Photobooks, zines, reviewed, etc...

Thanks to everyone who sent book ideas my way. New books have been ordered as per your suggestions.

British Folk Part One - James Pearson-Howes

This arrived today.

In this short book, James begins to document some of the weird, wonderful and frankly quite odd traditions which pervade British culture and society. He has done a great job of capturing the atmosphere and dedication which goes into preserving such bizarre rituals.

The book fits nicely alongside Estelle Hanania’s fantastic work as to a certain extent they share a theme.

I hope James continues to document more and more of these folk rituals. As I look through the book I can’t help but feel how wonderful it would be to see the straw bear being paraded past!

Tell me about some cool photo books I can buy!

Where can you see a spaceman transform into someone who is passed out on the floor?

Check out GOLDEN PARACHUTE by Jared Ritz. This new zine is awesome. More like this please.

(Sorry guys, I used your photo, but just LOOK at that cover!)

DANS LA CHAMBRE VERTE - Sam Falls

and

HYPOTHESE D’UN CONTINENT - Charles Negre

I love this ‘blue zine’ series. Just when an edition sells out (like these two, sorry…) a new one becomes available (like this one).

I’ve been a fan of Sam Falls’ work for a while but it was good to see how well it translates to black and white.

Charles Negre’s images were new to me but just look at how good they are!

Looking forward to the next release (ordered already).

Life Adjustment Centre - Ryan McGinley

It’s been a good year for fans of Ryan’s work.

Just over 12 months ago we saw the release of Moonmilk (now sold out in its second edition) - a series of images shot in massive underground caves and presented in both book form and as a set of huge prints.

Earlier this year Everybody Knows This is Nowhere was released. I reviewed this collection of gorgeous black and white portraits as soon as I received it and the book remains a favourite to look through, if only to soak up the fabulous studio lighting.

I haven’t updated this site for just over a week simply because I’ve had nothing new arrive. That changed earlier today when Life Adjustment Centre landed on my desk.

This new book - published by Dashwood Books - presents two distinct series of photographs. First, an extension of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere in which animals are included in the shots. If Everybody Knows This is Nowhere represented a change in direction from Ryan’s well known outdoor work, these images bring the outdoor into the studio in the form of these wild creatures.

The second series - which is intermingled with the first, as if to further emphasise the meeting of the old and the new Ryan - is a continuation of his early work taken on his infamous road trips across America. This is currently the most accessible way to get hold of this work in print and I recommend the book highly on this basis.

Dashwood have done another great job in publishing this and the staff were as friendly as always when I ordered it. The printing and finish are excellent and my only quibble is that some of the images weren’t as big as I would have liked (but this is always a problem when trying to include landscape images in a portrait orientation book).

My favourite photo in the book is Amanda (Railroad) 2010 but the whole thing is really rather good.

So Now Then

As we are mid way through the 2010 Hereford Photography Festival, it seems as good a time as any to mention this book which was published for the 2006 festival.

What I like about this book is how many connections there are between the work featured here and books which are being published right now. Even though this is 4 years old it feels very relevant.

For example, you’ve got Boris Mikhailov who has a new book coming out soon from Morel and Trent Parke whose book ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’ was published earlier this year by Little Brown Mushroom Books.

This book contains a small selection of work from 14 photographers and 3 essays. It’s not the most amazing book I’ve seen, but it’s nice enough and acts as a good reference for the work of these photographers which might not be readily available elsewhere.

New York City - Squale Photos

A while back I wrote about Mauerreste - The Berlin Wall 20 Years Later, a book depicting the remnants of the Berlin Wall. Recently New York City was made available, and just like last time the book is currently free of charge.

There are some great street photos from around New York in this book. When I looked through the book I felt like I was walking to work on a crisp autumn morning with the city waking up and moving around me. Then, it felt like a walk home again with the sun setting at the end of a street.

In terms of the presentation, I particularly like the translucent cover (I can’t quite remember the name of the material unfortunately) and the whole thing has a sturdy/substantial feel to it.

This is great - well done.

Unknown Land - Louis Porter and Downcasting - Beau Brashares

I recently received these two new books from Doubleplusgood Books, which you may remember as being Stuart Woodman’s publishing enterprise that sprang into life with the publication of his first book - Now We Are 30. As this had resonated particularly strongly with me (thanks to the combined factors of me turning 30 and my love of Polaroids), I was keen to see what would happen when Stuart published someone else’s work.

In Unknown Land, Louis takes us on a tour of the decay and cracks in the seemingly spotless face of urban Australian life. Using the harsh sunlight to great effect, his ability to spot small but significant details, combine several of these into one great photo, and his immaculate use of colour make this book very rewarding to look through.

In Downcasting, Beau abstains from the use of colour entirely to take us on a rather magical tour of New York in which the traditional tourist views of the attractions are replaced with small moments where life and light intersect to great effect. The use of light and shadow in this book really is incredible - see the photo labelled “757” for example. Beau’s view of New York is infinitely more beautiful than many posed/formal photographs of the city, and yet each scene looks like it was simply stumbled upon by accident.

There are similarities between these two titles (the labelling of photos with the location being one obvious example) and the two books compliment each other well. Based on these two it looks like we have a lot to look forward to from Doubleplusgood Books.

Covers - Ofer Wolberger

I really like the latest book in The Photographic Project series. It’s a beautiful publication - staple bound, dark brown cover with silver lettering and gorgeous, thick cream paper throughout.

The book contains a series of photographs - or perhaps scans? - of book covers. A full catalogue of the covers included in the books follows the plates, and mine came with a large poster sized print of one of the covers featured in the book.

This book is particularly appropriate in the age of the digital hoarder. With bit torrent came a rise in people hoarding masses of digital content - far too much for any individual to consume in a lifetime. Enjoying consuming the media they collect is not the point - the objective is to simply amass as much as possible, trading with like-minded individuals online to fulfil a self-imposed, but, due to the never ending flow of music and film releases, ultimately futile objective.

Whilst it’s easy to mock and dismiss such a seemingly pointless hobby, is it really that different from the age in which books were collected, not to be read, but to be displayed? The age in which books could either be bought quite cheaply in a format designed for reading, or more expensively - leather bound - for display is not that far behind us, and the passion for collecting photography books that I share with you follows quite naturally from this.

Perhaps further investigation will reveal what Ofer is trying to tell us or share with us. The covers are arranged in alphabetical order by book title and I’ve already noticed that not every letter of the alphabet is accounted for. I’m interested to see what else I’m going to discover.

Maybe it’s not as complicated as that, but to me this is the joy of self-publishing. The artist here is accountable to no-one. If he has chosen to put out a book of book covers for no reason other than a personal desire to do so we should accept it as such and revel in the joy of living in an age in which this can be done.

Projects like this deserve our support, and I’m pleased to be able to recommend this particular series of books once again. Now I’m going to get back to flicking through it, savouring the old book covers.