(via Aperture Foundation | Aperture Magazine)

Ryan Foerster 
Ryan Foerster 
7 x 8.5 in., 48 pages, soft cover, color offset 
Text by Bob Nickas 
Edition of 500 
ISBN 978-0-9847300-1-8 
Publication date: May 2012

(via Hassla)

Unordinary Lives, Afghanistan 2003 - 2009
Manca Juvan
afterwords by Clare Lockhart and Karim Merchant, design by Bostjan Pavletic
196 pages
21 x 26 cm
Offset printing
Edition size: 700 copies
Price: 50 Euros + shipping

“More than ten years after 9/11 and the international community’s intervention against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the promises of bringing democracy and rebuilding this war-torn nation have proved elusive. The ongoing war and instability in Afghanistan - justified in the name of international security yet sweetened with fleeting glimpses of domestic peace, development and prosperity - continues to diminish the hope of the Afghan people, who have been caught up in this endless conflict of interests and struggles for money, power, and control. Stories of ordinary Afghans deserve to be both told and seen in order to remind us what the real images of war and poverty - of lives far from ordinary - look like.”

To order: http://unordinarylives.com/buy-the-book/

The Soho described by Robert Louis Stevenson in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde as ‘a district of some city in a nightmare’ is dramatically different to the one discovered in 2011 by renowned Swedish photographer Anders Petersen. As part of a series of off-site artist commissions supported by Bloomberg, Petersen was invited by The Photographers’ Gallery to undertake a four-week residency in the bubbling creative underbelly of London. Turning his direct and unflinching gaze to the streets of Soho, Petersen produced a series which is both penetrating and sensitive to his subjects. His intimate, diaristic style of coarse black and white photography captures the essence of today’s Soho while drawing you back into the depths of its history.

For a month Petersen immersed himself in the life of the famous London district, documenting the streets, pubs, cafes and private homes of the residents. This latest installment of his series City Diaries is a testament to the dynamism and diversity of the area and the people who frequent and live in it.

(via MACK - Anders Petersen - SOHO)

Who Dares Wins

By Stephen Wooldridge

Digital Colour print

289mm x 380mm

Edition of 300

Newspaper

28PP

Project Description:

Who dares wins is a fictional portrayal of four young men preparing for a career with the British Army. The series is a comment on both the Armed Forces and society, politically and socially. Using these autonomous characters, the viewer is prompted to consider these young men as individuals and as a representation of the British Army today. The series is at times absurd, dull and melancholic. Such are the lives of these individuals.

www.stephenwooldridge.com

photolia:

Beaufort West. Mikhael Subotzky (South Africa). 

Photographes by Mikhael Subotzky 
Essay by Jonny Steinberg 

Published by Chris Boot, 2008. Edition of 3,000 copies.

[Purchase Chris Boot, photo-eye]

Beaufort West is the first book by Mikhael Subotzky. The book opens with aerial images, - Beaufort West is a small poor rural town in South Africa. Located between Cape Town and Johannesburg, it became a transit point for travelers who can get here food, sleep, sex, gas. The place is also known fot its prison, “situated in a traffic circle in the centre of the town in the middle of the N1 highway”.  Subotzky takes us through the town documenting its social landscape, marginalized residents (many of them are trashpickers, prostitutes, homeless, prisoners), their homes, surroundings. The portraits are surprisingly intimate. Beautiful pictures in contrast to miserable reality they depict. 

Beaufort West is a beautiful oversized book. It has very clean design and a nice cover in a blue fabric. The essay at the end of the book is by known South African writer Jonny Steinberg. Mikhael Subotzky also provides a short commentary for each image. 

More
A Conversation with Mikhael Subotzky 
Review by Joerg Colberg
 

Exploring “The Pleasures of Good Photographs”

A Flak Photo Discussion with Tom Griggs

Flak Photo is is teaming up with fototazo creator Tom Griggs to host an online community conversation focused on essays from Gerry Badger’s recently published The Pleasures of Good Photographs.

(via Exploring “The Pleasures of Good Photographs” | A Flak Photo Discussion with Tom Griggs | FlakPhoto.com)

Dora Fobert
Hand-bound newspaper, 64 pages
Edition of 50
28. 9 × 38 cm

This is the first publication to be produced exclusively by Chopped Liver Press and is already almost out of print. It contains the work of Dora Fobert who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940–42. She assisted Jakub Boim, official ghetto photographer and began her own series of portraits of women in the Warsaw Ghetto shortly before being deported to Treblinka, August 1942. These photographs were saved by Adela K, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. They were taken in a studio in the ghetto on Chlodna Street in June 1942. Because of the limited supply of photographic chemicals, they were never properly fixed and remain unstable under natural light. Broomberg and Chanarin presented this works for the first time at Alias Photo Month in Krakow, 2011. These works are now included in major collections including the Saatchi collection, London.

