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 “Three books to give collectors haunted eyes and sleepless nights. A self-destructing book, an indestructible book, and a book actually made of money. ”
The Green Child is, to put it simply, the strangest book on this list. The introduction and blurbs speak of an “other-worldly suspense” or an “unearthly, hypnotic radiance.” Even a basic synopsis of the plot is almost too strange to convey.
Welcome to Book Hell, “a club devoted to the collecting of obscure, esoteric and otherwise weird books.” — finding original postings of Book Hell are like wandering through Hell’s seven circles- just another boring spam filled hole.
A Journey Round My Skull, explores “Unhealthy book fetishism from a reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature.”
The Voynich manuscript “is the most mysterious of all texts. It is seven by ten inches in size, and about 200 pages long. It is made of soft, light-brown vellum. It is written in a flowing cursive script in alphabet that has never been seen elsewhere. Nobody knows what it means.”
CODEX SERAPHINIANUS by Luigi Serafini, is one of the world’s strangest and mysterious books: “The Codex is a lavishly produced book that purports to be an encyclopedia for an imaginary world in a parallel universe, with copious comments in an incomprehensible language. It is written in a florid script, entirely invented and completely illegible, and illustrated with watercolor paintings.” -Archimedes Laboratory
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 The following list of reviews is reproduced from the “Grain Newsletter” by permission from photographer Bob Mosher. “Grain” is “an alternative newsletter for traditional photography” that Mosher has created. At the Grain site you can also view portfolios of photography by Mosher. Book Beat stocks (or can order) all the titles on the list and I’ve included links if they have been currently entered online. Here now is Bob Mosher’s annual top ten holiday photography book list:
This years crop of photography books and (films) does not disappoint with some steadfast older photographers’ plus a few new and unusual titles to choose from, here is a handful for your consideration. ….read on good friends, happy holidays. --Bob Mosher
1. The Americans by Robert Frank
2. The Complete Film Works by Robert Frank
3. RFK by Paul Fusco
4. Unknown Halsman by Oliver Halsman Rosenberg
5. Life-Time by Jock Sturges
6. Land 250 by Patti Smith
7. A Certain Alchemy by Keith Carter
8. Somewhere There’s Music by Larry Fink
9. Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric-The Lost Manuscripts by Barry Feinstein & Bob Dylan
10. Frezno by Tony Stamolis
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The Americans
  The marketing banner wrapping the cover says it all, “Few books in the history of photography have had as powerful an impact as The Americansâ€. Yes, The Americans is 50 years old and many – (most) photographers own it and many have learned how to see photographically and use it as a point of inspiration for their work. Stiedl, the publisher has reproduced the original Grove,
Aperture versions at least as good with heavy weight paper and fuller toned reproductions. Frank personally supervised the printing of this book, so here you have the opportunity to purchase the output that the photographer placed his stamp on. If you have anyone in your circle of influence that is seriously interested in or becoming a photographer, this book is a must. The reason the book hit the American public as idiosyncratic and even un-American at the time in 1957 was we were still in the aftermath of WWII America with McCarthyism and the cold war as realities. Most people grew up with Life, Look and Saturday Evening Post magazine brand of
visual vocabulary as opposed to Frank’s casual but steel edged ironic images of America.
The Complete Films of Robert FrankÂ
Frank’s output of nine + films since 1959, when he and Alfred Leslie produced ‘Pull My Daisy’, is not as well known as his still photography. But the films have a real following among indie-film afficianados. Pull My Daisy’, started Frank’s path of making nine films in 15 a year span from 1959 to 1975. Pull My Daisy’, 28 min., Vol. I dialogue and narration over by Jack Kerouac with the beats, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Peter Orlovsky, Alice Neel and Pablo, Frank’s young son. A hillairous story of a railroad
brakeman and wife (Neel) who invite a clergyman over for dinner and the beats crash the party and the fun continues. This is a masterful mix of seemingly camera verde and improvisational dialogue until Leslie revealed in 1968 that the whole film was carefully planned and executed by he and Frank. Editor’s note, After seeing Pull My Daisy’, at least 10 times, it is one of Frank’s best films. While a graduate student at the Institute of Design,Chicago, Aaron Siskind invited Frank to visit in 1970 and show several films to us as a private viewing and give his thoughts on film and photography in general. I have been a street photographer and a Frank fan ever since.          Â
‘The Sin of Jesus’, 37 min.Vol. I. produced in 1961. About a woman working at a chicken plucking factory and her listless husband. An off the wall subject but it must be remembered that Frank is first and formost a still photographer and not that comfortable with spoken or written words but must be viewed as part of his ouervre.
