Unintended Sculptures.

Unintended Sculptures. By Henrik Saxgren. Text by Bill Kouwenhoven and Timothy Persons. Hatje Cantz, 2009. 112 pp., illustrated throughout, 34,7x28,6cm. Images from here.

 Book description:

"The elegant S-curve of a freeway and its counterpoint, huge wind turbines on the hills behind it - Henrik Saxgren (*1953 inRanders, Denmark) searches for and finds artistic potential and creative will in the most obscure places.

The title of his series 'Unintended Sculptures', which he has been working on since 2001, says it all: in nature and the environment, Saxgren discovers relational forms, structures, and optical illusions that seem to have been deliberately placed there by the artist’s hand. To anyone whose eyes are open, it is obvious that those greenhouse-covered fields must have been wrapped by Christo and Jean-Claude - or that these geometrical basalt-rock formations along a section of the coastline looks like an enormous sculptural vision.

Saxgren’s eye, schooled in documentary photography, allows him to capture these 'sculptures' at the very moment they, as Timothy Persons writes, 'best define themselves in the framework of their environments'."

Happy Mother's Day

Image sources google/unknown.

Silent Nests.

Silent Nests. By Vicki Topaz. 2006. Design and production by Vicki Topaz and Radek Skrivanek. 82 pp., illustrated throughout, 10,75x12,25". Edition of 45. This edition sold out, also available in this edition, Images from here.

I do not like pigeons. I like these shapes.


Book description:

"Some years ago, during a brief stay in Northern France, I saw my first pigeonnier standing isolated in a farmer's field off a tiny back road.

Pigeonniers, also known as colombiers, were constructed to house the French nobility's pigeons. Dating back to the thirteenth century, thousands of pigeionniers used to exist throughout France. Few remain today. Some survivors are scattered throughout the landscapes of Normandy and Brittany.

The survival of these pigeonniers across the centuries reverberates with me: their early randomness and lack of social significance; their rise as subsequent symbols of prosperity and domain as the rights of the nobility superceded those of their serfs; and their ensuing neglect I have discovered them in their final phase of existence, that of beautiful, useless, and sometimes forlorn structures. Many will soon disappear entirely, as have the worlds they represent: a composite of fantastical beliefs, medieval art and tapestries; of scientific discoveries; and of power inequity and political revolutions.

Pigeonniers usually stand as silent, abandoned dwellings hidden away in the countryside. They feel haunted by their rich histories. At the same time, pigeonniers are very inviting, and some are still inhabited by a few pigeons. These structures retain, too, some of the sweetness of their former occupants, of the characteristics of these birds - their gentleness, loyalty, nesting, and social instincts, and ability to hone in on home.

These buildings were framed long before I ever found them, by their period, their usage and their placement in nature. They are artifacts of their time, trapped by outliving their usefulness. As I have learned about their history and of their demise, it has compelled me to attempt to reveal fragments of their nature.

Their decline has touched me as it embodies the loss we all may experience through life changes, decay, and the death of loved ones. The pigeonniers' survival represents the continuity of objects long after their builders have gone, reflecting our shared history. I find this continuity contains a measure of reassurance."

Sunday [every day] book love

Images from here, here, here.

Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction

Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction (wonderful artist, wonderful exhibition, wonderful short docu).

Moderna museet (Modern Museum Stockholm + Modern Museum Malmö) has some great videos, talks, shorts, interviews here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ModernaMuseetVideos

[a serene] Book of Frustration.

[a serene] Book of Frustration. Sara Elgerot, 2013. Unpaged, illustrated throughout, 42cm uncurled.

Book description:

"I made a book out of frustration; it became serene."

Materials:
Scrap paper (trimmed-off paper from other book), recycled plastic ('handles' from household packaging), recycled plastic ties (from consumer packaging).

Other//Colours Of A Day.

Other//Colours Of A Day. A book by Sara Elgerot for 'An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street', 2013. Unpaged, illustrated throughout, 21x13cm. Signed and numbered. Edition of 3 books (+1 artist copy). -->> better photos to come.

This book was made for 'An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street' - a project initiated by Beau Beausoleil (USA) and co-curated by Sarah Bodman (UK). Links: here and here.

I've been very moved by this project and its intent, and am very happy to be part of it.


Book description:

" “I was born in Sweden of Swedish parents. Sweden has not had or been in war since 1814. It is not the same. I've lived most of my adult life in the UK. I lived in London on 7/7/2005, very near to where the bombs went off. Then life moved on. It is not the same.

I knew Baghdad only from history lessons and books. I knew its book market from “We Came To Baghdad” and a documentary which chronicled Agatha Christie's life in Mesopotamia and talked at length of Baghdad’s bookstalls and book market. 'One day', I thought, 'one day I will visit'. Then I knew Baghdad from a war we marched against, terror that doesn't stop. Years, a decade, later it hasn't stopped. It is not the same.

