Atmos.

Atmos. By Naoya Hatakeyama. Nazraeli Press, 2004. 56 pp., illustrated throughout, 12x9". Images from here.

Book description:

"Naoya Hatakeyama is a leading figure in contemporary Japanese art. The subject of numerous books and exhibitions, Hatakeyama’s previous series such as 'Lime Works', 'River' and 'Underground' have received international critical acclaim.

The photographs in the previously unpublished series 'Atmos' were made in En Camarque, Fos-sure Mer in 2003, and are beautifully represented in this important new artists’ book.

Hatakeyama photographed this industrial area from two distinct perspectives: from inside the mill located within the town’s borders, and from the outskirts of the town itself.

The former document the terrifying power of machines man builds to produce goods; the latter reveal the dream-like variations in the surrounding landscape: salt fields, calm waters and pastures.

The two bodies of work have been bound face to face within a hardcover case, allowing the viewer to create hundreds of double page spreads from the twenty-two reproductions.

Hatakeyama’s photographs have been extensively exhibited in the United States, Europe and Japan. He was one of four photographers included in the traveling exhibition 'Land of Paradox', which toured the United States and Japan from 1996 to 1998."

Round The Way.

Round The Way. By Maya Hayuk. Nieves, 2010. 20pp., illustrated throughout, 19,5x25,5cm. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Ultra, Ultra Deep Fields by Maya Hayuk.

Book description:

"In the olden days - when people still thought the earth was flat - the universe was sometimes compared to the inside of a human skull. This was our notion of the infinite that lies beyond the world we live in, as a reflection of the infinity of our powers of thought and perception.

This comparison, and the discovery of the most far-flung corners of the universe using the Hubble Space Telescope, are the basis of 'Ultra, Ultra Deep Fields' by Brooklyn artist Maya Hayuk.

'Round the Way' is a collection of paintings from the last two years leading up to 'Ultra, Ultra Deep Fields', Maya Hayuk's exhibition at MU.

[...]

Maya Hayuk’s work, be it her large abstract murals or her smaller works on paper, is imbued with symmetry and colour.

It is midway between the stellar clouds that the Hubble Telescope allows us to see and the abstract patterns on Ukrainian Easter eggs, Mexican blankets, Rorschach tests and holograms. Using a symbolism that also leaves room for spirituality, she expresses her love for the positive."

You are the cream in my coffee and the sugar in my tea!

You are the cream in my coffee and the sugar in my tea! By Jenny Bergman & Nacho Tatjer. La Pinya, 2012. 45pp., illustrated throughout.

Book description:

"Sara, en modig ung kvinna från Motala, färdades över Atlanten 1927 på fartyget M/S Gripsholm. Äventyret och kärleken väntade på henne i Chicago. Good luck Sarah and bon voyage!"

[Sara, a brave young woman from Motala, travels over the Atlantic in 1927 on the ship M/S Gripsholm. Adventure and love awaits her in Chicago. Good luck Sarah and bon voyage!]

Tacita Dean. Contemporary Artists Series.

Tacita Dean. Contemporary Artists Series. By Tacita Dean. Texts by Tacita Dean, Jean-Christophe Royoux, Marina Warne, Germaine Greer and W.G. Sebald. Phaidon, 2006. 160 pp., illustrated throughout, 29x25cm. Images from here.

This monograph, published in 2006, was the first monograph of the artist Tacita Dean.

It includes an interview by Marina Warner, focus by Germaine Greer, survey by Jean-Christophe Royoux, artist's choices by W. B. Yeats and W. G. Sebald, and writings by Tacita Dean.


Book description:

"With films, drawings, photographs, audio recordings and installations, Berlin-based English artist Tacita Dean explores the ways that chance and coincidence influence daily life, constructing narratives that connect past and present, fact and fiction, private histories and larger events.

Across one archipelago of works - Disappearance at Sea (1996), Disappearance at Sea II (1996) and Teignmouth Electron (1999) - Dean documents the tragic account of Donald Crowhurst and his attempt to fake a solo voyage around the globe, which culminated in his eventual loss of sanity and his death at sea. The works tell the story through various fragments and landscapes, including a magnificent sea vista from a lighthouse beacon that produce what the artist refers to as a ‘missing narrative’ reminiscent of an atmospheric nineteenth-century seascape painting.

