photobook daily

“The Asakusa quarter of Tokyo has a shady past—it...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:03:00 -0500

“The Asakusa quarter of Tokyo has a shady past—it was the home of some of Japan’s most notorious pleasure palaces. Today it embraces this history by remaining a steadfast holdout of independent culture, which encompasses traditional comedy theater and some of the most innovative burlesque in the world. Asakusa has long attracted bohemians who opt out of Japan’s contemporary consumer society, yet it is also home to the famous Senso-ji temple, which attracts floods of tourists. Over the past two decades, Hiroh Kikai has created an extensive and unforgettable series of street portraits from the diverse mass of people that pass through the district. Posed against the stark walls of the temple, his portraits of Asakusa’s iconoclasts radiate a sense of hard-won individuality. The photographs are accompanied by Kikai’s own pithy commentary.”

Asakusa Portraits, Hiroh Kikai [Amazon]

“Although Edward Steichen exhibited some of Saul...

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:32:35 -0500

“Although Edward Steichen exhibited some of Saul Leiter’s color photographs at The Museum of Modern Art in 1953, for 40 years afterward they remained virtually unknown to the art world. Saul Leiter: Early Color provides the first opportunity to see a comprehensive presentation of images by one of photography’s great originals. Leiter moved to New York in 1946 intending to be a painter, but through his friendship with the Abstract Expressionist Richard Pousette-Dart, he quickly recognized the creative potential of photography. Though he continued to paint, exhibiting alongside Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning, Leiter’s camera became—like an extension of his arm and mind—an ever-present interpreter of life in the metropolis. He sought out moments of quiet humanity in the Manhattan maelstrom, forging a unique urban pastoral from the most unlikely of circumstances. The lyricism and intensity of his vision come into fullest play in his eloquent handling of color unequaled by his contemporaries. Leiter’s visual language of fragmentation, ambiguity, and contingency is evoked by these 100 subtle, painterly images that stretched the boundaries of photography in the second half of the 20th century.

Saul Leiter: Early Color [Amazon]

“An undisputed masterwork among Japanese photobooks, Eikoh...

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:30:14 -0500

“An undisputed masterwork among Japanese photobooks, Eikoh Hosoe and Tatsumi Hijikata’s Kamaitachi was originally released in 1969 as a limited edition of 1,000 copies. Hosoe, the renowned photographer, and Hijikata, the founder of ankoku butoh dance, had visited a farming village in northern Japan, where Hijikata improvised a performance inspired by the legend of a weasel-like demon named Kamaitachi. As Hosoe photographed Hijikata’s spontaneous interactions with the landscape and with the people they encountered, the two artists together enacted an intense investigation of tradition and an exploration, both personal and symbolic, of contemporary convulsions in Japanese society. In 2005, Aperture published a limited-edition facsimile in homage to the original, in close consultation with the artist; now, they have made this enchanting body of work available in its first ever affordable trade edition, which was painstakingly reworked by renowned graphic artist Ikko Tanaka—the designer of the original volume—shortly before his death. His reinterpretation of this classic book object, which is truly a paragon of Japanese bookmaking, includes as a special bonus four never-before-published images from the classic Kamaitachi series.”

Eikoh Hosoe: Kamaitachi [Amazon]

“Mark Steinmetz completes his powerful and moving trilogy,...

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:16:23 -0500

“Mark Steinmetz completes his powerful and moving trilogy, ‘South’, with ‘Greater Atlanta’. Photographing in Atlanta and its outlying regions, Steinmetz provides his testimony on contemporary American civilization. Combining portraits and landscapes, he weaves a symbolic and lyrical investigation that subtly questions notions of progress. He further develops motifs - on the automobile, on the telephone - that were first introduced in ‘South Central’, and catalogues car culture, fast food, convenience stores, and suburban sprawl. Beautifully printed in duotone on matt art paper, ‘Greater Atlanta’ is printed in a first edition of 1,000 casebound copies.”

Greater Atlanta [Amazon]

“For photographers, the city of Paris must constitute a...

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:00:00 -0500

“For photographers, the city of Paris must constitute a genre of its own (alongside “nudes” or “botanical”), so perennially photogenic are its streets, skylines, storefronts and people. Here, William Eggleston—“The Father of Color Photography”—offers a brilliant, unusual take on Paris today, with depictions that completely revitalize our sense of this most picturesque of cities. Eggleston spent three years working throughout different seasons, to craft images that reveal surprising and rarely-seen facets of the city, as one might expect from the lens of a photographer most associated with the American South.”

William Eggleston: Paris [Amazon]

“In this exquisitely produced book, the influential...

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:57:08 -0500

“In this exquisitely produced book, the influential American photographer Robert Adams revisits the classic collection of nocturnal landscapes that he began making in the mid-1970s near his former home in Longmont, Colorado. Originally published by Aperture in 1985 as Summer Nights, this new edition has been carefully reedited and resequenced by the photographer, who has added 39 previously unpublished images. Illuminated by moonlight and streetlamp, the houses, roads, sidewalks and fields in Summer Nights, Walking retain the wonder and stillness of the original edition, while adopting the artist’s intention of a dreamy fluidity, befitting his nighttime perambulations. The extraordinary care taken with the new reproductions also registers Adams’ attention to the subtleties of the night, and conveys his appeal to look again at places we might have dismissed as uninteresting. Adams observes, “What attracted me to the subjects at a new hour was the discovery then of a neglected peace.”