‘Me and My Brother’, 85 min. Vol. I b&w & color with music, feature length film, a rich story
of a man who is trying to help his catatonic brother in a plot that twists and turns. This is a film
that must be seen more than once to fully appreciate.
‘Ok End Here’ 32 min. Vol. II 1963, Frank’s first attempt at a different format and approach, seen as a work in progress type films and interestingly he did not make another until 1969. ‘Conversations in Vermont’, 32 min. Vol. II 1969 b&w a film with Robert and his daughter and son, Pablo. The pain comes through loud and clear regarding some miss steps that many of us experience in marriage and child rearing. By this time, Frank had divorced Mary and  Frank does not sugar coat anything, you really feel his angst in this film as he endeavors to come to grips with his situation.
‘Liferaft Earth’, 37 min. Vol. II 1969 b&w a film championed by Stewart Brand, the founder of the ‘Whole Earth Catalog’, a late 60’s to mid 80’s. It was a compendium of ecological discussions in the form of articles, books and energy saving hardware of the time. Brand
retained Robert to make the film of 100 people who enclosed themselves in a plastic enclosure for a week long starve in to heighten awareness of our dying planet. Sound familiar? Maybe we should get Al Gore to speak with Mr. Brands’ heirs to do another similar film considering ‘Liferaft Earth’ was made almost 40 years ago.
‘About Me: A Musical’, 30 min. Vol III. 1971 Autobiographical, portrayed through a young woman who as Frank, is placed in sketches that depict Franks’ life. ‘S-8 Stones Footage from Exile on Main St.’8 Min. Vol III. 1971. As it turns out,1971 was a very prolific year for Frank, (Editor’s note: I spent a week at a workshop with Robert in June, 1971 and he had just returned from touring with the Rolling Stones and had left them abruptly because as he said, “—to not know what city you are in along with the other degrading stuff
going on, was over the topâ€, to him, so he left them early.). The Stones successfully blocked Frank from using the 1972 film, ‘Cocksucker Blues’. However, bootleg copies exist and Frank is allowed to show the film no more than 5 times per year to audiences and only if he was present. The Exile on Main Street film was made as a promotion for the Stones album, of the same name. The album cover, by Robert Frank, is worth obtaining for the pictures alone but the music is from the Stones most prolific and arguably, their best from ’68 to ’72 period. Even though, Mick Jagger liked, Cocksucker Blues and said, “It’s a fucking good film, Robert, but if it
shows in America we’ll never be allowed in the country againâ€. A court order has prevented its wide spread viewing, ever since.
‘Keep Busy’, 44 min. Vol. III, 1975. “I am filming the outside in order to look inside,” Robert Frank once said about this film, made in part in Frank’s home in Nova Scotia, is more light hearted than some of the others. It is reminiscent of ‘Pull My Daisy’, in its parody of the middle class world.
Paul Fusco: RFK Aperture, New York, 2008. 224 pp., 120 four-color illustrations., 11¾x9½”.
Fusco, a Look magazine staff photographer was given the enviable assignment of photographing the entire 1968 Robert F. Kennedy funeral from New York to Washington DC. This is a tour de force of what the books marketing calls, documentary photography. I prefer just, photography on thehighest level, it reminds one of Walker Evans ‘Subway Photos’ of the 1940’s, in its unvarnished starkness and simplicity. The thousands of people of all ages and nationalities, mostly standing, some saluting and all exhibit the decorum that is displayed in a funeral home of a deceased loved one. The book is interspersed with RFK’s quotes like this one, “What we need in the US is not division; what we need in the US is not hatred; is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one anotherâ€. Fusco in a recent interview of what he saw when the train slowly moved out from Penn station to make its way to Washington DC,on June 8th. Fusco was not prepared for the breathtaking spectacle that occurred on that day he was rather thinking about the funeral the next day at Arlington cemetery and was stunned and overwhelmed by the people at the side of the train tracks in silent vigilance. He opened the train car window and photographed the people all day and is sharing 120 photographs in this publication. Also, there are 70 never before published photographs, that were not in Fusco’s earlier out of print book, RFK Funeral Train, published in 2000.This book is highly recommended.
