Book of the Day Posted Feb 04, 2023

Book of the day > Stephen Shore Topographies: Aerial Surveys of the American Landscape

Topographies: Aerial Surveys of the American Landscape presents the latest body of work from Stephen Shore: a series of photographs shot by drone from 2020 onwards, which reveal in arresting detail the interplay of natural and man-made landscapes in Montana, North Carolina, New York, and beyond.
In this new body of work, Shore revisits the original ambitions of the renowned 1975 exhibition ‘New Topographics’, using a new aerial viewpoint to consider afresh the concerns of the movement – the objective, the commonplace, and the relationship of the natural and man-made in the American landscape – reflecting on how these might be applied in the twenty-first century.
As much as exploring the formal possibilities of the aerial photograph, Topographies displays a glorious dedication to detail and surprise, in which the slightest bend of a river or turn of a shadow uncovers the textures and colours of America’s urban and suburban landscapes, all investigated with Shore’s signature rigour.
Purchase here
Events Posted Jan 24, 2023

Black Mass + LAXART at Arcana

We are excited to announce an in person discussion between LAXART's director Hamza Walker and Yusuf Hassan and Kwamé Sorrell of BlackMass Publishing. This Saturday, January 28th, 4pm.

Founded by Yusuf Hassan in 2019, BlackMass Publishing is a New York-based collective and independent press. At once a structure of coherent units and a collection of disjointed parts, BlackMass invokes an aggregate of Blackness, of matter in resistance. Combining archival photographs and found print material with poetry and jazz music, BlackMass grapples with the blurred lines and idiosyncrasies which make up the collective improvisation of African diasporic culture.

BlackMass have publications included in the permanent book collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, RAW Material Company, Dakar, Center for Book Arts, New York, The Thomas J. Watson Library, New York, The Whitney Museum Library, New York, The Houghton Library, Cambridge, The Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, New York, The New York Public Library, and The Evergreen State College, Washington.

Their discussion will be held at Arcana Books in Culver City on January 28th at 4pm. We look forward to seeing you there!

Miscellany Posted Jan 20, 2023

Please help Gusmano

If you are able to, please consider a contribution to help our friend Gusmano Cesaretti. Gusmano is a fabulous artist and could use your support in any amount to help him keep his studio.
 
You can read more about Gusmano and make a contribution on go fund me here.
 
Thank you.

 

 

Events Posted Jan 04, 2023

Book SIgning & DIscussion 1/14/22 > LAWRENCE WESCHLER + STEPHEN BERKMAN: A TROVE OF ZOHARS

 
We are delighted to invite you to a book signing for Lawrence Weschler's brand new Hat & Beard publication, A Trove of Zohars. For the event Mr. Weschler will be joined by photographer and early-photographic process historian Stephen Berkman for a discussion about the book and the shrouded-in-mystery Zohar Studios. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy, please place your order here, or call 310-458-1499.
 
"So Lawrence Weschler was minding his own business, as all his stories begin, when he got a call from Gravity Goldberg (her real name!) who introduced herself as the Director of Public Programs and Visitor Experience at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. She was calling, she told him, to apprise him of an upcoming show - an inaugural exhibition, that is, of a recently uncovered trove of work by Shimmel Zohar, a mid-19th-century Lithuanian immigrant photographer. A contemporary of Mathew Brady, Zohar had chronicled the Jewish immigrant community of the Lower East Side of 1860s - 1870s Manhattan in unparalleled detail, compiling a complete inventory of professions and types. Or not. There was, she suggested, some slippage in the whole story, and they were trying to find someone who might be willing to investigate things, and they were wondering, might he be interested?
Thus begins an antic tale of investigative perplex and vertiginous inquiry, as Weschler tracks down Stephen Berkman, the wet-collodion devotee who claims to have discovered the trove in question, but it’s a long and loopy story. And indeed, Weschler’s account evolves into the fourth volume of his ongoing “Chronicles of Slippage” series, doing for the early history of photography and the long heritance of Judaism what the series’ first volume, the Pulitzer-shortlisted Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, once did for the history of museums and the phenomenology of marvel.
And that’s just the half of it, for the main text sprouts a veritable delirium of digressive footnotes (taking up more than half the book), constituting what may be the closest we are going to ever get by way of memoir from this confounding and beloved writer."
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Book of the Day Posted Dec 19, 2022

Book of the Day > Todd Hido 2023 Calendar from Deadbeat Club

Twelve months of Hido! The year ahead looks full of promise and beauty and peaceful moments.

