LA Day/LA Night.

LA Day/LA Night. Photographs by Michael Light. Radius Books, 2011. 72 pp., two books in a Z-binding format, 34 duotone illustrations, 10½x16". Images from photo-eye.

Book description:

"Wih 'LA Day/LA Night', Radius Books continues photographer Michael Light’s ongoing aerial examination of the arid American West by bringing together two opposing views of the city in a double volume set.

'LA Day' stares directly into the sun, washing the metropolis in blasted, relentlessly specific light.

'LA Night' drifts over it in an ever-darkening electric dream, until the vast city below reverses and begins to signify the starry night sky vaulted above.

Referencing Ed Ruscha, Peter Alexander, Julius Schulman, and writers from Philip K. Dick to Raymond Chandler, 'LA Day/LA Night' continues Los Angeles’ rich cultural legacy of examining its favorite schizophrenic subject - itself."


I've previously featured the book 'Some Dry Space' by Michael Light.

Grasmücke.

Grasmücke. By Yukiko Yamasaki, Luo Rong Rong, Tomoe Miyazaki, Shinya Hiratake, Yuki Murabayashi, Anke Feuchtenberger, Jul Gordon and Gosia Machon. MAMI-Verlag, Hamburg 2010. Colour illustrations through-out. Images from Gosia Machon (whose work I found via Camilla Engman).

'Grasmücke' (which is German for Warbler) is an anthology of work by German and Japanese illustrators.

It was created through an exchange between German and Japanese cartoonists and illustrators in Hamburg and Kyoto, and features work by Yukiko Yamasaki, Luo Rong Rong, Tomoe Miyazaki, Shinya Hiratake, Yuki Murabayashi, Anke Feuchtenberger, Jul Gordon and Gosia Machon.

Foto & Copyright. Volume 2.

Foto & Copyright. Volume 2. By G.P. Fieret. Voetnoot, 2010. 160 pp., black & white illustrations thoughout, 9½x13".

Book description:

"Self-taught photographer Gerard P. Fieret photographed every aspect of the life around him, from himself to children, animals, street scenes and, most commonly, women.

Fieret's emotions and experiences are the central reference point of his work, while his complex printing techniques and copyright marks became an unmistakable part of his images.

Volume 1 of this title, published in 2004 to commemorate Fieret's 80th birthday, is now sold out and a collectible object. Volume 2, compiled from the rich collection of the Hague Museum of Photography, contains some 160 works that are being published for the first time."


'Foto & Copyright. Volume 2' was selected as one of photo-eye's Best Books of 2010.

Rest in Peace Elizabeth Taylor

Images: source, source, source, source.

Rest in Peace Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) - the screen legend and great beauty has passed away at the age of 79.

Read, read, read, read, read.

Recent Western Landscape 2008-09.

Recent Western Landscape 2008-09. Photographs by Lee Friedlander. Text by Klaus Kertess. Mary Boone Gallery, 2011. 30 pp., 25 duotone illustrations, 12x12¾".

The book 'Recent Western Landscape 2008-09' was published to accompany the 2010 exhibition of the same name at the Mary Boone Gallery (New York) featuring photographs by the American artist and photographer Lee Friedlander.

I've previously featured books with Lee Friedlander's work here, here and here.


Book description:

"Shot in locations such as Glen Canyon, Death Valley, and the Mojave Desert, in these works Friedlander often focuses on tangles of foreground brush, with occasional glimpses of rocky or snow-covered landscape beyond.

In the catalogue to the exhibition, Klaus Kertess has written:

'The heterogeneous organic mesh so often experienced in the foreground of these landscapes imbue forests and mountains with a kind of intimacy and immediacy ordinarily reserved for those actually trekking through the photographed terrain. The foregrounds do not diminish the power of the hills and mountains but rather draw them into the whole of the rectangular plane, at once veiling and celebrating their volume and shape.

On occasion the reflection of a mountain in a body of water viewed through the interstices of the foregrounded screen draws the mountain into the frontal plane and unfurls a panoply of reflected illusion. When snow is added, the soft light becomes still more diffuse, trees appear as almost immaterial filigrees of shadow, and recalcitrant leaves still clinging to branches enliven the foreground with delicate, chiming repetitions.

The muffled silence of the snowbound landscape, the fragile delicacy of the leaves, and the trees almost dissolving in the misty atmosphere envelop the plane in lyrical reverie seldom equaled inpainting or photography'."

Juchitan De Las Mujeres. 1979-1989.

Juchitan De Las Mujeres. 1979-1989. Photographs by Graciela Iturbide. Text by Mario Bellatín, Elena Poniatowska. RM/Editorial Calamus, 2009. 104 pp., 75 tritone illustrations, 8½x14¾". Images from photo-eye.