I wanted to make a book for transformation, with one wish: May all beings know and live in peace.”

The book was inspired by transformation and the phrase “The River Turned Black with Ink”. It was made by taking newspaper photographs of the destruction on and of Al-Mutanabbi Street treating them with water, painting with the water on the paper until all the colours had emerged and blended together. Cut up and assembled into books they have turned into 'other'."


Materials & Technique:
Newspaper photographs printed on paper, treated with and painted on with water. Scanned in and printed out unaltered. Gathered, folded, cut and assembled. Cover: ancient Baghdad map printed on paper and treated with water. Hand-bound with white and coloured thread.


Edition of three copies, which is donated to the project (+one artist copy). All copies are made up of different parts of the original sheets, which means each copy is different. Each copy is also bound with different coloured (exposed) threads.

One copy of 'Other//Colours Of A Day' will be donated to the Iraq National Library in Baghdad, whereas the other two copies will be part of touring exhibitions for the next few years in conjunction with the 'Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project'.

Skogen.

Skogen. By Robert Adams. Yale University Press, 2012. 48pp., illustrated throughout, 9,75x11". Images from here.

Book description:

" 'Skogen' is the Swedish word for forest, and while the dense woods featured in Robert Adams's most recent series of photographs grow near his home in Oregon, the pictures evoke a wild utopia, and convey a hushed, primeval awe.

In this volume, the latest to document Adams's ongoing quest to find form amid the chaos of nature, shadows predominate, tempered by an ambiguous light that is unique to the Pacific Northwest.

'Skogen' features forty-six previously unpublished images, a body of work that is among the most pictorially complex of Adams's distinguished career. Also included are an introduction by the artist and a poem by the acclaimed poet Denise Levertov. This pairing is meaningful; as Michael Fried wrote in Bookforum, 'Adams's artistic ideal...has much in common with that of a certain sort of lyric poem, one that similarly has not the slightest room for carelessness of any sort'."

Today in 1890

Swedish Worker's movement/Swedish Labour movement, first of May demonstration in 1890, Sundsvall, Sweden - source for photograph.

"8 timmars arbete, 8 timmars frihet, 8 timmars hvila" - 8 hours work, 8 hours freedom, 8 hours rest.

Today I don't know // A day of not knowing are days without knowing

Today I don't know - Photo on 29-04-2013 at 10.21 #2.

Taeyoon Choi sent me three of David Horvitz's photographs with some instructions (>>"My friend David Horvitz gave me couple hundreds of his photographs without specific instruction. I'm trying to send them to strangers and friends around the world. [...]")

My hair was like that for many years, and my mouth is kind of like that, and for some time now I don't know... I will take pictures until I know - or until (for now) I've stopped thinking of not knowing.

Sam Cooke/A Change Is Gonna Come

Sam Cooke: A Change Is Gonna Come

Couldn't find a live performance, but a still of Sam Cooke reading is a pretty stellar second alternative in my book...

Wave Music.

Wave Music. By Clifford Ross. Introduction by Arthur C. Danto, interview by A.M. Homes. Blind Spot Book/Aperture, 2005. 144 pp., illustrated throughout, 14x11". Images from here.

Book description:

" 'Wave Music' by photographer Clifford Ross, opens with explosive images of stormy seas and skies - photographs taken on the edge of hurricanes.
 This series presents gorgeous, formalist slices of nature at her most tempestuous and romantic.

As 'Wave Music' progresses, however, the focus tightens with increasing obsession on the processes and materials of the photographic medium.

The 'Hurricane' series is followed by 'Horizons', classically composed images of sky and quiet surf, and finally, by images of pure photographic grain. The 'Grain' pictures are pure abstractions-tonal fields of grey. Each 'Grain' image echoes the tones seen in the previous two series and addresses the very stuff of black-and-white photography itself.

In 'Wave Music', Clifford Ross provides an incredible, heuristic journey, from the ecstatic formalism of ocean waves to the abstract sublime of pure light. Underlying each of the series and providing a unifying thread, are shifting elements of gesture, composition, and tone. Each of the images is exquisitely reproduced in tritone."

Sea Etchings.

Sea Etchings. By Nicola Dill. Nazraeli Press, 2011. 48 pp., illustrated throughout, 13x16". Limited first printing of 500 copies. Special edition of 25 copies. Images from here.

Book description:

"This gorgeous, limited edition artist's book by Nicola Dill is a 48-page 'installation' of the artist's elegant and meditative photographs of surf grasses.

Unstaged and recorded in-camera, the photographs comprising this series are gestures in patience and time.

The individual pieces leave the narrative aspect of photography behind, focusing on constantly changing structures and lines, preserving on film the temporary etchings created by the surf and sandy shores of the Pacific.