Unknown Halsman
One of the of the most striking things of this book is its bright yellow cover with a self portrait of Halsman under a dark cloth,
taken with Halsman’s own large format twin lens camera designed and built by him in 1936. Book design and edited with
the forward written by grandson, Oliver Halsman Rosenberg. Halsman, one of the twentieth centuries premier portrait
photographers is well known for his many photographs of artists, celebrities and famous persons’ of the 40’s through the 70’s.
Who can forget the great ‘Dali in space photographs’. The Dali photographs are not highlighted in this book but grandson Halsman gives us a view of Halsman that we may not have considered before as a witty photographer and inventor of cameras. Halsman was a former engineering student before he became a photogapher . There are outtakes from his magazine work and contact sheets, showing a glimpse of how Halsman worked as a photographer. The book is like a well put together family album that in part gives its appeal.
This book is a must if you are a Halsman fan. Halsman is a guy that has been around forever and is in all of the photo history books but still deserves a look by some doubting folks.
Life Time, photographs by Jock Surges, Steidl 192 pp., 134 color illustrations., 12½x14″
It is noticed that most of the distributors for this book are currently out of stock, not surprising given the subject matter that this book is chock full of, nubile young nude girls and women with a few stoic young guy’s thrown in. I am being facetious I must confess and
really, Mr. Struges has earned his reputation as a serious artist in (b&w), now color photographs of the female form. For Sturges devotees this book will not disappoint with 134 color plates of the most scrumptious color photographs ever assembled in book format.
Really, as a coffee table book this book is destined to become, it will not embarrass anyone’s mother-in-law when she comes to visit. The photos are more frontal showing full genitalia but not sexually suggestive in the least. As a matter of fact, it is noticed Sturges goes to considerable trouble to have some of the youngsters shown with skinned up knees and elbows, now there is wholesomeness for you. Jock, in a statement at the end of the book regarding ‘why are the models nude’, he emphasizes his long standing trust, friendship and
involvement with the families perhaps, avoiding any potential issues with American book censors. But frankly, the censors should concern themselves with the material that has no redeeming merit to it whatsoever. Sturges lives in Seattle, WA but has to travel to France and the Netherlands to freely photograph his subjects without getting labled, or worse arrested for child molestation.
Leave this one open for your consideration.
Patti Smith: Land 250
The pictures in the book are from pieces made from 1967 to 2007 a 40 year span of work. It is interesting to see a person who has earned their chops at one creative venue and then turn to another as in this case with Smith’s work, sometimes it works out, as with this book.  What is refreshing here is, Smith used photography to illustrate how she felt at various times in her life, not follow a theme or subject based series of photographs. In Patti Smith’s work, the editor is reminded of another fabulous photographer, Sally Mann and her ‘What Remains’, body of work presented at the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington DC in ’02. Mann’s work shown in glass plate format is haunting and mysterious also unforgettable. Not sure Smith comes up to to this mark but the book is worth an examination.
ï€A Certain Alchemy by Keith Carter
The book is filled with contrasts, yin and yang, for example a photogram of a bat juxtaposed on the opposite page with a stretched out lace handkerchief. Carter, no novice at sequencing his photographs into book format, ‘A Certain Alchemy’, is no exception. The photographs in the book are toned, as his originals and that gives them a sumptuous quality.that matches his themes drawn from the
animal world, popular culture, folkore and religion. Interspersed with the photograph are quotes by Carter, ie: “the photos that work the best for me are the ones grounded in grace and intelligenceâ€Â I believe this statement would fit for most photographers’ working today, as well. Also, reminded of the 1970’s era work by Nickolas Nixon and Richard Avedon’s sequential photos of people dying day by day with incurable diseases. Carter photographed his mother in her last year of life stricken with Alzheimer’s disease. One can only think that these photographers’ are going through some things emotionally to show this side of their personal lives. The pictures are not easy to look at when you know the ultimate outcome of the person being photographed but they are beautiful and tender images, just the same. The only criticism that can be leveled at this book, is its glossy (clay-coated) paper, even though the printing quality
is high. Of course,content and printing quality should win out over paper type, in making a decision regarding purchasing this book.
