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Deadline. By Will Steacy.
b. frank books, 2015.

Deadline

Reviewed by Blake Andrews

Deadline
Photographs by Will Steacy
b. frank books, Zurich, 2015. In English. 80 pp., 677 four-color color and black & white Illustrations. Newspaper formatting. Loose Leaf., 11x22".

The boom-bust cycle is a familiar phenomenon of capitalism. Whether it's gold, timber, housing, or Cabbage Patch Kids, it's always the same bubble. An industry becomes successful, gradually attracts investment and speculators, then quickly crashes as the economy shifts to other sectors, usually leaving a trail of societal destruction as jobs, families, and communities are left in the lurch. That's when the photographers begin circling above.

Until recently not many would've guessed that the newspaper business was a boom-bust industry. Newspapers? Newspapers didn't crash, they reported the crash. They observed from the sidelines, firmly planted on civic bedrock. Looking back on the newspaper industry now — or what's left of it — that outlook seems naive. The cause and effect is clear in hindsight — the Internet tsunami has hopelessly scrambled the physical trades, especially media. But during journalism's heyday just a few short decades ago, who woulda thunk it? Newspapers busted? Yup, it's true. Print journalism has cratered and it's probably never coming back.

Whether this is just another economic wrinkle or a cultural shift with wider ramifications will probably depend on your point of view. If you're a macroeconomist or curious observer, it's the former. If, however, you come from five generations of journalists, the shift is likely to assume a seismic quality. Enter Will Steacy, photographer by trade, journalist by heritage. His father was a newsman (an editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer), along with his grandfather, as was his great-grandfather and so on, back to great great-great-grandfather Hyram Young, proud founder of a daily paper in 1876. Steacy escaped the cycle, sort of, pursuing a profession outside of newspapers, but it remained in his blood.

Deadline. By Will Steacy. b. frank books, 2015.

When The Philadelphia Inquirer began to founder in the early years of the millennium, Steacy smelled a photo essay. Over the course of roughly four years, May of 2009 to February of 2013, he photographed the newsroom and printing facilities of the once proud Inquirer with unrestricted access. The resulting publication Deadline is a project of mammoth scope and ambition.

Although it contains Steacy's photo essay, and will be sold in photobook stores and marketed to the photobook community, this isn't a traditional photobook. Instead it's a full-sized newspaper, as thick as any Sunday edition. Will Steacy tops the masthead, but like any paper Deadline is a collaborative effort, incorporating 70 original essays spread across five sections, and wide contributions from the Inquirer staff, including Will's father Tom.

Deadline. By Will Steacy. b. frank books, 2015.

But there's more. Deadline was printed using The Inquirer press facility. Every part of the production is modeled on The Inquirer, from layout to typeface to banner ads to paper type. The very structure of the old Inquirer building, with clock tower crowning a Deco mini-skyscraper of blank offices, seems to portend a bygone era, and it's nicely captured in a Steacy portrait heading section E. I'm old fashioned enough to still read a print newspaper every morning, and Deadline is a perfect facsimile. The paper spreads between the hands over a kitchen table, sections tumbling loosely, rubbing ink smudges on the fingers. The pages crinkle audibly just like normal newsprint. The mimicry is so faithful that it borders on parody. But Deadline is nothing to laugh about. The Inquirer's demise is a sorry tale. If you need a primer, Deadline recounts the story section by section: The Golden Age, Deadline, That's The Press Baby, and Farewell, Tower Of Truth. Altogether it's the history of The Inquirer's rise and fall, extended in journalistic fashion to the entire industry.

Tucked in the center is Section C: When Newspapers Were A Family Business. Through old photos, news clips, journal entries, and articles, Steacy scrapbooks together his family's long run in journalism. He titles a short essay "Ink In My Blood." The section's lead caption? "A tradition handed down from father to son for more than a century comes to a painful end." We get the picture: it's personal. Family history might've come across as sappy nostalgia in lesser hands. But Steacy's keen edit has crafted a moving portrayal, told mostly in images, all the way to the point his father was laid off. This is the only section of Deadline that does not feature Steacy's photojournalism, and so it has a slightly different flavor than the others. It's not the exposé you'd find in a typical paper. Nevertheless it serves as Deadline's emotional core.

Deadline. By Will Steacy. b. frank books, 2015.

Steacy's passion comes through in the other sections as well, sometimes assuming a messianic tone. He's named Deadline's publisher b.frank books, the guise of an imprint speaking truth to power? "The voice of the people will never be silenced," he exclaims in one piece, words more suitable for a protest placard than a newspaper. Steacy intends Deadline as civic lesson and moral fable. If he has crossed the line from reporter to advocacy, that can be excused in the interest of artistic license, because, after all, Deadline is not an actual newspaper. But a reader at emotional remove might wonder at all the fuss. Industries shift. Screens replace print. Society moves on. In this context, is the fierce defense of newspapers simply knee-jerk nostalgia? For me it's not clear. In any case, one facet of the old era has been abdicated in the digital age: proofreading staff. Deadline is marred by several careless typos on the first page alone.

Deadline. By Will Steacy. b. frank books, 2015.

I wrote earlier that Deadline is not a traditional photobook, and that's true. But it is a print vehicle for Steacy's photographs, so let me spend a moment on the photos. Steacy spent four years shooting this project and that dedication is clearly reflected in the imagery. They cover all gamuts of The Inquirer's production, shot in many styles from portrait to office scenes to sequential series. The photos display the quiet, well lit, and clean framing typical of large format photography, and it's a shame the reproductions can't match the content. Printed large on a gallery wall I'm guessing these images would provide plenty to dawdle over. But like any newspaper photograph, when they are shrunken to a 5" halftone on newsprint the quality shifts, not just the reproduction quality, but the photographic essence. The photos lose some oomph as fine art. This may be a conscious strategy by Steacy, to subsume his photographs to the wider story. Any photojournalist can relate. Still, it seems a shame to toss so much detailed content aside like yesterday's recycled newspaper.

Maybe some of these issues will be addressed in the sequel. According to Steacy's website, Deadline is the first publication in a two-part series. I'm curious to see the next phase, because part one is great. Unlike most old newspapers, Deadline is worth saving.—BLAKE ANDREWS

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BLAKE ANDREWS is a photographer based in Eugene, OR. He writes about photography at blakeandrews.blogspot.com.

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photo-eye's Nudes/Human Form Newsletter features books that explore the human form in a variety of ways. Sign up for the Nudes/Human Form Newsletter here.

FEATURED BOOK

Pillow Book "Erotos"— Limited Edition
Photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki

The title Erotos is a term that Nobuyoshi Araki coined to express an image in which "Eros" and "Thanatos" harmoniously blend together. For these ambitiously provocative photographs, Araki used a macro lens and ring strobe flash to shoot his subjects at the closest possible range, which is probably his ultimate interpretation of "still life."

The Pillow Book is a bound collection of 10 platinum prints bound in ultra-soft genuine leather. An edition size of 50, each book contains the artist's signature, handwritten edition number and an original signed color Polaroid print.

To view the signed Polaroid prints inquire with Christopher J Johnson via email at christopher@photoeye.com or call 1-505-988-5152 ext. 113

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PRE-ORDER DEADLINE

Snow and Rose & other tales — SIGNED
Photographs by Marianna Rothen

“In the lonely fortress of her domestic home, life is unbearable.” With those dramatic words, the viewer is invited into the world created by Marianna Rothen, a fictional account of women who left the world of men behind and moved to a remote and peaceful place to live amongst themselves. Rothen’s photographs are staged like homages to the films of Antonioni, Bergman or Godard; they seem like film stills and intrigue the viewer to search for and identify the references.

Hardcover, linen bound with a photograph tipped-in and an elastic band.

photo-eye is taking pre-orders for signed copies of Snow and Rose & other tales. If our supplier runs out, orders will be fulfilled in the order in which they are received. The cutoff time for ordering in our shipment is Monday, November 9th at 12:00 PM MDT.

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NEW ARRIVALS

All I Ever Wanted — SIGNED
Photographs by Hester Scheurwater

This uniquely designed photobook is book of books divided into 9 discrete sections. Printed on red card stock, the exterior booklet features an essay by Patrick Remy with 9 larger booklets affixed in between the pages. Signed and numbered in a limited edition of 500 copies.

"Do you keep a diary?
My images are a visual diary about my sexual power, about fantasies as a sex object. This diary is my 'martial' response, my shooting back in reaction to the fake pornification of the media images. I shoot back with wild sexual power."— from the interivew with Scheurwater in European Photography No. 90

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Entartete
Photographs and text by Rita Lino

Nudity and nakedness as confessional, as an admission of vulnerability, not for the sake of titillation; Lino explores the possibilities of her body with an uninhibited sexuality and a playful, stylised shamelessness.

Entartete (German for Degenerate) is the result of more than 10 years of auto-portraiture by the emerging Portuguese photographer, Rita Lino. A large series of experimental photographs of psychological or emotional moments taken primarily for the purpose of introspection and self-analysis presented in a limited edition quarter-bound hardback.

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TINTYPE

Attic Room
Tintype by Keith Carter
8 x 10 inches, Edition of 15

From Carter's latest series Ghostland, this tintype is ethereal and highly collectible.

Attic Room is offered through photo-eye Gallery and through our Nudes/Human Form Newsletter. It is not listed within the portfolio online. $1200 unframed or $1325 framed by the artist.

Pizza Party and Modele Feminin (both featured in previous Nudes/Human Form Newsletters) are still available and also have a price of $1200 unframed or $1325 framed by the artist.

For more information or to purchase prints please contact Gallery Director Anne Kelly at 505-988-5152 ext. 121 or anne@photoeye.com

View past editions of the Nudes/Human Form Newsletter

YU: The Lost Country. By Dragana Jurišić.
Oonagh Young Gallery, 2015.