Nicola Dill's photographs have been widely exhibited and published in the United States and in Germany.

'Sea Etchings', her first monograph, is printed in an oversized format on matt Japanese art paper."

Un nuit où je me sentais seule (A night where I felt alone).

Un nuit où je me sentais seule (A night where I felt alone). By Xavier Armange. Éditions MeMo, 2013. 36pp., illustrated throughout, 19,5x19,5cm.

Book description:

"The arrival of a tsunami occurred one night, seen through the prism of three characters in a very graphic landscape, at the same time beautiful, simple and solemn.

A book apart, very minimal but which makes room for emotion and the capacity for resilience which can appear when faced with a natural disaster."

Ton cauchemar (Your Nightmare).

Ton cauchemar (Your Nightmare). By Malika Doray. Éditions MeMo, 2012. 32pp., illustrated throughout, 20,5x14cm.

17 April is ♥.

Book description:

"At night, a little rabbit learns to overcome his fears by appeasing them, 'because a nightmare is just a dream that needs taming'...

A funny and sensitive story with a very endearing nightmare...

This book forms part of a small trilogy with common formats and prices Malika Doray draws fine line characters and plants, by adding stained slides with delicate colours, tints here in pale mauve."

Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes.

Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes. By Ed Panar. Spaces Corners & The Ice Plant, 2013. 24 pp., illustrated throughout, 5x8". Edition of 500 copies. Included with each copy is a signed and numbered archival inkjet print by Ed Panar (3,25x4"/edition of 500). Images from here.

Book description:

" 'Reality seems to have a hole in it, like realizing that you're floating in outer space (which, of course, technically, we are)'. - Timothy Morton

Nothing changes if nothing changes. Or does it? Pick it up. Follow the path. Turn it over. Turn it over. Again. Does it have a beginning or an end? Does anything cross your mind? Take your time."

Wind.

Wind. By Jungjin Lee. Text by Vicki Goldberg and Eugenia Parry. Aperture/Sepia, 2009. 112 pp., illustrated throughout, 10x11". Images from here.

Book description:

" 'Wind' showcases the most recent work of the widely acclaimed and exhibited Korean photographer Jungjin Lee.

Known for her laborious and textured photographic process, Lee brushes liquid emulsion onto the surface of handmade rice paper, endowing her images with a uniquely painterly effect.

'Wind' captures the ethereal quality of the element in a series of landscapes dominated by windswept expanses and atmospherically foreboding cloud formations - panoramas that reveal an adventurous spirit, yet resist casual entry.

Manmade objects, such as a dilapidated school bus or windblown prayer flags, all appear deeply inscribed by an invisible hand that runs through the entire corpus of this volume, leaving evidence of its handiwork on all surfaces.

Lee’s landscapes are imbued with an elemental vastness that strikes us as at once powerful and serene."

Cancellations.

Cancellations. By Thomas Barrow. powerHouse Books, 2012. 108 pp., illustrated throughout, 12x10". Images from here.

Keep coming back to New Topographics...


Book description:

"Thomas Barrow’s 'Cancellations' is a series of photographic prints of desolate spaces - empty lots, construction sites, deserted industrial areas - that all show the presence of mankind without showing a single living human.

Compiled in the 70s and 80s, Barrow’s beautiful sepia-toned images show their age in their sheer physicality. These are clearly prints, not digital files, evidence of which can be seen in their specked and aged surfaces.

And they call further attention to the hands-on process of silver gelatin photography through marks, often an X across the image, carved by Barrow directly onto the negative.

Widely exhibited since its compilation, 'Cancellations'' will see print for the first time in the form of a beautifully produced artist’s book.

At once both a mordant social commentary on the built environment of the American west, and linked to the process art movement because of the distressed and defaced nature of the prints, this work calls attention to the photographic negative and the photo print as object - an important subversion in a medium often utilized for its subtle ability to clinically remove any evidence of process from its product, and in the digital age rapidly losing its ties to the physical world."

Glad Påsk & Happy Easter!

Vintage Easter cards.

'Bright Easter sunshine
And clear skies of blue
Wish all things you wish for
Is what I wish you'

Happy Easter! Hope it's a wonderful time with family...

The Dressing Gown Month.

The Dressing Gown Month. By Dionisia Tzavalas. Nobrow Small Press, 2012. 16pp., illustrated throughout, 14,8x21cm. Limited edition of 50.

Book description:

"Dionisia Tzavalas, a recent graduate of the Kingston Illsutration BA, has created a beautiful book detailing snippets of life in the urban sprawl of her native South East London.

Her images are full of tension and loneliness and although somewhat brutal in their depictions of human relationships they show a wry humour and even a tenderness which is what makes this book so pleasing.

Screenprinted by hand in black ink on white paper, this edition is of only 50 copies signed and numbered by Dionisia herself. The book all also features an unfolding dust jacket."