Dean's compulsion to archive forgotten fragments of history is perhaps best captured in FLOH (2002), a collection of photographs she discovered in flea markets across Europe and America - holiday snaps or banal occurrences retrieved and preserved for the future.

Other works include a Jukebox (2000) filled with ambient sound recorded around the world on the eve of the new millennium; views of a changing Berlin filmed from the revolving Fernsehturm television tower (Fernsehturm, 2001); and the sounds of a frustrated attempt to follow directions (as misleading as they are meticulous) to find Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in Utah's Great Salt Lake (Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty, 1997).

Dean’s work has been presented at museums and galleries throughout the world (including Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Tate Modern and Tate Britain, London; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; and ARC / Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) as well as in major international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (2003 and 2005).

Her films have also been screened at the Venice and Rotterdam international film festivals."

Extraordinary woman, extraordinary women // Still I Rise

Source, source, source for images.

The poem Still I Rise (1978) by Maya Angelou beautifully read at the occasion of her being honoured with the BET Honors Literary Arts Award (2012) ----------> link

Works that are made of what they appear to be made of.

Works that are made of what they appear to be made of. By Markus Degerman. Markus Degerman/Künstlerhaus Bethanien (in collaboration with Iaspis), 2008. Unpaged, illustrated throughout, 17,4x24,5cm  Limited edition of 700 copies, unnumbered. Images from here.

Book description:

"Markus Degerman monograph 'Works that are made of what they appear to be made of' was released on the occasion of the exhibition No matter how hard you work to bring things up, there is someone out there working just as hard, to bring them down at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin July 2008"

V&A Pattern: Garden Florals.

V&A Pattern: Garden Florals. V&A Publishing, 2010. 80pp., illustrated throughout, 17,8x12,9cm. Each title in the series includes a free CD of high-resolution images. Images from here.

Book description:

" 'Garden Florals' showcases textiles and wallpapers that depict motifs derived from the natural world - the selection is mostly British and from the period 1880-1910.

Artists and designers featured include William Morris, Walter Crane, C.F.A Voysey and Lewis Foreman Day.

'Garden Florals' is also available in a collectors' slipcase edition with 'Owen Jones', 'Novelty Patterns' and 'Kimono'."

A Sky Full of Kindness.

 

A Sky Full of Kindness. By Rob Ryan. Sceptre, 2011. 64pp., illustrated throughout, 19,7x25,3cm. Images from here and here.

Book description:

"With magical, intricate papercuts Rob Ryan tells the story of two birds about to become parents for the first time.

From the hopes for their unborn child to the fears about their own state of readiness, A SKY FULL OF KINDNESS captures the intense and contradictory feelings of an unconditional love."


Wonderful film with Rob Ryan here (via the Atlantic), Rob Ryan and the beautiful Ryan Town shop here and Rob Ryan on Etsy here.

Slipstream.

Slipstream. By Patrick O'Hare. Patrick O'Hare, 2008. Unpaged, illustrated throughout, 8,25x11". Limited edition of 100 copies, signed and numbered. Special edition of 30 copies, signed and numbered, with a 8x10" C-print. Images from here.

Book description:

" 'Slipstream' is a personal exploration of ravaged landscape glossed over and sealed by perpetual development and at the same time, more vulnerable than ever to man made and natural upheavals.

It Visually lays open a culture of impermanence, architecture of the fleeting and the sense of a rootless world that could easily be swept away.

I photograph cross-sections of this modern landscape, the stations of our lives and the silence between them. I search for signs, portents and absurdities in a wasted but strangely beautiful world that occasionally offers slivers of redemption.

From helicopters skirting the edges of cities to the strip mall sprawl, many of us traverse an increasingly sterile terrain that is difficult to escape. I'm interested in what lies behind these netherworlds when they are stripped down to their essence.

I look for the hillside drive through where light and darkness fill a shape, the roof of a Wal-Mart stretched to the horizon, the sweep of roadside embankments, cleared and manicured; all the borders where earth, man, and sky meet and melt into each other.

Our unquestioning embrace of modernization and efficiency and a longstanding spiritual loneliness continue to reverberate in the tenor of everyday life. The physical effects of these forces can be seen on most any street, highway, or mall.

Our lives are played out against these backdrops as well as quiet hope and desperation. But it is here also, in the everyday, where mystery still resides and the ruins of our civilization still haunt us. My goal is to photograph the silent truths of an uncertain age: those places on the edge of a frayed world."