Graciela Iturbide is a Mexican photographer, who's work has "become synonymous with Mexican culture in all its diversity". I very much like her work, and have previously featured this, this and this book.


Book description:

" 'Juchitan de Las Mujeres' is a reprisal of her 1989 masterwork, comprising ten years of travels along the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, near Southern Oaxaca, where she lived among the pre-Columbian Zapotec culture indigenous to the remote region.

With new design and excellent production quality, this volume, which features many previously unpublished photographs, is a visual record of the daily life of an ancient culture in flux, through portraits of its people and glimpses into the Zapotecs’ attitudes toward sexuality, ritual, death and the role of women.

Revealing some of the finest examples of Iturbide’s enduring themes - the clash between urban and rural life, ancient and modern life - it includes a foreword by celebrated Mexican novelist, Mario Bellatín."


A limited edition of 'Juchitan De Las Mujeres' is available. It features "an original 12.3 x 7.55 in photograph printed on silver gelatine, signed and numbered by the author. Housed in a handmade clamshell box."


First quote from here ; last quote from here.

Pierre Molinier.

Pierre Molinier. Photographs by Pierre Molinier. Text by Jean-Luc Mercié. Les Presses du Réel, 2010. 400 pp., colour and black & white illustrations throughout, 24x31cm. Images from photo-eye (further images at Les Presses du Réel).

Book description:

"Pierre Molinier is discussed and celebrated for his pioneering photographic explorations of corporeality, gender and sexual hedonism. Yet his work has remained inaccessible to most of those people aware of his name and importance.

André Breton staged the only proper solo show enjoyed by Molinier in his fifty year career; upon his death in 1976 his photographs were familiar only to a small circle of erotic art connoisseurs. Many of his pictures have never been exhibited and only 160 prints have been published.

This groundbreaking monograph, garnered from the artist's archives, unwraps Molinier's oeuvre and fully reveals his artistic obsessions with sexual pleasure, transvestitism and public notoriety, with over 800 pictures, mostly unpublished, plus documents, manuscripts and letters, a chronology and critical biography, and a text by Jean-Luc Mercié."


Read more about Pierre Molinier here and here for example.

Mark Morrisroe.

Mark Morrisroe. Photographs by Mark Morrisroe. Edited by Beatrix Ruf, Thomas Seelig. Text by Stuart Comer, Elisabeth Lebovici, Fionn Meade, Linda Yablonsky. JRP|Ringier, 2010. 512 pp., 420 colour illustrations, 20,3 x 26,2 cm. Images from photo-eye.

Book description:

"The extraordinarily diverse work of the American photographer Mark Morrisroe has until now mostly been exhibited and discussed in connection with his famous Boston colleagues Nan Goldin and David Armstrong. Like them, Morrisroe documented his circle of friends, whose lifestyles were inspired by punk and bohemia.

He finished his studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1982, a few years later than Goldin and Armstrong. He moved to New York in the middle of the 1980s, and died of AIDS-related illnesses in 1989 when he was only 30.

Mark Morrisroe's short period of creativity in the 1980s was astonishingly productive and stands out because of its individual aesthetic. He captured his friends in painterly portraits and nude photographs; the Polaroid camera became a mirror of his own body, reflecting its illness and decay.

During the three years leading up to his death he transferred his photographic experiments more and more to the darkroom, where he used pages from porn magazines and X-ray images of himself as negatives.


This first comprehensive monograph, realized on occasion of an exhibition at the Fotomuseum Winterthur and in collaboration with The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection), shows many unknown works: from the tumultuous punk beginnings to the sandwich prints produced through extensive laboratory work, the graininess and muted colors of which are reminiscent of Pictorialism.

The book is illustrated with more than 500 images, and accompanied by newly commissioned essays and a complete biography."


Further publisher's description here.

Maze.

Maze. Photographs by Donovan Wylie. Steidl, 2009. 206 pp., 150 colour illustrations, 29.5 x 23.5 cm. Images from photo-eye.

Beautiful and poignant images of the demolition and demise of the Maze prison, a symbol for the Northern Ireland conflict.


Book description:

"Between 2002 and 2003 Donovan Wylie spent almost a hundred days photographing inside the Maze prison. Through its history of protests, hunger strikes and escapes, this prison, holding both republican and loyalist prisoners, became synonymous with the Northern Ireland conflict.

After the Belfast peace agreement in 1998, inmates were gradually released, but the Maze remained open.

Wylie was then the only photographer granted official and unlimited access to the site, when the demolition of the prison began, symbolizing the end of the conflict in 2007. He systematically recorded its demise.