(via Dora Fobert | Chopped Liver Press)

Fundraiser for Shane Lavalette

ABOUT THIS PROJECT:

” In 2010 I was commissioned by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to create a new body of photographs for their “Picturing the South” series, which includes past artists Sally Mann, Emmet Gowin, Richard Misrach, Dawoud Bey, Alex Webb and Alec Soth. I’m honored to be amongst these artists, and look forward to exhibiting new work with photographers Martin Parr and Kael Alford in June of 2012.

Having grown up in the Northeast, it was primarily through traditional music—old time, blues, gospel, etc.—that I had formed a relationship with the South. With that in mind, the region’s rich musical history became the natural entry point for my work. I was not interested in making a documentary about Southern music today, but desired to explore the relationship between traditional music and the contemporary landscape through a more poetic lens. Moved by the themes and stories past down in songs, I let the music itself carry the pictures. 

Two years later, with the project now complete, I have begun working on a mock-up of a book which I believe is the ideal venue for this body of work. From the beginning I imagined this project in book form. With your help, I hope to make this book physical in the coming months. “

– Shane Lavalette

(via Picturing the South, A Photobook by Shane Lavalette — Kickstarter)

Paul Graham 
The Present

114 pages, including 13 gatefolds

24.5 cm x 30.5 cm
Hardback with embossed cover

Publication date: April 2012

ISBN 978-1-907946-18-9

Publisher’s Description:

Street photography is perhaps the defining genre of photographic art. Seminal works by Walker Evans, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand display photography’s astonishing dance with life, and its unique role in forming our perceptions of the modern world.

The Present is Paul Graham’s contribution to this legacy. The images in this book come unbidden from the streets of New York, but are not quite what we might expect, for each moment is brought to us with its double – two images taken from the same location, separated only by the briefest fraction of time. We find ourselves in sibling worlds, where a businessman with an eye patch becomes, an instant later, a man with an exaggerated wink; a woman eating a banana walks towards us, and a small focus shift reveals the blind man right behind her.

Although there are flashes of surprise – a woman walks confidently down the street one moment, only to tumble to the ground a second later – for the most part there is little of the drama street photography is addicted to. People arrive and depart this quiet stage, with the smallest shift of time and attention revealing the thread between them. A suited young businessman crosses the road, only to be replaced by his homeless alternate; a woman in a pink t-shirt is engulfed with tears, but seconds later there is a content shopper in her place.

The Present gives us an impression quite different to most street photography where life is frozen rigid. Here we glimpse the continuum: before/after, coming/going, either/or. A ‘present’ that is a fleeting and provisional alignment, with no singularity or definitiveness; a world of shifting awareness and alternate realities, where life twists and spirals in a fraction of a second to another moment, another world, another consciousness.

The Present is the third in Paul Graham’s trilogy of projects on America which began with American Night in 2003 and was followed in 2007 by a shimmer of possibility (winner of the Paris Photo Book Prize 2011 for the most significant photo book of the past 15 years). The Present takes Graham’s reputation as a master of the book form to new heights, employing multiple gatefolds to convey passages of time and the unfolding of urban life.

(via MACK - Paul Graham - The Present)

ampersandgallery:

Our new book featuring photographs by  Jefferson Hayman is now available.

The first 15 are signed & include a miniature gelatin silver print.

These are selling quickly.

Purchase online here.

- Publication -

04.24.2012

Gazed Upon

Curated by Amy Elkins

Featuring artists, Jen Davis, 
Cara Phillips & Stacey Tyrell

Essay by photographer & writer, 
Sarah Palmer

5 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. 
Perfect bound soft cover 
74 pages 
29 plates 
Printed on Mohawk Superfine

Designed & published by Ampersand 
Printed & bound in Portland, Oregon

Edition of 100

Numbers 1-10 are signed by curator Amy Elkins & include one signed & numbered print by each artist.

In bringing together the work of North American artists Jen Davis, Cara Philips & Stacey Tyrell in the current exhibition, Gazed Upon, curator & artist Amy Elkins asks the viewer to interrogate his or her own sense of looking. We are presented with three artists who challenge standard notions of “beauty” & perception, causing a schism between what we think we see & how we might read or interpret it. Along these lines, we, as viewers, are directed through the title of the exhibition to employ the gaze, that loaded Lacanian term that piles all of our potency & desires onto the “object” upon which we gaze. These artists, working in different media & different shooting styles all dance with this complex set of ideas about the role of the observer, how the gaze, itself, is employed & how it might reflect back on an audience.

- Sarah Palmer (from the book essay)

(via Ampersand - Gallery & Bookshop — Gazed Upon - Guest Curated by Amy Elkins)

Title: Surfing Hong Kong
Artist: James Feldman
Designer: Elise Inthavixay
40 pages, 37 color plates
24.4 x 16.8 cm / 9 5/8 x 6 5/8 in
edition of 500
offset lithograph
ISBN: 978-988-16222-1-1


In Surfing Hong Kong (2012) James Feldman combines “soulful” surf photographs taken 15 to 20 years ago in California, with more recent photographs taken in Hong Kong (where he has lived since 2005). In these 37 images, the moods and surroundings of two discrete periods of a life are woven digitally together, and resonate in a way that’s as uncomfortable with the label “fiction”, as with the label “documentary”.

book available here: http://hongkongpaintings.com/surfing_hong_kong_order.html

Twentysix Gasoline Cans
Publication date: March, 2012
Perfect-bound, 5.5”x7.25”
Printed by McGreevy Pro Lab
© Joseph Putrock
Edition of 300

available through Small Batch Editions

Twentysix Gasoline Cans by Joseph Putrock is an homage to Ed Ruscha’s 1962 seminal book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations. This book contains 26 color images shot by Putrock over a 3 year period. 

