a photograph.

To Deal, both acts are about establishing a frame around a vast scene that suggests no definite boundaries of its own. Thus, when approaching his own photographs of the Great Plains, Deal viewed his photography as a form of reenactment, a method of understanding how it felt to contain the Great Plains in smaller, more measurable units.


In 'West and West', Deal, who was born and raised in Kansas, revisited the Kansas-Nebraska territory and applied his photographic understanding of the landscape grid and horizon line to illuminate the sense of infinite space that transcends the reality of the survey.

As Deal writes in his concluding essay: “If the square, as employed in the surveys of public lands, could function like a telescope, framing smaller and smaller sections of the plains down to a transect, it can also be used as a window, equilaterally divided by the horizon, that begins with a finite section of the earth and sky and restores them in the imagination to the vastness that now exists as an idea: the landscape that is contained within the perfect symmetry of the square implies infinity.”

The stunning photographs in West and West present the Great Plains from a rare perspective. From this vantage point, Deal is able to distill and contemplate its expanse."

-- publisher's description.

Read more about 'West and West' late photographer Joe Deal here and here for example.

There is also an interesting review of 'West and West' by Larissa LeClair in photo-eye magazine.

Twenty One Red-Crowned Cranes and One Black Crow.

Twenty One Red-Crowned Cranes and One Black Crow. (One Picture Book #27). Photographs by Camille Solyagua. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2005. 16 pp., 11 duotone illustrations, 5½x7¼". Images from photo-eye.

One Picture Book is an ongoing series of limited edition artists' books published by Nazraeli Press, which I've previously written about here and here.

The artist is asked to create a book based on one image or series of connected images, from their previous work. The hardcover edition is limited to 500 and contains an original print by the artist.

'Twenty One Red-Crowned Cranes and One Black Crow' (One Picture Book #27) is Camille Solyagua forth book with Nazraeli Press. It's described as:

"Red-crowned cranes are considered to be sacred by the Japanese people. Once almost extinct, today approximately 2,000 of the rare birds remain in all of Eastern Asia.

Since 2002, Camille Solyagua has repeatedly traveled to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido in mid-winter to pay homage and photograph the birds.

With grace and elegance she has produced a series of remarkable photographs, brought together here in her contribution to our One Picture Book series."


Quote part of publisher's description.