The photographs which document this period are divided into four sections, each depicting a 'layer' of the prison: the internal walls, the various modes of fencing, the H-blocks and, finally, the perimeter walls, which reveal the external landscape.

Eventually this once-enclosed space is reintegrated with the outside world.


First published in 2004 to critical acclaim, this new edition of Maze comes in three volumes: Maze 2002/03, Maze 2007/08, and The Architecture of Containment."


'Maze' is made up of two hardcover books and a singer-stitched booklet housed in a slipcase.

Kyklades.

Kyklades. Photographs by Ali Bosworth. Gottlund Verlag, 2010. 64 pp., colour illustrations throughout, 7½x10½". Images from photo-eye.

Book description:

"The photographs in 'Kyklades' were taken in the summer of 2008 during a trip to the series of Greek islands of the same name."


'Kyklades' was selected as one of photo-eye's Best Books of 2010.

Making Books

Making Books (1947). Producer: Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. Part of the Prelinger Archives collection. Source. Found via Casual Optimist.

There is just nothing I don't love about this documentary, and the process of making books!

'Making Books' is a 1947 documentary produced by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films about "writing, editing and mass production of books" - showing the book making process of the day from manuscript to finished, mass-produced book.

Sweet Home Yokosuka 1976-1980.

Sweet Home Yokosuka 1976-1980. Photographs by Ishiuchi Miyako. PPP Editions, 2010. Unpaged, black & white illustrations. Images from photo-eye.

Today my thoughts are with Japan...

'Sweet Home Yokosuka 1976-1980' was published to accompany Japanese artist Ishiuchi Miyako's exhibition of vintage black and white photographs at the Roth Gallery (New York) in 2010.

"The images on view were selected from Ishiuchi’s three earliest series published as: Apartment (1978), Yokosuka Story (1979) and Endless Nights (1981).

In conjunction with the exhibition PPP Editions has published 'Sweet Home Yokosuka 1976-1980' printing over 200 tri-tone photographs with a bilingual essay by the contemporary Japanese writer and filmmaker Nishikawa Miwa.

'Sweet Home Yokosuka' revisits Ishiuchi’s three early works that in retrospect may be considered as a trilogy. Together the photographs manifest a personal document primarily of her hometown Yokosuka, a place of compromised identity, accommodating two large American Naval bases since the late 1940s.

'Apartment' documents both exteriors and interiors of new and old dwellings, generally focusing on the buildings themselves not their inhabitants.

They are in some respects anthropomorphic portraits of the architecture: the repairs on the walls are like veins and the cracking and peeling of old paint are like the scars on aging skin.

'Yokosuka Story' describes Ishiuchi’s wanderings in her native city, confronting locations that although changed, still hold the memories of her childhood.

And 'Endless Nights' documents the popular 'love hotels', as abandoned; the physical structure of the places themselves and their furnishings, stairways, corridors and empty beds echo the intimate stories that unfolded there.

What is most compelling about this work is not necessarily what Ishiuchi photographed or the seductive rendition of reality into black and white, but rather how she conceptualized the act of picture-taking.

Ishiuchi was less interested in finding her unique vision, more comfortable 'using' the medium as a means to confronting herself and her past.

This methodology was reinforced by the ideas discussed among her peers from the Provoke movement, Moriyama, Takanashi and Taki Koji, who questioned whether the photographic medium was capable of capturing any version of empirical truth."


Further reading here and here for example.


Quote from here.

One Day. Ten Photographers.

One Day. Ten Photographers. Ten books by ten photographers. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2011. 304 pp., 200 colour illustrations, ten books in a slipcase, 6¾x9". Images from photo-eye.

Book description:

"In 2009 photo artist Harvey Benge had the idea of getting a group of photographers together to shoot a book in a day. On June 21st, 2010, - the day of the solstice - ten of the world’s leading photographers of today each shot a series for a book, in different places around the world.

The individual concepts for the 'One Day' series are as multifaceted as the work of the included artists, sometimes they even allow the viewer to catch a glimpse of the photographers’ private life.

Martin Parr decided to photograph the small rituals of his daily life, Rinko Kawauchi documented a train journey in Japan, and Alec Soth took pictures with a polaroid camera his son had just given him for his birthday.

The result is a truly unique collector’s item, a boxed set including ten individual and elaborately designed hardcover books."


The book 'One Day. Ten Photographers' features one book each from artists/photographers:

Alec Soth, Eva Maria Ocherbauer, Gerry Badger, Harvey Benge, Jessica Backhaus, John Gossage, Martin Parr, Rinko Kawauchi, Rob Hornstra and Todd Hido.

The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait.

The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait. By Frida Kahlo, with introduction by Carlos Fuentes. Harry N Abrams, 1995. 295pp., numerous colour illustrations, 9.3 x 6". Images from here.