Twentysix Gasoline Cans is available for purchase for $20 for the book alone, or for $50 with a choice of one of two 8″x10″ digital c-prints by the artist. The two available prints are Hidden Gas Can (Option One - 20 available) and Hoader’s Can Can #1, Cohoes, NY (Option Two - 20 available).

About the artist 

Joseph Putrock’s photographs are simple observations of everyday life. His photographs contain nothing but the objects or scenes that everyone encounters on a daily basis, and often times miss. He merely captures these simplicities, which may have gone unnoticed, and holds them up for further contemplation. Odd Juxtapositions, idiosyncratic colors, and humor are all elements that creep into these sometimes complex, and sometimes pedantic images.

For more information on Joseph Putrock, visit Stafford Contemporary.

Lucas Foglia
A Natural Order

ISBN: 978-1-59005-352-2
Hardcover, 11 x 15, 80 pages, 45 four-color plates.

Publisher’s Description:

In the summer of 2006, Lucas Foglia set out to photograph a network of people who had left cities and suburbs to live off the grid in the rural southeastern United States. Many were motivated by environmental concerns, others were driven by religious beliefs or predictions of economic collapse. While everyone he photographed was working to maintain self-sufficiency, none lived in complete isolation from the mainstream. Instead, they chose which parts of the modern world to embrace and which to leave behind. The body of work, made over a five-year period, is gathered together in the artist’s first book, A Natural Order – a stunning collection that explores a human relationship with wilderness and the persistent libertarianism of the American psyche. Foglia’s photographs, at once iconic and intimate, provoke us to take a candid look at individuals whose chosen lifestyles seem both exotic and unnervingly close to home. Lucas Foglia exhibits and publishes his photographs internationally. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Pilara Foundation and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Fine Art, and has been published in Aperture Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Contact Sheet, and PDN’s 30.

(via Nazraeli Press, Books on the Fine and Applied Arts)

Sarah Hobbs: Small Problems in Living

Quote from publisher:

This is a superbly illustrated overview of the work of contemporary artist/photographer Sarah Hobbs. The photographs collected here are the product of an ongoing exploration into our neurotic tendencies. Hobbs’s work explores phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorders and how we attempt to deal with them. Set in domestic spaces, the images illustrate the idea that even the most comfortable spaces can house our uneasiness. A compilation of three series, the book allows the viewer to see the work as a whole in order to gain a full understanding of Hobbs’ intent to explore the human psyche and relish the idea that we are all beautifully flawed.

Artists: Sarah Hobbs

Authors: Lisa Kurzner, Winifred Gallagher

Publisher: Charta

Format: 28 x 28 cm

Pages: 72

Binding: hardback

Illustrations: 25 including 24 in color

Year: 2011

Edition: english

ISBN 978-88-8158-831-2

D.A.P. spring 2012 catalogue: p. 172

www.sarahhobbs.net

Thomas Demand 
The Dailies

64 pages
16 colour plates
37 cm x 34 cm
Large format leporello bound book with magnetic closing system in faux leather
Hardback embossed

Publication date: April 2012

ISBN 978-1-907946-19-6

Publisher’s Description:

“Existing in a state of continual motion, from the hotel room to the road, the life of the travelling salesman, the commercial traveller, is experienced as a perpetual passenger, punctuated by both the shifting of place and the marking of time.”

In the mid 1970s, architect Harry Seidler designed a space for the historic Commercial Travellers’ Association in Sydney, Australia. In collaboration with Pier Luigi Nervi, he created a circular building that sprouts up from the street like a radiating flower.

For the 25th Kaldor Public Art Project, Thomas Demand’s series The Dailies occupies an entire floor of Seidler’s structure. The floor of sixteen bedrooms, which house The Dailies, extend off a circular corridor creating a labyrinthine effect. Demand’s images sit above the beds in each room, the transient scenes capturing everyday moments and objects, suspended in time like the environment around them.

Working within the parameters of his now well-known technique, Demand created carefully formed paper and card sculptures, photographed and then destroyed them. His creations are based on things he saw and photographs he took while travelling and walking the street. Demand describes the series as like Haiku poetry, simple fragments strung together to inspire reflection.

The Dailies includes contributions by designer Miuccia Prada and US author Louis Begley.

The book, a work of art in itself, expands to a 16-pointed star, its concertina pages unfurling to echo the shape of the CTA building.

(via MACK - Thomas Demand - The Dailies)