YU: The Lost Country

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

YU: The Lost Country
Photographs by Dragana Jurišić.
Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, 2015. In English. 112 pp., 48 four-color illustrations, 5x8¼".

Dragana Jurišić was only sixteen years old when her family’s apartment burned down, a casualty of the devastating war that led to the dissolution of her birthplace: Yugoslavia. This event proved formative for Jurišić. Her father — who had been a passionate amateur photographer — lost thousands of negatives and prints and never photographed again. She explains, “[w]here he stopped, I started. The act of photographing, of looking at the world through the camera lens, helped provide a semblance of control over an otherwise unpredictable world.”

YU: The Lost Country. By Dragana Jurišić. Oonagh Young Gallery, 2015.

More than twenty years after the war, Jurišić returned to the Balkans — her camera in hand — to the separate countries that previously formed Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Her pilgrimage was integrally linked to Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), British writer Rebecca West’s two-volume tome examining the complexities of Yugoslavia; decades later, readers marvel at her prophetic tone which seemed to anticipate the disintegration of this young country. Jurišić faithfully retraced West’s itinerary, providing structure for a project that might otherwise have seemed insurmountable. Beyond this practical framework, she felt a profound solidarity with West, another woman afflicted by a feeling of displacement, isolation, and alienation… of never quite belonging. Just as West relied on writing as a way of remembering, to preserve her memories, Jurišić turned to photography to try and give tangible shape to her recollections.

YU: The Lost Country. By Dragana Jurišić. Oonagh Young Gallery, 2015.

Throughout the book, Jurišić pairs her pictures and her own observations with passages from West’s book. In one of the first images, two young adults dressed in archaic outfits stand on a street in Zagreb, Croatia; the scene feels more theatrical than reality based. Jurišić reinforces this disconnect, writing, “everything is so familiar but very distant. It feels like I have been given a new pair of eyes to see that things are not as one remembers.” In addition to places she distinctly recalled, Jurišić also traveled to locations specifically mentioned in West’s prose. Here, we experience disjuncture again, between West’s account and an often darker, more melancholic impression from Jurišić. She can neither locate her memories in this landscape and its people, nor those in those described on the pages of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

YU: The Lost Country. By Dragana Jurišić. Oonagh Young Gallery, 2015.

This body of work is quiet and subtle; Jurišić’s isn’t a heavy-handed approach. Even the sporadic images insinuating decay and violence maintain a muted tone. A sense of nostalgia and longing characterize the pictures she makes of the landscape and people. This visual language, together with her written words, suggests the palpable incongruence of her memories from childhood and experience decades later. Her words convey the frustration of recognizing little of her past — and West’s written record — in these places. The intermittent use of images of entanglement and tethered objects serve as a poetic metaphor for Jurišić’s experience — a forced connection that she cannot escape or take control of. It is heartbreaking.

YU: The Lost Country. By Dragana Jurišić. Oonagh Young Gallery, 2015.

The weaving together of text and images coupled with the small scale of YU: The Lost Country give a diaristic aesthetic to the publication. Through the book, we are privy to an intimate, private world. In this way, the book form is perfectly suited to the content and tenor of this work. I would be interested to see how Jurišić would preserve and translate this experience into an exhibition.

YU: The Lost Country. By Dragana Jurišić. Oonagh Young Gallery, 2015.

With Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, West aimed "to show the past side by side with the present it created." In YU: The Lost Country, Jurišić realizes the challenge — even impossibility — of this kind of endeavor for herself, of detecting her past, her Yugoslavia, within the current landscape. She explains, “I was following a ghost on her travels through a country that had disappeared.” To understand this practically is one thing. Jurišić discovers that memory is a narrative we create, and one that must be painfully re-created or “corrected” from time to time.—ALLIE HAEUSSLEIN

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ALLIE HAEUSSLEIN is the Associate Director at Pier 24 Photography, an exhibition space dedicated to the presentation of photography. Her writing has appeared in publications including American Suburb X, Art Practical, and DailyServing.

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The Notion of Family. By LaToya Ruby Frazier.
Aperture, 2015.

This week's Book of the Week pick comes from Adrian Octavius Walker who has selected The Notion of Family by LaToya Ruby Frazier from Aperture.

"A sewer. A drain. A place for throwing waste. Like W.E.B Du Bois, I too was born by a golden river, in the shadows of two great hills.—LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier gives her audience a first hand glance into the world and ways in which she was raised. Through her word choice and use of photography, Frazier allows the reader to emotionally connect with her story of growing up in Braddock, Pennsylvania.

The first photo shown of young Frazier exposes a very vulnerable young woman who is experiencing many struggles, yet is very eager to tell the story of the numerous hardships endured by her family, community, and self.

Our upbringing molds us into the people we become, and Frazier uncovers her family in a very delicate, yet intriguing style. Being raised mostly by Grandma Ruby and Mother Frazier, she was taught things like black women should never cry and should always hold their own, regardless of what they’re going through. Frazier uses careful wording and imagery to describe the personalities of the women in her life. Although not much is said, by the end of the book the reader will feel as if he or she truly knows Grandma Ruby and Mother Frazier.

Overall, Frazier is fascinatingly successful at going into detail without going into detail. I believe she leaves her story somewhat open-ended to allow the reader room to connect in a magnitude of different ways through her photography. While going through the book, the reader is able to interpret the photos as they please, which, in return, allows the audience to make the story what they want. This is a compelling approach that leaves her story open to a variety of different people. She makes her book accessible to anyone who is willing to open up the cover.

Frazier does an incredible job relating to those with similar lifestyles and making a beautiful story for the rest of the world to see. Growing up in north city St. Louis, I experienced what it was like to not have access to things like a good school system or good enough jobs or good healthcare. Frazier uses her photographic voice to create an experience for her audience of what it’s like to live in a way unknown to most.

After reading the book I researched Frazier and came across her Ted Talk, which sums up The Notion Of Family. An A+ read that will break you down emotionally, but her story will uplift you and inspire you to learn more about where you come from and the community you were raised in."—Adrian Octavius Walker

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The Notion of Family. By LaToya Ruby Frazier. Aperture, 2015.

Adrian Octavius Walker: Photographer, born and raised in St. Louis, Mo. My passion is creating new experiences by connecting people, brands, and innovative concepts in dynamic ways. Much of my work has been focused on giving creative individuals the support, guidance, and exposure they need to reach their goals.
http://www.adrianowalker.com

View books by Adrian Octavius Walker at photo-eye Bookstore

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Installation view of Raymond Meeks photographs at photo-eye Gallery

Two Landscapes: England & Peru, featuring photographs by Edward Ranney, runs at photo-eye Gallery through December 5th, 2015. Read the interview with Ranney about the exhibition here. In addition to Ranney's bodies of work, photo-eye Gallery is also showing a selection of prints from Raymond Meeks — who recently selected Ron Jude's Lago Book of the Week. The three works currently installed hail from two separate bodies of work, Orchard and A Clearing, represent Meeks' hushed dreamlike aesthetic pregnant with implied narrative.

Maryellen, a Gathering, 2005 — © Raymond Meeks

When asked to describe his photographic practice, Raymond Meeks has answered:

"I photograph in response to my immediate surroundings: landscapes that I walk or drive past nearly every day, and my family and the ever familiar backyard. There is no real intent other than to make a record of time and place."

While absolutely true, Meeks' images are not strict documents of events; they are imbued with a sense of distance, story, and nostalgia I find absolutely compelling. Raymond Meeks has been on of my favorite photographers since coming across a copy of his monograph Sound of Summer Running in 2004 while living in Maine, long before working for photo-eye Gallery. My response to Meeks' imagery is surprisingly emotional, and has a propensity for being memorial and silent. I wholeheartedly agree with Darius Himes', former photo-eye Booklist Editor, assesment of the work:

"Meeks' photographic images, steeped in warm, lush brown tones and bathed in a nineteenth century light, seem to fall into our laps from a distant era, beyond that of our parents and their fading Kodachromes, and back further yet to an era of Civil War tintypes and twice-a-lifetime portraits."

Untitled, A Clearing, 2005 — © Raymond Meeks

Meeks' images also have a tendency to linger not unlike a melody running through my head, meandering and presenting themselves in the minutiae of my own day. Untitled, A Clearing, 2005 is an excellent example. Now living in New Mexico, I am reminded of this picture twice daily in the passing landscape as I drive between Santa Fe and my home in El Dorado. Sooty and atmospheric, Untitled, A Clearing, 2005 takes on a mountain's monumental form, lending the image a mysterious sense of awe and wonder. The image's subdued pallet, clean lines, and central form seem to transform the mound into a monolith, and in my eyes, elevate the object giving it a near sacred presence.

North Pit and Axel , 2005 — © Raymond Meeks

A Clearingby Raymond Meeks
Published by Nazraeli Press

As objects, the prints are exquisite. Meeks takes a poet's approach to printing, and does not seek to uniformly represent his images but instead adjusts the size and medium to best serve the essence of each individual picture. All three images currently on view at photo-eye Gallery are printed on continuous tone film, a delicate yet rich opaque silver gelatin material lending each image its unique creamy tone, luminosity, and smooth texture.

Untitled, A Clearing, 2005 and North Pit and Axel, 2005 can also bee seen in Meeks' 2008 monograph A Clearing published by Nazaraeli Press. While the book is currently sold out, photo-eye Gallery has a few copies of the Limited Edition, which include a silver gelatin print made by the artist.—Lucas Shaffer

View more photographs by Raymond Meeks

View the monograph, A Clearing

For more information or to purchase prints, please contact Gallery Director Anne Kelly at 505.988.5152 x 121 or anne@photoeye.com or Gallery Associate Lucas Shaffer at 505.988.5152 x 114 or lucas@photoeye.com

Gathered Leaves. By Alec Soth.

Mack, 2015.