Our pals at the Deadbeat Club called upon "friend and photo-lord Todd Hido to bring immaculate vibes for the annual Deadbeat Club Calendar.

Here's to less noise, more joys in 2023 and beyond. Happy new year, everyone... we did it!
 
Book of the Day Posted Dec 15, 2022

Book of the day > Bruce Weber - All-American XXII: That Towering Feeling

"Consider the sky on a new moon night; gaze out at horizon by the sea as the waves roll in. That “towering feeling” explored in this year’s edition of Bruce Weber’s All-American journal can be experienced in such moments—when the immensity and inscrutability of human emotion intersect with the practical vagaries of life on this fragile earth.

Time is a central presence in this 22nd edition. A rich, poignant photo essay by Weber lies at the heart of the issue—a reunion with Aungelique Patton-James, a poet he met while working in Detroit sixteen years ago. Equal part reminisce and reverie, this story presents a new, unexpected take on central themes of Weber’s oeuvre: the tension between fantasy and reality, the importance of family, the seduction of romance and the joys of juxtaposition—in this case Aungelique with the beguiling actress and model Tina Kunakey from Biarritz.

The hopeful pursuit of Dr. Denise Herzing, a marine biologist who has spent the better part of her career trying to crack the language to dolphins, is beautifully documented by the photographer Tanya Burnett. An intimate view of Dr. Paul Farmer, the celebrated co-founder of Partners in Health and tireless advocate for the poor, is shared by the photographer and writer Behna Gardner, who traveled with him extensively. And Bruce Weber shares a deeply personal tribute to Alden Powers, a young musician and student who he photographed for many years.

All-American XXII: That Towering Feeling includes lyrics by Geoff Stephens and Les Reed and a suite of poems by William Stafford."
 
Book of the Day Posted Dec 14, 2022

Book of the day > Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen

"Part cookbook. Part manifesto. Created with big Bronx energy, Black Power Kitchen combines 75 mostly plant-based, layered-with-flavor recipes with immersive storytelling, diverse voices, and striking images and photographs that celebrate Black food and Black culture, and inspire larger conversations about race, history, food inequality, and how eating well can be a pathway to personal freedom and self-empowerment.
 
Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen is the first book from the Bronx-based culinary collective, and it does for the cookbook what Ghetto Gastro has been doing for the food world in general—disrupt, expand, reinvent, and stamp it with their unique point of view. Ghetto Gastro sits at the intersection of food, music, fashion, visual arts, and social activism. They’ve partnered with Nike and Beats by Dre, designed cookware sold through Williams-Sonoma and Target, and won a Future of Gastronomy award from the World’s 50 Best.
 
Now they bring their multidisciplinary approach to a cookbook, with nourishing recipes that are layered with waves of crunch, heat, flavor, and umami. They are born of the authors’ cultural heritage and travels—from riffs on family dishes like Strong Back Stew and memories of Uptown with Red Velvet Cake to neighborhood icons like Triboro Tres Leches and Chopped Stease (their take on the classic bodega chopped cheese) to recipes redolent of the African diaspora like Banana Leaf Fish and King Jaffe Jollof. All made with a sense of swag. "
 