Robert Adams: Summer Nights, Walking [Amazon]

“Edward Burtynsky’s Oil collects a decades’...

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:47:31 -0500

“Edward Burtynsky’s Oil collects a decades’ worth of photographing the world’s largest oil fields, refineries, freeway interchanges and automobile plants, in an attempt to comprehend the scale of production attending this most politicized of resources. The ideal photographer for this job, Burtynsky locates and documents the sites that urban dwellers never see, and questions human accountability. His imagery is vast in both scale and ambition, revealing the apparatus behind the energy we mine from dwindling resources, and the ongoing effects of the industrial revolution. “In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany,” Burtynsky explains: “it occurred to me that all the vast, man-altered landscapes I had been in pursuit of for over 20 years were all possible because of the discovery of oil and the mechanical advantage of the internal combustion engine.”

Edward Burtynsky: Oil [Amazon]

“Mike Disfarmer was a true American eccentric. Born Mike...

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:00:00 -0500

“Mike Disfarmer was a true American eccentric. Born Mike Meyer, he changed his name to distance himself from both the surrounding farming community of his native Arkansas and from his own kinfolk—claiming that a tornado had accidentally blown him onto the Meyer family farm as a baby. The son of a German-born Union soldier in the heart of the South, Disfarmer was an agnostic from Lutheran stock among the church-going Baptists and Methodists, and remained a confirmed bachelor in a community of large families.”

Disfarmer: The Vintage Prints [Amazon]

“Men wearing suits jousting with sailfish. Head-on bridge...

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:53:40 -0500

“Men wearing suits jousting with sailfish. Head-on bridge collision. Men with linoleum. Kitchen murder-suicide. Firemen playing donkey baseball. Ideal woman in apron. Through more than 10,000 images, Irwin Denison Norling, the unofficial town photographer for Bloomington, Minnesota, captured the strange juxtapositions, incongruities, and dark corners of the developing suburban America of the 1950s and ’60s. A competitive amateur glued to his police radio, Norling spent years examining the light and darkness, tragedies and desolation, rituals of community and celebration through the lens of the camera, deftly capturing the uneasy dichotomy between the familiar and subversive–the familiarly subversive. “That was the way it was. And the way it was, that’s what I was after.”

Suburban World: The Norling Photographs [Amazon]

“Recent world events have dramatically altered the...

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:22:08 -0500

“Recent world events have dramatically altered the cultural identity of airports. Where once they connoted excitement—the prospect of flight, remote destinations, encounters— today airports are loaded with very different associations and anticipations. Armed police officers, safety regulations and restrictions only heighten our feelings of insecurity. Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport has always been a special place for the Swedish photographer J.H. Engstrom. At the age of 10, he moved to Paris with his parents, and Charles de Gaulle was his first contact with a world beyond his native Sweden. The relocation created an intense relationship to the city of Paris, as well as to the Charles de Gaulle and airports in general. For the project CDG/JHE, Engstrom spent three weeks isolated in an airport hotel, photographing in and between the terminals. The airport became a place to observe public behavioral habits at a crucial juncture in its brief history.”

J.H. Engstrom: CDG/JHE [Amazon]

“In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Taryn...

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 11:29:16 -0500

“In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Taryn Simon documents spaces that are integral to America’s foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience. She has photographed rarely seen sites from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature security and religion. This index examines subjects that, while provocative or controversial, are currently legal.”

An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar [Amazon])

“Long known for his radiant black-and-white naturist...

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:00:00 -0500

“Long known for his radiant black-and-white naturist portraiture, Jock Sturges has also been quietly working in color for more than two decades. Life Time presents a broad range of this color work for the first time and carries forward Sturges’ extended portraits of families in Northern California counter-culture communities and on French naturist beaches.”

Jock Sturges: Life Time [Amazon]

“In 1956, a 28-year old William Klein arrived in Rome,...

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:32:00 -0500

“In 1956, a 28-year old William Klein arrived in Rome, fresh from the debut of his now classic monograph Life Is Good & Good for You in New York, to assist Federico Fellini on his film Nights of Cabiria. Filming was delayed, and so Klein instead strolled about the city in the company of Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia and other avant-garde Italian writers and artists who served as his guides. It was on these walks that Rome, a pioneering and brilliant visual diary of the city, was born. First published in 1959, Klein’s Rome features the quirky extended captions that distinguished his New York book, interspersed with observations about the city by Stendhal, Michelet, Mark Twain, Henry James and others. Today it is one of the most celebrated photography books of the twentieth century.”

William Klein: Rome [Amazon]

“Robin Schwartz, born in Passaic, New Jersey in 1957,...

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:42:59 -0500

“Robin Schwartz, born in Passaic, New Jersey in 1957, earned her MFA in photography from Pratt Institute in 1981. Her photographs have appeared in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.”