Gathered Leaves

Reviewed by Colin Pantall

Gathered Leaves
Photographs by Alec Soth.
Mack, London, England, 2015. In English. Unpaged, Clamshell box housing four mini facsimile books (4 vol. set), and 28 large-format postcards., 9x8¾".

Back in 1935, Marcel Duchamp begin constructing his Boite-en-valise, or Box in a suitcase. These boxes contained miniature versions of his work put into a suitcase. They were like portable exhibitions that, if you had a room small enough, you could use to curate a Duchamp exhibition in your own home. He made over 300 of these suitcases and they were all ‘luxury’ editions. In addition to the miniature reproductions of the Urinal, Mustachioed Mona or Nude Descending a Staircase, these would come with something unique. If you’re used to photobook publishing and the rise of the special edition, it all seems incredibly familiar.

If you look at Alec Soth’s latest publication, Gathered Leaves, the familiarity is even more apparent. Gathered Leaves is a collection of four miniature versions of Soth’s stand-out photobooks, Sleeping by the Mississippi, Niagara, Broken Manual, and Songbook (three of which are currently out-of-print). In addition to the books, there’s a collection of 29 postcards that you can curate into your own Soth exhibition.

Gathered Leaves. By Alec Soth. Mack, 2015.

It all comes in a beautiful box covered in a wallpaper detail from one of Soth’s Mississippi pictures. Since they are out of print, the books are the main attraction; a budget way to own books most people could otherwise not afford. Sleeping by the Mississippi is a poetic documentation of Soth’s journey along the mythologies of the Mississippi. Niagara is a depiction of the loved, the loving and the loveless in Niagara, the one-time honeymoon capital of the United States of America. Broken Manual pictures those who have fashioned an escape from modernity in the back hills, and Songbook is a lyrical take on small town habits of small town America done in small town style. It’s all rather lovely.

Gathered Leaves. By Alec Soth. Mack, 2015.

Then there are the postcards. These show a selection of key images from each of the four books. On the back of the cards are pearls of wisdom both from Soth and from others. This lays down Soth’s philosophy to photography and life; a key reason why Soth inspires such deep admiration.

Soth was once asked which photographers are over-rated. His reply was that every photographer who is ‘rated’ is over-rated. Soth is probably honest enough to include himself in that category even though his work is among the most influential of the twenty-first century. What marks Soth out is a reluctance to sit on that reputation, something that he could very easily have done. Instead, he has continued to investigate the photobook form with a combination of serious-minded integrity and wide-eyed curiosity. This curiosity is evident in both his own work and in Little Brown Mushroom, the creative publishing arm that he manages from his Minnesota Headquarters.

Gathered Leaves. By Alec Soth. Mack, 2015.

This curiosity comes across in the postcard quotes where he asks people to look beyond the obvious.

‘When I teach, it seems like every student wants to do some sort of typology. I just want to shake them and tell them to photograph whatever they want. I tell them to pretend that they have a museum in their basement. It is locked, and they are the only person with a key. I tell them to close their eyes and imagine what pictures they see down there. It can be anything, just be honest. Then make those honest.’
Alec Soth, email interview with Aaron Schuman, 2 August 2004

In other postcards he talks about the mythology of narrative photography; the idea that individual photographs do not have a narrative in the fuller literary sense, an idea reprised in this quote:

I long for stories.

They satisfy. Novels and movies satisfy but photographs often leave me feel (sic) like something is missing. I’m trying to work on this.

Gathered Leaves. By Alec Soth. Mack, 2015.

Photobooks can often be unsatisfying but Gathered Leaves isn’t. It’s not really a book but is something that has been worked on to be an object in itself. Ostensibly it’s a catalogue for a traveling exhibition, but really it’s a box of photographic delights that looks great and feels lovely to touch. The four books do look a bit cheap and flimsy (I was expecting bijou little hard-cover books) but the idea is that they can act as sequencing references to the unavailable and out-of-price original books.

Gathered Leaves. By Alec Soth. Mack, 2015.

And the postcards are great and you can put them up on your wall and have your own exhibition. Of course, the sad thing is that very few people will do either of these things. Whenever Soth makes something lovely, it’s sold out in a flash and becomes a relatively inert part of many a bookshelf. The same will undoubtedly happen to this collection of books. At the same time, you get the feeling that the mini-photobook will become a thing, a cheap thing that will make the unavailable suddenly accessible and affordable in the ten dollar sense of the word. And you saw it here first. Marcel Duchamp doesn’t count.—COLIN PANTALL

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COLIN PANTALL is a UK-based writer and photographer. He is a contributing writer for the British Journal of Photography and a Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Wales, Newport. http://colinpantall.blogspot.com

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Please Note: Stock levels for these titles are extremely low. In most cases only one or two copies remain.

Wild Pigeon
By Carolyn Drake
Self-published

"Traveling through China’s far western province with a box of prints, a pair of scissors, a container of glue, colored pencils, and a sketchbook, I asked willing collaborators to draw on, reassemble, and use their own tools on my photographs of the region. I hoped that the new images would bring Uyghur perspectives into the work and facilitate a new kind of dialogue with the people I met—one that was face-to-face and tactile, if mostly without words."—the publisher

Selected as a Best Book of 2014 by:
Melanie McWhorter
Martin Parr
Markus Schaden

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El Porqué De Las Naranjas
By Ricardo Cases
MACK

"At first sight, reality appears chaotic and anarchic. If events have any kind of logic to them, it lies well hidden behind an overlay of banality so thick as to make it invisible. And yet, at certain exceptional moments, life slackens and reveals itself. The automaton allows its innards be glimpsed, and its mechanism becomes momentarily evident as the logic of chaos."—the publisher

Selected as a Best Book of 2014 by:
Colin Pantall
Cristina de Middel

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Typology 1979
By Joachim Brohm
MACK

"Joachim Brohm rose to prominence in the early 1980s, one of the first photographers in Europe to take pictures exclusively in colour, connecting the everyday cultural landscape with the new possibilities of colour photography. This collection titled Typology 1979 is one of his very earliest series, depicting 35 allotment sheds from the Ruhr valley region of Germany, painterly images that are an everyday inventory – of garden structures, of human activity. Influenced by the great American photographers such as William Eggleston and Robert Adams, he also looked to his German contemporaries, Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose ‘typologies’ are heralded in the collection’s title."—the publisher

Selected as a Best Book of 2014 by Jeffrey Ladd

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Gift
By Rinko Kawauchi & Terri Weifenbach
Amana

"Photographers Rinko Kawauchi and Terri Weifenbach met for the first time in Brooklyn five years ago. After corresponding via email for some time, and eventually attaching photographs to those messages, they decided to have a conversation only using their own photographs. More than a year later, these personal picture letters are now the subject of a show at IMA Gallery in Tokyo and this marvellous double book. Flipping through the pages of the mirrored bindings sets each artist’s work opposite that of the other in a captivating progression of delicate and subliminal beauty: small observations and radiant nuances plucked from the respective worldviews of these two unusual talents." —the publisher

Selected as a Best Book of 2014 by Eric Miles

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Cathedrales
By Laurence Aegerter
RVB Books

"The starting point of Laurence Aëgerter’s facsimile Cathédrales, is the 1949 catalogue Cathedrals and churches of France, published by the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Tourism. The artist placed the book by the window in her studio and allowed the incidence of natural light to impact a reproduction of the façade of the Saint-Étienne cathedral in Bourges. She photographed the book every minute during two hours, obtaining 120 photographs of light variations upon this unique image. The play of shadow and light of the Gothic architecture in the orignal photograph, is superimposed by a new shadow that slowly glide on the cathedral and, imperceptibly but irreparably, swallows it up. Aëgerter’s photographs contain thus three stratified layers of times : the 12th century, 1949 and 2012. Cathédrales presents a photographic sequence and as we turn the pages, we are aware of the temporal dimension of this visual exploration, a metaphor of transcience." —the publisher

Selected as a Best Book of 2014 by Ruth van Beek

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Frame. By Mark Cohen.
University of Texas Press, 2015.

New from Univeristy of Texas Press, Frame is the first retrospective from Mark Cohen. Featuring color and black & white images, photographs made in the 1960s through to the present, and pictures taken in Paris, London, Mexico City and his own Wilkes-Barre, Frame is a mishmash of the photographer's work, arranged and sequenced by Cohen himself and reflective of his canny and idiosyncratic vision. In her essay for Frame, Jane Livingston describes Cohen like this:

"Combined with Cohen's innate empathy and complexity of understanding is a slightly transgressive streak, seen in his enjoyment of taking people by surprise. Fundamentally classical as is his approach to photography, he wants to surprise not only his photographic subject but also his viewer. And guiding this quest for little jolts of shock is a thoroughly intentional mind."

Writer and photographer Blake Andrews talked to Cohen about the new book, visual triggers and his recent move from his long-time home of Wilkes-Barre to Philadelphia.

Blake Andrews: How did it come Frame come about?

Mark Cohen: Frame started out as a book about dogs. I have hundreds of pictures of dogs, but then after a conversation with David Hamrick we decided to try to make a much more comprehensive book, one that looks at a thin section of a whole body of work. A retrospective.

Frame. By Mark Cohen. University of Texas Press, 2015.

BA: Are you generally happy with it, or would you change anything?

MC:   It could not have been done better and the introduction that is written by Jane Livingston goes a long way, further than any before, in explaining my work and process.

BA: How would you compare it to your recent book Dark Knees?

MC:   Dark Knees was made very spontaneously as a catalog of a show at Le Bal in Paris in 2012. Xavier Barral made this very modern, but non-standard compact book that covers some of the same space but with many fewer pictures, in a smaller flip book type format.

BA: I understand you sequenced [Frame] yourself. Was there an overriding concept to the flow, or just a rough sense of what followed what? Some of the pairs on facing pages are noticeably matched. But from pair to pair it seems pretty jumbled, and the book itself feels scattered. How intentional was that?