Book of the Day Posted Dec 12, 2022

Book of the day > Tove Jansson by Paul Gravett

This book provides fresh insight into and a deep appreciation of the life and art of Tove Jansson, one of the most original, influential, and perennially enjoyed illustrators of the twentieth century. In this volume Paul Gravett examines Jansson’s highly successful Moomin books, as well as her interpretations of classics such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
 
Born in Helsinki among Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority, Jansson was brought up with a love for making art and stories in a supportive, artistic family. Her first illustrated tales were published when she was fourteen years old and she went on to draw humorous and political cartoons as well as striking front covers for the satirical magazine Garm, in response to events in World War II. As she developed from art student to painter and muralist, and from bohemian to lesbian, she also created her Moomin world, which appeared in her first children’s book in 1945 and then in newspaper strips. Beyond this imaginative achievement, Jansson also wrote many novels, documented here along with personal commentaries from her own writings.
 
A title in The Illustrators series, which celebrates illustration as an art form, Tove Jansson offers a visually rich view into the life and work of this much-loved artist and writer.

Purchase here.
 

 

Book of the Day Posted Dec 11, 2022

Book of the Day > Joan Didion: What She Means

An exploration of the visual corollary to Didion’s life and work and the feeling that each generates in her admirers, detractors and critics—including artists from Helen Lundeberg to Diane Arbus, Betye Saar to Maren Hassinger, Vija Celmins and Andy Warhol
In Joan Didion: What She Means, the writer and curator Hilton Als creates a mosaic that explores Didion's life and work and the feeling each generates in her admirers, detractors and critics.
Arranged chronologically, the book highlights Didion's fascination with the two coasts that made her. As a Westerner transplanted to New York, Didion was able to look at her native land, its mores and fixed rules of behavior, with the loving and critical eyes of a daughter who got out and went back. (Didion and her late husband moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1964, where they worked as highly successful screenwriters, producing scripts for 1971's The Panic in Needle Park and 1976's A Star Is Born, among other works, before returning to New York 20 years later.) And from her New York perch, Didion was able to observe the political scene more closely, writing trenchant pieces about Clinton, El Salvador and most searingly the Central Park Five. The book includes more than 50 artists ranging from Brice Marden and Ed Ruscha to Betye Saar, Vija Clemins and many others, with works in all mediums including painting, ephemera, photography, sculpture, video and film. Also included are three previously uncollected texts by Didion: “In Praise of Unhung Wreaths and Love” (1969); a much-excerpted 1975 commencement address at UC Riverside; and “The Year of Hoping for Stage Magic” (2007).
 

 

Book of the Day Posted Dec 10, 2022

Book of the day > William Eggleston: The Outlands: Selected Works

A selection of nearly one hundred previously unseen images from the 1960s and 1970s by the pioneer of color photography, William Eggleston.
The Outlands, a series of photographs taken by Eggleston between 1969 and 1974, establishes the groundbreaking visual themes and lexicon that the artist would continue to develop for decades to come. The work offers a journey through the mythic and evolving American South, seen through the artist’s lens: vibrant colors and a profound sense of nostalgia echo throughout Eggleston’s breathtaking oeuvre. His motifs of signage, cars, and roadside scenes create an iconography of American vistas that inspired a generation of photographers. With its in-depth selection of unforgettable images—a wood-paneled station wagon, doors flung open, parked in an expansive rural setting; the artist’s grandmother in the moody interior of their family’s Sumner, Mississippi home—The Outlands is emblematic of Eggleston’s dynamic, experimental practice. The breadth of work reenergizes his iconic landscapes and forms a new perspective of the American South in transition.
Accompanying the ninety brilliant Kodachrome images and details, a literary, fictional text by the critically acclaimed author Rachel Kushner imagines a story of hitchhikers trekking through the Deep South. New scholarship by Robert Slifkin reframes the art-historical significance of Eggleston’s oeuvre, proposing affinities with work by Marcel Duchamp, Dan Graham, Jasper Johns, and Robert Smithson. A foreword by William Eggleston III offers important insights into the process of selecting and sequencing this series of images. 
 

 

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