Today is International Women's Day, which I thought we'd celebrate with Frida Kahlo.

Book description:

"Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1919- 1954) kept this haunting journal during the last decade of her life, preoccupied with death, beset by declining health, isolation and repeated surgical operations resulting from the bus accident that severely damaged her spine, pelvic bones, right leg and right foot at the age of 18.

This facsimile edition reproduces her handwritten, colored-ink entries and accompanying self-portraits, sketches, doodles and paintings, which fuse surrealism, pre-Columbian gods and myths, biomorphic forms, animal-human hybrids, archetypal symbols. Ardent entries and love letters mirror her obsessive devotion to her husband, painter Diego Rivera.


In his moving introduction, Mexican critic/novelist/poet Fuentes relates Kahlo's images of pain, loss, mutilation and transcendence to Mexico's historic cycles of revolution and reaction.

Lowe, author of the study Frida Kahlo, ably places the journal in the context of the painter's shattered life. Sprinkled with irony, black humor, even gaiety, and augmented with translations of the diary entries plus commentaries and photographs, this volume is a testament to Kahlo's resilience and courage."


(more reviews here for example).

Gunnar Frössén: Streptomyces griseus.

Gunnar Frössén: Streptomyces griseus. By Ragnar von Holten, Gunnar Frössén. Carlssons publishers, 2007. 127pp., numerous colour illustrations, 21x17,5cm.

Book description (loose translation by me):

Streptomyces griseus is a fungus, which infested the artist Gunnar Frössén's studio for a period. It made him tired, his head heavy and his eyes red. It also effected his artistic process: resulting in monomaniac, intensely vibrating images. These are the images shown in this book.

The black and white paintings are sometimes 'city images' [...] the acrylic paintings in colour are 'landscapes', exteriors.


Gunnar Frössén is a Swedish painter, illustrator and sculptor living in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ragnar von Holten is a curator, artist and author living in Stockholm, Sweden - formerly at Nationalmuseum (Stockholm) and Moderna Muséet (Stockholm) as well as 'Svenska kulturinstitutet' in Paris.

John Stezaker.

John Stezaker. Photographs by John Stezaker. Ridinghouse and Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2011. 224 pp., 100 colour illustrations, 27 x 22,5cm.

The exhibition John Stezaker is shown at the Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK) until the 18th of March 2011.

It features work by the British artist John Stezaker. In his work he takes "classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations [and] makes collages to give old images a new meaning.

By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images.

Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty."

To view exhibition images go here.


Book description:

"The art of John Stezaker engages with the ceaseless flow of images that has been a consequence of mechanical reproduction, mass media and popular culture.

His intervention into these images through collage, excision, reconfiguration, inversion or occlusion can be seen to interrupt their everyday circulation in a profound way: image and perception alike are questioned, rearranged and opened to new possibilities.

Through their transformation Stezaker's images acquire poetic resonance, and, in many cases, a disquieting allure. With over 120 illustrations, this monograph presents the first overview of John Stezaker's work on paper from the 1970s onwards, featuring his found images, collages, image fragments and a selection from The 3rd Person Archive.

Essays by Dawn Ades and Michael Bracewell, as well as a conversation between the artist and curators Daniel F. Herrmann and Christophe Gallois, place Stezaker's work in a historical context and analyse his methodology and practice."


First quote from here.

Blindschleiche und Riesenblatt.

Blindschleiche und Riesenblatt. By Anne Schwalbe, design by Birgit Vogel. Anne Schwalbe, 2010. 68 pp., illustrated throughout, 21x27cm. Images from here.

Meaning of title: Slow worm and giant leaf. Book description: "30 photographs - landscapes and some other things".

See more of Anne Schwalbe's work here. View more pages of the excellent 'Blindschleiche und Riesenblatt' here, as well as all pages of the book (video).

Colstrip, Montana.

Colstrip, Montana. Photographs by David T. Hanson. Introduction by Rick Bass. Text by David T. Hanson. Taverner Press, 2010. 200 pp., 87 colour illustrations, 11¾x9¾". Images from photo-eye.

Book description:

"Over the past 30 years, American photographer David T. Hanson has scoured the American landscape for telltale signs of the way we live now - what we do with our land and how we live on it.

Colstrip, Montana, is the site of one of the largest coal strip-mines in North America. Between 1982 and 1985, Hanson undertook a photographic investigation of the mine, power plant and industrial site.

The Colstrip, Montana sequence was first exhibited by John Szarkowski at The Museum of Modern Art in 1986. This book publishes the entire series for the first time."


UPDATE: Read more about 'Colstrip, Montana' and David T. Hanson in this great feature over at Places Journal.