MC:   It is intentionally scattered so as not to try to fix too tight a theory about the work. The first picture of the coal truck and the last picture of the alarmed old guy flashed is intentional and then scattered through are some corresponding pictures that make either formal sense or rebus like sense in a psychological way. It is an autobiographical book. I had no plan when I started taking pictures and still see no complete sense of reason about the wide range of pictures and its possible link to social issues.

BA: Will the dog book happen?

MC:   The dog book seems less interesting now. It would be a very strong and focused book and probably easier to sell but Frame is about me taking pictures of everything.

BA: And what about the Mexico book, which you mentioned at the end of Grim Street?

MC:   I think the Mexico book is happening but these things need a lot of alignment.

Frame. By Mark Cohen. University of Texas Press, 2015.

BA: You say you take pictures of everything, but certain subjects repeat again and again in your photos — cut-off torsos, woolen coats, hand and foot gestures, wires, and probably several other things that escape my notice (dogs?). Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think you set out consciously to shoot those things. Yet you seem drawn to them almost involuntarily, as I think most street photographers react to certain specific visual triggers. Have you thought about what your triggers are and why certain things attract you? Can you explain it in psychology terms? Or some other way?

MC: The idea of visual triggers is very true. Old wool coats, flesh, as grain in a print. The whole sexual display in the street, a set of possibilities. Invasion of personal space but only very fleetingly. But in the whole book there are outliers, strange pictures that are not part of the 'regular' set of possibilities. I am always trying to see a new thing, a new possibility so I don't keep repeating myself. I look in a lot of backyards. There is a snowscape with a rake. You can't miss it. It is hard to explain.

Why light up a rag in a barren field with a flash? The pictures are not seen until the film is developed. So I can't identify what the motive for any picture is. I am looking around on the street and in my mind moving toward a 16X20 inch print. Then with twenty or thirty of these prints in a room, a gallery, there is a certain psychological impression that is made. The pictures are like Rorschachs in a twice-removed way. A piece of rope and a flashed plastic ring along the side of the road is an exciting visual puzzle. It is eerie and has no meaning. I did not look through the finder, just held the camera down by the rope and took the picture. Then saw the negative and made the print - a found picture, and so surrealistic. I start out with no picture in mind but I do select a place to start the walk. Now in Philadelphia there are a lot more possibilities and some of the most attractive ones are a little dangerous.

BA: I'm glad you mentioned Philadelphia because I was curious about your move there. Why did you decide to move? How do you like it so far? How has the move affected the photos you make now?

MC: In Wilkes-Barre the roof was leaking and my wife wanted to move and I did too since I thought I had used all of Northeastern PA up, and to go and live in a city was a shocking step. There is a lot more here but it is tricky to learn to use it. The most degraded parts of the city are quite dangerous to start taking flash pictures at night in. Think about it: this stranger walking around on these streets under the El and just hanging out with a camera, with no credentials, no motive. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? So I am working on it. I am a little more cautious here in some places. Some people want the camera, want to see the picture, but now there is an airport here and it is easy to get to... etc.

Frame. By Mark Cohen. University of Texas Press, 2015.

BA: "No credentials. No motive." Not entirely true. But it raises the question: What is your motive? When you are asked "What Are You Doing Here?" what do you say?

MC: I am fueling an obsession — with Tri-X. There is a certain exciting anticipation in looking at the film coming off the developing reel. So I can't talk about artistic obsession with a guy on the street who feels ripped off and is a little, or a lot, angry, so I try "it's my hobby" and “I'm an old guy” and that can do it but it is much better to know who to avoid but those are the people that I most want to photograph, so it is tricky — much more comfortable with a landscape.

BA: Who are the people you most you want to photograph? Do they have a particular appearance or mannerism? This question might circle back to the idea of visual triggers. Are there certain types of people who are triggers for you? And if so, who?

MC: There seem to be people on the very edge of society, in old woolen coats and alone in the city, people who are in some way estranged, so I see a part of them moving along with a paper bag or in an old hotel lobby putting out a cigarette, or a kid seems trapped in a car or in a small yard. When I get close to this situation I am in some sort of transference project and so take a picture of how this exploration is going. I never really want to intrude anywhere but to put the camera in place is the problem. I see a lot of pictures when I don't have a camera with me and am relieved not to have to try to get there.

Frame. By Mark Cohen. University of Texas Press, 2015.

BA: "Transference Project"? Can you explain?

MC: Maybe I mean that to see something, someone closely is to empathize with it. I "know" the old guy and the trapped boy. So in making the picture there is some wave-like same frequency that happens, a congruency in the successful result. I am not sure about this. I'm only thinking about it now. Real motives are not easily discovered. I’ve been taking pictures since I was 14. After 50 years in Wilkes-Barre I was making pictures of nails in buildings at the end of the city, so I left.

BA: That's a slightly different reason for moving than you wrote earlier. So apart from the roof leaking and your wife's feelings, you felt you'd exhausted the possibilities of Wilkes-Barre? 50 years in any place is a long time but in a smaller city I think it might be especially difficult to find surprises. By the time you moved, did you feel your photography had run its course there?

MC: No. There is an infinite amount in even a small city. I was living in a big house that had a studio and darkroom and archive on the first floor and it was more than I could maintain — an old brick house with a slate roof. So I moved to an apartment in a new city. In Wilkes-Barre I was moving toward smaller and smaller landscapes, the heads of nails in a wall, and making a picture. Look at Morandi, painting the same 6 bottles all his life in one room. It's nice to be by an airport.

Frame. By Mark Cohen. University of Texas Press, 2015.

BA: I realize there are photographic possibilities everywhere. Like you I'm a visual scavenger. I'm dependent on the world to feed me material. And I know just about any material can suffice in the right hands. But part of being a scavenger too is the sense of exploration, the feeling of optimism that just around the corner might be something new and different and fresh. And that is sometimes a tough mental attitude to keep while in narrow surroundings. I think that's part of my curiosity about you. You made a huge body of work over 50 years in a relatively small geographic region. Sure, Morandi did something similar. Or Strand and Sudek with photography. But I think their working style is different. I wouldn't call them visual scavengers. Scavenging requires fresh visual meat.

MC: It's pretty complicated to assign a strong clear motive for making a picture.

BA: I realize it's difficult to assign a clear motive for making a picture. That's what makes the urge interesting.

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Day for Night. By Richard Learoyd.
Aperture/Pier 24 Photography, 2015.

This week's Book of the Week pick comes from Cig Harvey who has selected Day for Night by Richard Learoyd from Aperture/Pier 24 Photography.

"My love of photobooks has a long and deep-seated history. In my twenties, I would buy them before food and sleep amongst them. A few of the books I bought early on, like Yamamoto’s scrolls, are now worth thousands of dollars. But I would never sell them. They are my treasures. And besides, they are too well thumbed and stained with tea for anyone else to want them. It may be early to say, but I think that Richard Learoyd’s Day for Night will be one of the special ones that appreciates in both heart and pocket.

Like a good picture, a good photobook has to seduce me with form and content. Day for Night does both. At 14 ¾ by 12 inches with 287 images, it feels monumental; there is nothing casual about it. As it should be, it’s expensive; it’s a pair of shoes, or a great meal out. This book is a visual feast, difficult to take in in one sitting. The cover appears as a mirror, except wait, that is not me. The delicate, soft red end pages tease me into the heavy smooth paper of the plates. The type echoes the delicious indigo palette of the pictures. Every detail of the design is exact, minimal and considered.

Day for Night is a collection of portraits and still lifes. Made as direct positives with a camera obscura, the grainless-photographs are all one-of-a-kind with endless detail in the shallow depth of field. This amount of detail unnerves me and the scale allows me an opportunity to really see. The images are stripped-down; props are kept to a minimum. It is all about the gesture and the gaze. But to what end? These are pictures of deep psychological thought. Learoyd says in his statement about one of the models that 'he doesn’t sit easy with the world.' And I think that idea is a thread throughout the book. The world feels tragic; the world feels beautiful. The still lifes seem to be metaphors personifying the thoughts of the sitters, allowing us to stare at psychological space. But somehow with all this staring, only twice do the sitters confront the camera. The essay, On Being Photographed, by one of the models Nancy Gryspeerdt, is the best opportunity to glimpse at staring back.

Learoyd often favors models with a vintage look and animals with archetypal roots in art history. But just when you think you know what to expect, Learoyd presents us with a sitter or object that deals with different set of experiences, addictions, more time in life. Freckles, dark mirrors, and posies become galaxies. The flamingo suspended and entangled in thread takes my breath away when I turn the page.

Like galaxies, it seems these photographs are unknowable. But I want to try. So I am going to visit the prints in person, go on a date of sorts, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, where they will be on display until Feb 2016."—Cig Harvey

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Day for Night. By Richard Learoyd. Aperture/Pier 24 Photography, 2015.

Cig Harvey is the author of Gardening at Night (Schilt Publishing, 2015), a book about home, family, nature, and time. It received critical acclaim with features and reviews in Vogue, The Telegraph, the International Wall Street Journal, the International New York Times, and Aesthetica among others. The International Wall Street Journal said of the series, “Though the subjects and setting are familiar to us, we cannot help but feel that Cig Harvey has led us through the looking glass to a world of wonder. In the way that twilight is not quite day and not quite night, the photographs of Gardening at Night are stories not yet fully developed, while still capturing the unexpected yet oddly harmonious moments that surround us daily.”

Cig Harvey’s first monograph, You Look At Me Like An Emergency (Schilt Publishing, 2012,) is a collection of ten years of pictures and written vignettes. It sold out in all printings and was named one of PDN's Best Books of the Year 2012.