Robin Schwartz: Amelia’s World (Tiny Vices) [Amazon]

Nearly a century’s worth of Scurlock photographs combine...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:55:24 -0500

Nearly a century’s worth of Scurlock photographs combine to form a searing portrait of a black Washington in all its guises—its challenges and its victories, its dignity and its determination. Beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing into the 1990s, Addison Scurlock, followed by his sons, Robert and George, used their cameras to document and celebrate a community unique in the world, and a stronghold in the history and culture of the nation’s capital.

The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing the Promise [Amazon]

“Mitch Epstein’s latest project tackles one of the...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:52:38 -0400

“Mitch Epstein’s latest project tackles one of the most loaded issues on the nation’s agenda: what and who powers America? Between 2003 and 2008, prompted by the evacuation of an environmentally contaminated Ohio town, Epstein traveled the United States to document the country’s energy “hot spots,” where fossil fuel, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar power are produced, encountering further contaminations, Homeland Security obstacles, corporate invincibility and the occasional token of hope. In a post-Katrina and post-Patriot Act America, the angle of engagement permitted Epstein often varied, so that many of the power plants and refineries were shot from an enforced distance (“If you were Muslim, you’d be cuffed and taken in for questioning,” he quotes an F.B.I. agent in West Virginia telling him).”

Mitch Epstein: American Power [Amazon]

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“These images of public spaces - the streets, the park,...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:04:00 -0400

“These images of public spaces - the streets, the park, the metro, the shopping malls - are strangely disturbing and unsettling. Caught by the camera as moments as fleeting as the flicker from a TV screen they draw out our sense of unease about contemporary city life. It is an image of the city - any city - as if seen by a sleep-walker drifting in and out of consciousness. The players in this urban dream are indistinct. At times appearing against theatrical backdrops of washed out colours or suddenly, as the focus shifts, sharp against the cold, dull steel of an escalator. But always they seem somehow to be on the edge of reality.”

Dolores Marat - Edges [Amazon]

“Working from Memory is a collection of stories by the...

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:04:07 -0400

“Working from Memory is a collection of stories by the renowned photographer, painter and sculptor William Christenberry. Based on conversations with author and critic Susanne Lange, these stories elaborate the artist’s memories of the Deep South, in whose rich literary tradition they are steeped. In a lyrical but lucid prose, they set personal experience against the backdrop of important political and cultural moments in the southern states, endowing that landscape with a vividness that will be familiar to fans of the artist’s photography. Christenberry’s own photographs accompany these tales.”

William Christenberry: Working from Memory [Amazon]

“In 1981, Jeff Mermelstein began taking trips to Asbury...

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0400

“In 1981, Jeff Mermelstein began taking trips to Asbury Park, New Jersey, where he gravitated toward the abundant supply of bizarre characters populating this town made famous by Bruce Springsteen. Drawn to the seedy atmosphere and entranced by the taffy-rich colors, Mermelstein was mesmerized by the sights: a pink lady at a baby parade, a startled bag lady dressed in red, a cat-show judge named Mr. Friend. Things kept getting stranger for Mermelstein, whose first magazine assignment was to photograph animal actors, including the legendary four-pawed performers Morris the Cat, Lassie, Benji, the Merrill Lynch bull, the Exxon tiger, and Zippy, a performing chimp. “I still feel the excitement of hugging Zippy,” Mermelstein has noted, “and watching and photographing him in his bus as he entertained at a Bar Mitzvah on Long Island.” Inspired by these encounters with the odd and unusual, Mermelstein began to vigorously prowl the streets of New York City during the mid-’80s with some Kodachrome and a flash, snapping up scenes of vivid color, glitz, and plastic artifice. Attracted to the surreal, Mermelstein continued to document outlandish scenes, whether on magazine assignments or on adventures of his own devising - to dog shows, promotional events, and grand openings of malls across this colorful, far-too-colorful-for-words land. No Title Here catalogues the results of the past twenty years Mermelstein has spent photographing the wacky, the quirky, the off, and the oddly lyrical he has encountered across America.”

Jeff Mermelstein -No Title Here [Amazon]

“This first in-depth publication of photographer Tim...

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0400

“This first in-depth publication of photographer Tim Davisís work dissects the disenchantment and dissociation that have come to dominate American civil life. It is Davisís treatise on the state of contemporary politics, politics as an aestheticized banality abstracted from real issues of power. He finds freedom of expression exhibited at its most casual and cursory, with political, commercial and populist signage jostling for space and attention in the social landscape: His documentation of that landscape, as Peter Eeley of Frieze magazine interprets it, asks, ìWhat if campaign signs, badges, bumper stickers and flags arenít simply the ephemera of Americansí political lives, but their substance as well?î My Life in Politics represents photographic seeing at its finest and most subtle. Davis continues Stephen Shoreís colorist tradition, meshing the careful management of a quotidian palette with an incisive eye for those points at which light bends and refracts, becoming something other than mere illumination.”

Tim Davis: My Life in Politics [Amazon]