The photographs and artist books of Cig Harvey have been widely exhibited and remain in the permanent collections of major museums and collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. Cig began working in a darkroom at thirteen and has been dedicated to photography ever since. She grew up in the deep valleys of Devon in the UK, and came to the States for her MFA in 1999, after years spent living in Barcelona and Bermuda.

View books by Cig Harvey at photo-eye Bookstore
View photographs by Cig Harvey on the Photographer's Showcase

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Installation View, Edward Ranney – Two Landscapes: England & Peru | photo: Savannah Sakry

Edward Ranney is a patient man. Evidence of Ranney's even-tempered and understanding demeanor is present in the landscapes he's captured in his prestigious 40 year career. What else would drive a person to climb the Wastwater Hills in poor weather with a 5x7 view camera, or return to the heart of Peru consistently for decades? Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Two Landscapes: England and Peru, currently on view at photo-eye Gallery through December 5th, is not the juxtaposition of disparate climates but the consistency in Ranney's subtle yet persistent approach to the land. Viewed as a whole, the Peruvian desert images mixed on the same wall with England's Lake district, Two Landscapes is as much a testament of Ranney's photographic practice as it is a well constructed document of place. To expand on his process, photo-eye asked Ranney to describe the making of two of the exhibition's signature images – Palpa Valley, 2004 and Wastwater from Whinn Rigg, Cumbria, England, 1981.

Palpa Valley, 2004– Edward Ranney, 2004

"The pairing of these pictures brings up some interesting things to think about. First, in considering the important issue of vantage point, a key to any good landscape photograph, it’s important to be aware that one is not particularly helped by finding the most dramatic place to work from — structure is a key element in any work of art, and I was lucky with these two pictures to have found a spot where an abstract sense of space began to work for me. Often when I’m walking with the view camera in a certain spot, a slight elevation or rise will exert a pull that makes total sense when I set the tripod down there — this was the case with the view of the two Nazca lines, which can be seen to be either converging at this small rise or flowing out from it, drawing one’s eyes to certain spots in the landscape.

Investigators of the Nazca geoglyphs call spots where lines converge (or radiate) 'ray centers,' and while they are readily apparent from the air, it is not easy to see them on the ground. I had been walking for some time when I happened on this spot, and it made perfect sense to work there. In a sense, the picture made itself. Someone once wrote that '..lines, if perceptible, are forms, and have to go through the same being born as a form.' The recognition of these forms in the landscape perhaps confirms what the Nazca people centuries ago felt about this particular space, and gives an indication as to how they integrated themselves with this harsh environment by creating a certain kind of form.

Wastwater from Whinn Rigg, Cumbria, England, 1981– Edward Ranney, 1981

Northern England, of course, is an entirely different world from Peru’s desert, and I made the picture of Wastwater over 20 years earlier than the desert picture. Nevertheless, the same outlook regarding vantage point is relevant, especially in an area where quickly changing weather can give one an unexpected insight at a particular spot, or render a successful picture impossible. I considered rather carefully the conditions that would keep me from getting drenched by rain as I hiked up the area near Scafell Pikes and Great Gable in the western sector of the Lake District and found that by prowling around the cliff above Wastwater, there were hints of light conditions and vantage points that might give me something special. It took some time, but the structure for the image gradually developed and finally became clear from a certain spot, much as a drawing might develop as one sketches in the landscape. In addition, I saw the shapes of the fields below to be of some importance, along with the role the elegant little house plays in the picture. Different elements can play integral parts in a successful landscape, but overall what we’re after, I suppose, is a view that can help us discover what Robert Adams suggests is the 'significance of a place.' Hopefully that is open to as many interpretations as there are viewers of the picture."—Edward Ranney

Howgill Fells, Cumbria, England, 1981 – Edward Ranney

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Two Landscapes: England & Peru is currently on view at photo-eye Gallery through December 5th, 2015. For more information or to purchase prints please contact Gallery Director Anne Kelly at 505.988.5152 x 121 or anne@photoeye.com

Cubic Feet/Sec.. By Andrew Phelps.
Fotohof, 2015.

Cubic Feet/Sec.
Reviewed by Karen Jenkins

Cubic Feet/Sec.
By Andrew Phelps
Fotohof, Salzburg, Austria, 2015. In English. 112 pp., 60 illustrations, 7x9".

Over a thirty-four year period beginning in 1979, Andrew Phelps, his father and assorted friends took nine trips together through the Grand Canyon, rafting along the Colorado River. A camera was essential gear on each journey; beginning with eleven-year old Andrew’s Kodak Instamatic 110, replaced through the years by other formats, all taken up in a desire to share the adventure. Yet the slide shows expectantly culled from each trip’s exposures fell short, as Phelps found himself disappointed by the photographs’ inability to faithfully conjure his experiences for his armchair travelers back home. Now, a few years after the final trip has ended, he’s thought back over these journeys and combed through their multitudinous photographs, in a reexamination of failure. This time around, Phelps rejects the singular in favor of the collective, and draws photographs from each trip’s cache, made by himself, his father and others. The reimagined adventure of Cubic Feet/Sec. collapses time and disregards contiguousness and even authorship in favor of crafting one last, essential show that finally gets the story right.

Cubic Feet/Sec.. By Andrew Phelps. Fotohof, 2015.

The big themes of Phelps’ story emerge easily and effortlessly draw you in. With his savvy as a now mature photographer and curator, he taps into that quality of vernacular photography that feels somewhat unrooted from a temporal context and populated by representative types — father and son, guide and explorer. Phelps and his fellow cast members are often shot from a distance, small in the epic landscape of canyon and river. The figures may be put in their (relative) place, but they do insistently belong — one shot is all shadowy silhouettes of each adventurer, dark against a bright rock face, embedded in its surface and integral to the scene. Phelps also comes in close; including many in-the-moment scenes of himself and others taking in the details and the simple pleasures of leaping off a ledge or cooling off under a waterfall. Yet belonging is not staying the same, and if part of the story draws on the idea of immutable forms and forces, Phelps’ tale doesn’t entirely camouflage the inevitable change. Within these images, he and his father grow older. A young boy matures, and his bearded dad also evolves through each iteration of the trip (despite the near-constancy of his cut-off jeans).

Cubic Feet/Sec.. By Andrew Phelps. Fotohof, 2015.

In the face of change, photography has long been asked to freeze time, to faithfully preserve the fleeting and ephemeral. Yet in those periods immediately following each Canyon trip, Phelps wasn’t thinking in terms of the past; with the adventure still fresh and front of mind, he was keen to share a contemporary story. In this, the photographs were a perennial disappointment. He writes: “Though I’m sure most people who saw our shows went away with a thrill, I could never help feeling that photography was never going to do what I wanted it to do. This failure, of course, is not photography’s, but mine and my lack of understanding what it can never do.” I’m reminded of what Sally Mann argued in her recent memoir — that photographs, rather than being an aid to recollection, actually overwrite our ‘real’ experiences, supplanting rather than enhancing an accurate conjuring. To the extent that Phelps’ is now guided by a similar determination, Cubic Feet/Sec. is a liberation. In creating a new cut, irrespective of time, order of events, and inclusivity, Phelps releases the photographs from his prior demands of fidelity to one true adventure. No one steps into the same river twice. Phelps taps into the latent power of these photographs to finally be good enough, to stand in for something over and gone, and instantly transformed — an evocation, not a documentation, a story of a trip of a lifetime.—KAREN JENKINS

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KAREN JENKINS earned a Master's degree in Art History, specializing in the History of Photography from the University of Arizona. She has held curatorial positions at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ and the Demuth Museum in Lancaster, PA. Most recently she helped to debut a new arts project, Art in the Open Philadelphia, that challenges contemporary artists to reimagine the tradition of creating works of art en plein air for the 21st century.

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photo-eye's Nudes/Human Form Newsletter features books that explore the human form in a variety of ways. Sign up for the Nudes/Human Form Newsletter here.

PRE-ORDER DEADLINES

Étant Donnés 2° — SIGNED
Photographs by TR Ericsson

TR Ericsson's self-published artist's book is a clever take on Marcel Duchamp's enigmatic last work Étant Donnés, in which viewers could look through a peep hole at a diorama of a nude woman lying spread-legged in a grassy area. This second edition of Ericsson's Étant Donnés forms a cinematic tableau consisting of over 400 full-bleed black and white photographs that depict the collapsed nude body of an unidentified woman in a densely-wooded landscape.

photo-eye is taking pre-orders for signed copies of Étant Donnés 2°. If our supplier runs out, orders will be fulfilled in the order in which they are received. The cutoff time for ordering is Monday, December 22nd at 12:00 PM Mountain Time.

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Candy — Limited Edition
Photographs by Aaron McElroy

Candy is the second instillation of the "Sugar series." Containing a plethora of black and white images — a selection of older and new nude photographs. The muted color palette and the diaristic approach are replaced by the lines and form of the female figure mixed with the textures and off beat tones of the laser prints inside. Each cover is printed printed on 215 gsm ink jet paper by McElroy the contents of the book are printed by McElroy on 70 lb Ivory paper. Limited edition of 150 copies.

photo-eye is taking pre-orders for limited edition copies of Candy. If our supplier runs out, orders will be fulfilled in the order in which they are received. The cutoff time for ordering is Monday, December 22nd at 12:00 PM Mountain Time.

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ARRIVING SOON

New Natives
Photographs by Joseph Maida

Thematic intersections of masculinity, ethnic origin, and sexuality are central to representation in this project. Primordial, indigenous body markings give way to contemporary tattoos, and clothing ranges from traditional costume to nothing at all. These young men’s appearances deviate from Euro-american standards of “male model,” but that is precisely the point. Projection of an identity — much like the interpretation of one — is the articulation of the wish of how one wants to be seen — or how one wishes to see. The photographer’s work is, thus, the product of a fantasy cum image.

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PRINTS

Two Limited Edition Prints (photo-eye Exclusives)
Photographs by Jordan Sullivan

We are pleased to offer two different limited edition prints from Jordan Sullivan's latest book An Island In the Moon. Each is an edition of three.

MacKenzie Blue (above, 15″x10″) and Tiina 12 (below, 16″x24″) are offered exclusively through photo-eye Bookstore and the Nudes/Human Form Newsletter.

For pricing, more information or to purchase a print, please contact Christopher J. Johnson at 505-988-5152 ext. 113 or christopher@photoeye.com

View past editions of the Nudes/Human Form Newsletter

Jaunt
By Lotte Reimann
Art Paper Editions

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by:
10x10 Photobooks
John Phelan

"Jaunt by Lotte Riemann is a fun, slightly sinister, super slick journey; the itinerary brilliantly mapped by Jurgen Maelfeyt, who designed and edited it. Rephotographing found photos of a swinging couple on her monitor, Reimann has repurposed them to tell a new story reflecting her own gaze."—from the Book of the Week Pick by John Phelan

Frame: A Retrospective
By Mark Cohen
University of Texas Press

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Kevin Messina

"I am fueling an obsession — with Tri-X. There is a certain exciting anticipation in looking at the film coming off the developing reel. So I can't talk about artistic obsession with a guy on the street who feels ripped off and is a little, or a lot, angry, so I try 'it's my hobby' and 'I'm an old guy' and that can do it but it is much better to know who to avoid but those are the people that I most want to photograph, so it is tricky — much more comfortable with a landscape."—from the interview with Mark Cohen on photo-eye Blog

R+R (Rest + Relaxation)
Created by Ryan Arthurs
Houseboat Press

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Kevin Messina

"The content, in this case, takes vintage found photographs of men in the military as its starting point. But then Arthurs takes the pictures someplace else entirely by screen printing brightly colored shapes over the figures in each image — simultaneously obscuring and highlighting the men. The result is a body of work that can be read on many levels, but it was the origins of the source material — photographs of servicemen at leisure — that led Arthurs to the very successful physical form of his book."—from the Book of the Week Pick by Kevin Messina

Lago
By Ron Jude
Mack

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by:
Aaron Schuman
David Campany
Gerry Badger
Hans Gremmen
Sarah Bradley

"In Lago — Jude’s return to the California desert of his early childhood — memory serves as a leaping-off point to engage equally with what is present — perhaps, doubling as a re-birthing and making relevant connections with an indelible past. Jude accomplishes this, in part, with an avoidance of technique or style as means of maneuvering around what one cannot do. His color renders as generous, consistent and 'true.' There are few devices employed in the layout and design. A few blank spreads offer opportunities to cleanse or reboot and are perfectly placed and confident in their silence."—from the Book of the Week Pick by Raymond Meeks

The Lonely Ones
By Gus Powell
J&L Books

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by:
Jeffrey Ladd
Aaron Schuman

"Taking inspiration from a 1942 publication of the same name by the celebrated cartoonist William Steig (whose work, like Powell’s, was regularly featured in The New Yorker), Powell pairs and then hides each of his quizzical photographs behind a gatefold that contains a carefully matched, one-line text: 'Let’s not ruin it by talking,''Mistakes were made,''We’ve met before,''Remember?' It’s rare that, when text is paired with image, it not only provides a particular window of insight for the viewer, but also reflects multiple meanings to prismatic effect, prying open already open-ended photographs even further."—from the Book of the Week Pick by Aaron Schuman

Moisés
By Mariela Sancari
La Fabrica

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by:
10x10 Photobooks
Alejandro Cartagena
Colin Pantall
Daniel Boetker-Smith
Erik Kessels
Sarah Bradley
Thomas Sauvin

"The first time I saw the book, it was actually still a dummy in process but immediately it transported me into the sensation of wanting desperately to find someone you love but who is gone. Not having gotten to see that person for the last time dragged out a feeling in Mariela of not wanting to let go and these portraits position us in her shoes; in that place where you get a psychologically driven glimpse of that missing someone and how you want to obsessively check be sure if it's them or not. The book's sequencing is like looking for someone with Mariela, hand in hand searching and hoping one of these old men might bring her closure to an unresolved struggle that hurts like hell."—from the Book of the Week Pick by Alejandro Cartagena

Prophet
By Geert Goiris
Roma Publications

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by:
Hans Gremmen
Sarah Bradley

"This book serves as a visual metaphor for a constant hum of low level anxiety with a shriek of nervous laughter, a muffled moan, a gasp, a sigh. There are moments of such tension in certain photographs, strategically and rhythmically placed throughout the book; I felt my heart leap periodically as if timed to a metronome. The double gauge shotgun of a man dousing himself in the smoke of three cigarettes and a swathe of scorched earth, a crumpled arthropod awash in magenta and an icy green hued snowdrift pushed hard up against a darkened road. Geert's book is an aria of estrangement, linked through a wintery nightscape and startlingly confronting portraits. I approach the Prophet in wonder and discomfort in equal measure."—from the Book of the Week Pick by Ying Ang

Taratine
By Daisuke Yokota
Session Press

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by John Phelan

"In his new book Taratine, Yokota both reveals and conceals, offering glimpses of his personal life, in both text and image; profound, compound visions which are always subject to the dizzying aesthetic filters inherent to his practice. Yokota works consistently and with great energy and application to produce images that not only tell us about the strange gaps between life and art, but about the continued vitality of the 'mysteries of the dark-room' in the digital age."—from the Book of the Week Pick by Simon Baker

SPBH BOOK CLUB VOL VII
By Lucas Blalock
SPBH Editions

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Erik Kessels

"Lucas Blalock loves exploring the conventions of photography and pushing its borders. With SPBH Book Club Vol. VII, Lucas Blalock makes a book with hot dog sausages as his only subject, nicely photographed with strong shadows on a grey background. He developed a great talent at creating various compositions with these sausages, and each spread is a new surprise. This body of work pushes far away the level of irony. The book itself is a nice object in the continuation of the great Self Publish Be Happy Book Club collection."—from the Book of the Week Pick by Rémi Faucheux

Private
By Mona Kuhn
Steidl, 2014. 112 pp., 74 color illustrations, 11¾x12¼".

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Christopher J. Johnson

"I usually work very intuitively. A way for me to start a series is to first imagine the colors as a way of limiting the palate. The colors that I first imagined for the series, colors that matured over time for me, were the sand tonalities — sand which at times resembles skin, the golden desert colorations and golden light and then the darker shades of brown and black — that was the palate that inspired me. I’ve been living out in Los Angels for quite some time so I was also very drawn to understanding the desert, as it was my surroundings."—from the interview with Mona Kuhn on photo-eye Blog

Crackle & Drag
By TR Ericsson
The Cleveland Museum of Art

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by:
Christopher J. Johnson
Jeffrey Ladd
Melanie McWhorter

"Crackle & Drag is a family album; it contains ephemera (family letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and personal possessions) all repackaged as original works of art. One series is photographic, but made by pushing graphite and his mother's funerary ashes through a silkscreen onto resin to create the images; another is nicotine on paper, but also involving photographic silkscreens. Every detail of his work is personal and, often, relies upon many generations of family artifacts."—from the Book of the Week Pick by Christopher J. Johnson

Assignment No. 2: San Quentin Prison
Photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto and Richard Misrach. Text by Michael Nelson.
TBW Books

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Kevin Messina

"This book contains only two photographs, neither of which was taken in a prison, and yet it is one of the best 'prison photography' books of all time."—Kevin Messina

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When I Was Six
By Phillip Toledano
Dewi Lewis

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Melanie McWhorter

"This book is a revisiting by Toledano of the memories and found objects associated with the childhood death of his sister Claudia at the age of nine. Toledano photographs objects tucked away from Claudia’s childhood collection. The still-lifes also document the light as it moves across the background and this movement brings to mind the cycle of life. The black background and black pages remind us of the colors of mourning while the objects celebrate the preciousness of life. The intimate design forces the viewer to engage and ruminate on the universal themes of love, survival and loss that the subject prompts us to consider."—Melanie McWhorter

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SPBH BOOK CLUB VOL VII
By Lucas Blalock
SPBH Editions

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Erik Kessels

"Maybe the most unnecessary photobook of 2015, at the same time this is exactly what makes it so wonderful. The concept is simple: Blalock creates numerous photographic compositions with sausages. The end result is an entertaining combination of playfulness and plain nonsense. Andy Warhol would have wished it was his name on the cover."—Erik Kessels

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hide
By Jason Vaughn
Trema Förlag

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Melanie McWhorter

"The images in hide simply present exterior shots of deer stands at varying distances in the Wisconsin landscape. There is little text aside from the title page, a colophon and a brief introduction of the book by the photographer about the work, the project’s halt because of a cancer diagnosis and how the photographs took on a much deeper cultural and personal meaning after the terrible news. The book is modest, but not devoid of layers of complexity within its personal meaning and the purpose and symbolic nature of the deer stands and the residents' connection to the Wisconsin land."—Melanie McWhorter

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Shrubs of Death
By Mike Slack
Self-Published

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Sarah Bradley

"I love the title, the straightforward design, and super-flat images that become more bizarre and abstract the longer you look at them. It’s silly, and somehow also not."—Sarah Bradley

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Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
By Sally Mann
Little, Brown and Company

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by David Campany

"I think Mann’s prose is poetry. This is such a rich and rewarding book, especially for those who are not too keen on her photography."—David Campany

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Private
By Mona Kuhn
Steidl

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Christopher J. Johnson

"There is something that is always more genuine within the process of nude portraiture when a woman presents the female form. It becomes less about desire than it does about dignity, utility and grace. Private is Mona Kuhn’s best book yet, her handling of light, of the female form and of landscape makes this a book about connections: the body’s connection to the earth and the one principle that unifies and equalizes everything that falls within our sight — the principle of light."—Christopher J. Johnson

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Lead Kindly Light. Edited by Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan.
Dust-to-Digital, 2015.

Lead Kindly Light

Reviewed by Blake Andrews

Lead Kindly Light: Pre-War Music and Photographs from the American South

Edited by Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan
Dust-to-Digital, 2015. In English. 176 pp., 156 color illustrations. Two audio CDs., 6½x8½x½".

Scavenging has always been a close cousin of photography. Whereas other art forms can create new works from scratch, photography depends on pre-existing material. Straight photographers glean from the visual world. Studio photographers pull from manipulated subjects. Even photographers who don't create original exposures — who simply shuffle and re-appropriate — rely on existing images for their raw material.

In the recent decades this last category has seen a surge of interest. New material must be unearthed, and the rush is on to find and recontextualize existing photographs. To scavenge, in other words. The most accessible mother lode is the Internet. It supplies a steady cache of material, but much of the good stuff can't be found online. It's trapped in the physical ephemera of estate sales, warehouses, and unlabeled garage bins. It's up to amateur archivists to track it down, fueled by the scent of first discovery, a finders-keepers element, and a nostalgic yearning for sheer physicality.

Lead Kindly Light. Edited by Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan. Dust-to-Digital, 2015.

Record collectors — the phrase milk crate stirs their blood — have been keyed into this world for decades. Mid-century collectors like John Fahey unearthed magnificent records through sheer grunt work, cold-calling on door after door in the South. In the photo world, his rough equivalent might be someone like Robert Jackson or Thomas Walther, digging through reams of old photographs to scavenge together world-class collections.

Lead Kindly Light. Edited by Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan. Dust-to-Digital, 2015.

If photo collecting and record collecting share common traits, the recent book Lead, Kindly Light (the title taken from a 1833 hymn by John Henry Newman) is the first to solidify the link in a publication. Sarah Bryan and Peter Honig, a married couple from North Carolina, are each long time collectors. He collects records. She collects photographs. The book reproduces a selection from each, 159 photographs in a book with two CDs of 46 songs. The source material for both is the pre-War South and Appalachia.

"Everyone who appears in this collection — everyone singing or playing an instrument on the recordings, or working, dancing, or pretending to talk on the telephone in the pictures — was once alive," writes Sarah Bryan in the introduction, activating the book's channel to the past. "By transitory acts of making music into sound-gathering devices, and standing in front of light-gathering devices, they created objects that would survive them."

Lead Kindly Light. Edited by Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan. Dust-to-Digital, 2015.

The book's unspoken implication is that one should view the photographs while listening to the music. I tried this and they go together quite well. I also tried browsing the book while listening to music from The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, The Platina, Nas, and the latest from Boogarins. All were a good match. Which is to say, I believe the photo-viewing part of the brain and the music-appreciating part of the brain are so distinct that just about any combination can mesh without too much gear-grinding. But I admit this is a preliminary hypothesis based on a highly selective data set. I haven't yet tried with, for example, Ron Jude's Lago and its accompanying CD. Or any of the soon-to-be published photobooks that I'm guessing will follow suit.

Lead Kindly Light. Edited by Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan. Dust-to-Digital, 2015.

There's a theory — articulated by Christopher Rauschenberg among others — that every photograph will become more interesting in 50 years. And Lead, Kindly Light seems to affirm this. The photographs rivet the reader by revealing a strange past. They're interesting because they're exotic. But I can't help wondering if that's the only way they rivet. From perspective of technique or craftsmanship they don't show much creativity or inspiration. The best ones are the happy accidents, the light leaks, serendipitous folds and juxtapositions that can convert any photo to magic. But as pure captures they don't possess the gotcha moments of, say, Robert Jackson's collections. If they are more or less common snapshots, ironically that's what gives them energy, for an unvarnished glimpse can be more revealing than a polished one. Walker Evans built that aphorism into a career. That said, some of these would've perhaps been better left in the milk crate.

I think the same could be said about the musical selections, all of which come from a relatively narrow time period leading up and into the early years of The Great Depression. They are fascinating as rare artifacts and windows into a lost musical world. And in consideration of recent financial events, maybe there are lessons buried within. But after listing to a half hour of scratchy fiddle jigs, I'm not sure more will be very edifying. But that's me. I'm a child of the modern world, with the attention span of an ant. Sincere fans of old-time string bands will be more fully rewarded, but that may be a small demographic.

Lead Kindly Light. Edited by Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan. Dust-to-Digital, 2015.

Despite the misgivings above, this is a very enjoyable collection, and one that's obviously a labor of love. The collections represented here were years in the making, and their reproductions are as close as possible to the originals. The production, layout, and annotation is fantastic, with white cloth cover, clever CD folds in front and back, and detailed musical captions. My only gripe about the layout is the occasional use of full-bleed spreads, which needlessly destroy the illusion of thumbing through old prints. They jolt the reader back into book-reading mode, making it hard to immerse in the pleasure of scavenging. But perhaps that feeling fails easy reproduction.—BLAKE ANDREWS

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BLAKE ANDREWS is a photographer based in Eugene, OR. He writes about photography at blakeandrews.blogspot.com.

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The Hollow of the Hand.
Text by PJ Harvey. Photographs by Seamus Murphy.
Bloomsbury USA, 2015.

This week's Book of the Week pick comes from TR Ericsson who has selected The Hollow of the Hand by PJ Harvey and Seamus Murphy published by Bloomsbury USA.

"My affection for this book began with my love for PJ Harvey's acclaimed 2011 album Let England Shake — the urgency of the songs, the intimacy and compassion, the lyrical rage against the violence of our world and a breathtaking artistry and diversity to the melodies and rhythms of the music. She revisits this beautiful and troubling record in this new book. She and her collaborator, photographer Seamus Murphy, travel to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington DC and both document their experiences, Seamus Murphy with photography and PJ Harvey with words.

There is death and suffering and destruction in this book. Both artists are looking and listening, and completely open to the pain they witness in abundance. It becomes more than art, purer than art, and that’s the most compelling accomplishment of this perfect book — the more-difficult-than-it-would-seem ability to simply let these people and places tell their own stories, be what they really are, powerfully undistorted.

In one of the Kosovo poems a woman laments…

Now all I do is wait

…while in Washington DC A Guy Who Knows What the Fuck’s Going On (the poem’s title) concludes:

that’s how it is here in America
—it’s just so simple man—people are jus’ paid an’ bought an’ shit
an’ that’s the whole fucking bottom line

Like her earlier album, every image and every word is urgently and skillfully delivered. And yet amidst the pain a sort of beauty lingers, a sympathetic awareness and an earnest watchfulness. A knowing sadness that says it has always been this way and we will always want it not to be.

Let me watch night fall on the river
The moon rise up and turn to silver
The sky move, the ocean shimmer
The hedge shake, the last living rose quiver"

—TR Ericsson

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The Hollow of the Hand. Text by PJ Harvey. Photographs by Seamus Murphy. Bloomsbury USA, 2015.

TR Ericsson’s work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad including those with Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp, Switzerland; Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, NY; Paul Kasmin Gallery, NY, and Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels. Ericsson’s work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Yale University Library (Special Collections) and the Progressive Art Collection as well numerous private collections.

The artist's first solo museum exhibition TR Ericsson: Crackle & Drag opened at the Cleveland Museum of Art on May 23, 2015. A monograph/artist’s book designed by the artist, published by the Cleveland Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press was published to accompany the exhibition.

http://www.trericsson.com

View books from TR Ericsson

Lucas Shaffer – Gallery Associate

Keith Carter

Batman, 2012

Tintype

Exhibited in Ghostland

Summer 2015

Read the Exhibition introduction

Watch Keith Carter's Gallery Talk about the Ghostland series and his personal process

David Trautrimas

Pronation Drift

Archival Pigment Print

Released 2015

View the full Eidolon Point Online Portfolio

“While walking around the completely devastated neighborhoods I couldn’t help but feel an indelible energy, a spirit, if you will, emanating form the architectural ruins.”

Read Anne Kelly's Interview with Trautrimas about Eidolon Point

Ed Ranney

Palpa Valley, 2004

Toned Silver Gelatin Print

Included in Two Landscapes: England & Peru

Fall 2015

Read Lucas Shaffer's Interview with Ranney about the Exhibition

See the full Two Landscapes online portfolio

Savannah Sakry – Gallery Associate

Teri Havens

Moonglow, Walsenburg, Colorado, 2014

Platinum/Palladium Print

Photographer's Showcase

Read the Portfolio and Interview with Havens about her series, Last Light

View Last Light on the Photographer's Showcase

Bear Kirkpatrick

All the Links Rattled at Once, 2010

Archival Pigment Print

Included in the Selected Works exhibition

Winter 2015

Read Anne Kelly's 2013 interview with Bear Kirkpatrick about his Hierophanies series

View Hierophanies on the Photographer's Showcase

Brad Wilson

Raven #2, Albuquerque, NM, 2013

Archival Pigment Print

On View along side Mitch Dobrowner's STILL EARTH | STORMS

Winter 2015

View Brad Wilson's Affinity Series

Read Melanie McWhorter's interview with Brad Wilson

Our sincere thanks and best wishes for 2016. Please feel free to reach out to any of us if you have additional questions about any of the work listed, or if you would like to purchase a print.

Anne Kelly, Gallery Director
505-988-5152 x 121
anne@photoeye.com

Lucas Shaffer
505-988-5152 x 114
lucas@photoeye.com

Savannah Sakry
505-988-5152 x 115
savannah@photoeye.com

My Blank Pages. By Michael Schmelling.
The Ice Plant, 2015.

My Blank Pages
Reviewed by Adam Bell

My Blank Pages
Photographs by Michael Schmelling
The Ice Plant, Los Angeles, USA, 2015. In English. 192 pp., 6¼x8".

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Aaron Schuman

Drawn from a personal archive of 4x6 machine prints, the images that make up Michael Schmelling’s My Blank Pages might easily be seen as cast-offs or remainders, either tossed aside or left in a box. Shot on assignment, for fun, or simply out of boredom, they’re tangential shots that never made it, but nevertheless fill a deeper void. Kept for later, they’ve lingered and have found a home in Michael Schmelling’s new book, My Blank Pages. Unbound in a plain manila jacket, the book contains images from Schmelling’s vast archive of photographs dating from 2005 to 2012 when he moved to Los Angeles. Although it may only be a chapter or two, My Blank Pages tells a story about the life of its creator, a photographer driven to photograph the world around him with a relentless eye. At the same time, it’s also an intriguing meditation on the difficulty of creating a personal narrative or biography with photographs. Despite all the hand written notes and the work’s personal nature, there are some things that always remain blank, things that we’ll never know, things that the medium can never divulge.

My Blank Pages. By Michael Schmelling. The Ice Plant, 2015.

Although the wide-ranging snapshots collected by Schmelling give the impression of loosely sorted photographs pulled from a shoebox, they are in fact carefully sequenced images that reveal a busy and peripatetic life behind a camera. While there is no consistent narrative, there are reoccurring patterns to the work that reveal Schmelling’s interests — vernacular signage, magazines, newspapers, books, handwritten notes, friends or models, objects and found still-lifes of meals eaten. Perhaps best know as a documentary and portrait photographer, Schmelling offers us a different view of his life as a photographer. Moving between commercial outtakes and more personal imagery, My Blank Pages reveals Schmelling’s voracious eye and compulsive dedication to photography. No scrap of paper is undocumented. No homily plant in the corner is unworthy of a flash soaked caress. Unlike other forgotten or neglected picture archives brought back to life, this is not an excuse to reveal lost gems, but rather a chronology of a life ruthlessly documented.

My Blank Pages. By Michael Schmelling. The Ice Plant, 2015.

Accompanying the photographs are unique hand-written notes. Circling the images and hovering in the margins, the penciled in comments and notes enhance the intimate nature of the work, making each copy feel like a personal journal or album. Often drawn from a pamphlet carefully inserted in the folded manila book jacket, the notes reference the content of the images or simply relay Schmelling’s thoughts at the time or in the present. There is even a Post-It note midway through the book. What’s missing are dates, titles, or any back-story. Instead, the pages are filled with fragmentary phrases and marginalia that point in various directions. Given the equally enigmatic and contextless images, the stream-of-consciousness marginalia are more like running commentary than any attempt to explicate the imagery or book. As readers, we’re forced to parse the phrases and fill in the blanks of what feels like a deeply personal scrapbook.

My Blank Pages. By Michael Schmelling. The Ice Plant, 2015.

At the center of the book is a condensed version of Schmelling’s The Week of No Computer, which also offers a portrait of the photographer’s daily life. Created in 2008, The Week of No Computer falls roughly in the middle of the time-frame of the book. A sub-chapter or digression, it marks a period where Schmelling’s published material overlaps with the content of this new book. Bookended by a cropped version of the original book cover, the section contains images that deviate from the roughly 4x6 portrait image format of the rest of the book. Here we see square images, collaged or folded images, scanned book pages, a Polaroid, and other ephemera. In many cases, Schmelling moves between photographs of images in magazines or newspapers in situ, a common theme, which offers a vague timeframe for the work, and closely cropped or scanned images of similar content. The recurrence of photographic imagery, either that of Schmelling’s own images rephotographed (in stacks, on the wall, or as contact sheets) or those in various printed matter, reiterates Schmeling’s immersion in and delight with images.

My Blank Pages. By Michael Schmelling. The Ice Plant, 2015.

Most of us only look to the pages that seem full, but often those left blank are the ones with the most life. If Schmelling’s pages are crowded with images of Wilco, the Atlanta hip-hop scene, memory competitions, or scenes from the life of an eccentric projectionist in El Paso, TX, what remained blank is now at least partially full. It’s a life of messy apartments and studios, casual pictures of friends, models, books, and the stuff of everyday life. Despite the fullness of textual annotations, careful arrangement and abundant imagery, little is revealed in My Blank Pages. Like any album, it remains partially blank to others. Sometimes a pile of pictures is just that, a pile of pictures — about a life, a way of seeing, and the things and people we’ve seen. In the end, that’s usually more than enough to fill blank pages.—Adam Bell

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ADAM BELL is a photographer and writer. His work has been widely exhibited, and his writing and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Afterimage, The Art Book Review, The Brooklyn Rail, fototazo, Foam Magazine, Lay Flat, photo-eye and Paper-Journal. His books include The Education of a Photographer and Vision Anew: The Lens and Screen Arts. He is currently on staff and faculty at the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Art. (www.adambbell.com and blog.adambbell.com)

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Révélations: Iconographie de La Salpêtrière. Paris 1875-1918.
By Javier Viver.
Editorial RM, 2015.

This week's Book of the Week pick comes from Sonia Berger who has selected Révélations: Iconographie de La Salpêtrière. Paris 1875-1918 by Javier Viver from Editorial RM.

"Here is a book that Javier Viver did in an artist edition of 10 copies in 2013 and that I’m happy has recently been published in a trade edition. Viver presents a collection of images from La Salpêtrière, the famous Parisian psychiatric hospital during the 19th century. In 1875, Jean-Martin Charcot installed at the institution a photographic laboratory in order to document the clinical records of over 4300 mentally ill patients who were put into an induced hypnotic state, provoking reactions such as epileptic or hysterical attacks.

For me, the interesting part of revisiting such a collection of images lies in what it represents from scientific, artistic and religious points of view. While Occidental medicine had long ago undertaken the path of dissecting the body in order to see what cannot be seen, Charcot’s systematic photographic practice appears to be a stubborn attempt to dissect what remained invisible, the human soul, a field reserved to religion. On the other hand, driven by the same anatomical tradition that aimed to get beyond the blindness caused by the immediately visible, Charcot meticulously portrays fragments of bodies as if he was an artist trying to understand what muscles work in a given, sometimes induced, action. However, at that time artists were not yet interested in taking apart parts of the body and these scientific experiments carried out during the 19th century constitute precursory examples of the photographic fragmentation of the body as an aesthetic practice.

Does Charcot get to ‘see’ the enigma behind the surface? Do we get to ‘see’ the soul through these photographic portraits? The collection still produces the same fascination it caused in the cultural and scientific elites who regularly attended these sessions as we are invited to see ‘biological rarities, phenomena and monsters,’ the limits of the human. Through a series of texts and biblical captions included in a separate guide to the images, Javier Viver’s edition reveals ultimately the tension existing in Charcot’s rational efforts of registering the human spirituality."—Sonia Berger

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Révélations: Iconographie de La Salpêtrière. Paris 1875-1918. By Javier Viver. Editorial RM, 2015.

Sonia Berger is a Madrid based publisher. She is the co-founder of Dalpine, an independent publishing house and bookstore specializing in photography books.

View books published by Dalpine

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Photographs by David Gibson as installed at photo-eye Gallery

Time, beauty, and persistence — these are hallmarks of a David H. Gibson photograph. As a landscape photographer Gibson’s approach is simple yet stunning: discover a location, find the right place to stand, and stay there. Gibson tends to work in sequences by photographing an element of natural phenomena, such as a sunrise or weather, capturing versions of a scene as light and space fluctuate over time. photo-eye Gallery is excited to have three recent works in sequence by David Gibson currently on view along side Chaco Terada’s Between Water and Sky through January 16th, 2016.

Gibson’s three installed black-and-white panoramas document the passage of clouds through Arroyo Seco, New Mexico over the course of 22 minutes on the morning of August 27th, 2014. The images largely focus on the billowing dramatic forms the overhanging clouds exhibit as they pass over the hillside shrouding and revealing the inky land below. The tension and release of the cloud’s undulating shape as it changes from image to image is reminiscent of music — the repetition in variation providing movement pushing the eye around the picture plane. It is intriguing to see how the shape of the landscape changes throughout the series, and in such a small period of time, while the image’s overall tone remains consistent.

Together the triptych of images seems like a collection of film stills; the clouds seemingly animated in their juxtaposition. What is curios is how the expression of time works both ways in Gibson’s images. As Gibson documents the passage of time the image it self is arrested, the visual experience defmiliarized by photography’s ability to freeze time, permitting the viewer an unlimited gaze at the forms created in each frame in the Arroyo Sequence. Over the course of his career, Gibson has exhibited a fascination with the photographic expressions of the ephemeral, and these new works are a stunning example.

View David Gibson's Online Portfolio

Purchase Gibson's Handmade Artist Books

For more information and to purchase prints, please contact Gallery Director Anne Kelly at 505-988-5152 x 121 or anne@photoeye.com.

Book Review: Deadline

Nudes/Human Form Newsletter Vol. 17

Book Review: YU

Book of the Week: A Pick by Adrian Octavius Walker

On View at photo-eye Gallery: Raymond Meeks

Book Review: Gathered Leaves

In Stock at photo-eye: Best Books of 2014

Interview: Mark Cohen on Frame: A Retrospective

Book of the Week: A Pick by Cig Harvey

Edward Ranney: Behind the Image – Palpa Valley, 2004 and Wastwater from Whinn Rigg, Cumbria, England, 1981

Book Review: Cubic Feet/Sec.

Nudes/Human Form Newsletter Vol. 18

Best Books of 2015: Interviews and Book of the Week Picks

In Stock at photo-eye Bookstore: Best Books of 2015

Book Review: Lead Kindly Light

Book of the Week: A Pick by TR Ericsson

photo-eye Gallery – 2015 Staff Selections

Lucas Shaffer – Gallery Associate

Savannah Sakry – Gallery Associate

Book Review: My Blank Pages

Book of the Week: A Pick by Sonia Berger

Also on view at photo-eye Gallery: David Gibson's Arroyo Seco Sequence