Larry Fink: Somewhere There’s MusicÂ
Fink is a great photographer and has been photographing for decades. Couple of Gugenhiems and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, along with a few large shows at MOMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Also, he is shown heavily in European
museums. In other words, this guy knows where to stand when he is photographing anything. He seems to have the
beat with this book of jazz greats. The photographs are mostly unpublished b&w photographs from the 50’s to the ‘70’s. Many performance photos but quite a few that show the artists’ behind the scenes, practicing, jamming and hanging out in clubs. A sequence of the late great John Coltrane, showing his saxophone, another with Coltane’s back to the camera and finally a photo of Coltane
sleeping or passed out on a couch, not one with Coltrane’s face. This book should be considered if you are a classic jazz fan but doubly so if you collect or appreciate Larry Fink’s work.
Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript text by Bob Dylan. Photographs by Barry Feinstein. 141 pages, 10â€x9 1/2â€.
Feinstein was a travelling buddy of Dylan’s in the mid-60’s when Feinstein drove Dylan around and hung out with him while he attended to various gigs all over the world. Feinstein is no lackey, his photographs are just as strong as Dylan’s poems and Feinstein has a flair for juxtaposing disparate photos a melding of photographs and poetry. With the photographs depicting the tackiness of mid-sixties
Hollywood and Dylan’s words, this is a fun book. The collaboration between Dylan and Feinstein was just recently unearthed by Dylan and contains 23 poems and many photographs by Feinstein showing a decidedly unglamorous side of Hollywood, with over the hill stars like bloated Jayne Mansfield, a gaunt like Judy Garland and Bette Davis with tons of make up on and many others. Bob Dylan is a great artist and he immediately resonated with Feinstein;s photographs of the Hollywood world before committing it to his poetry. In this way, it is much like Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank’s ‘Pull My Daisy’, 1959 independent film of narration and visuals. It must
also be noted that Barry Feinstein went on to be a photographer of 60’s and 70’s rock and roll legends for many magazines.
Even though, ‘Hollywood-Foto-Rhetoric’is not printed well, it is highly recommended for your consideration.
Frezno by Tony Stamolis
Tony Stamolis is a 38 year old contemporary NYC photographer returned to Fresno to spend time with his ailing mother a few years ago. In coming back to Fresno, Stamolis realized that everything had changed, now the scene to him was a visual goldmine just waiting for coherency. Although, photographer returned to Fresno to spend time with his ailing mother a few years ago. In coming back to Fresno, Stamolis realized that everything had changed, now the scene to him was a visual goldmine just waiting for coherency. Although, Fresno could be anywhere in the USA that we have all seen, piled up shopping carts, posing young people of all stripes,
donuts and guns in the same shop it is all Americana. The leitmotif is familiar in this work but Stamolis has the advantage of being from Fresno and many of the photographs feel like a personal album, as well. The photographs are edited with care and well paced
throughout the book, the size is a bit small and the printing is not up to say a Steidl publishing house but for a first book effort, it is hoped Stamolis keeps working in this vein. Recommended for your consideration.
Other notable books:
1.Berenice Abbott 2 volume set published, 2008. This is the definitive and beautifully reproduced book on her 60 year career in photography. A collectors special and should not be missed. Go to http://www.steidlville.com/books/781-Berenice-Abbott.html for more information.
2. Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power published 2008. Here it is, Avedon’s great portraits of the well known revered figures such as, W.H. Auden juxtaposed against Bob Dylan, poets, artists, politicians, celebrities, royalty and all public people of every stripe.
Go to http://www.steidlville.com/books/796-Richard-Avedon-Portraits-of-Power.html
3. Richard Avedon: Performance published, 2008. 205 plates, some in color. Another portrait book by Abrams housed in a good sized Avedon photographic treasure tome with an interesting cover fold over.
4. Michael Subotsky: Beaufort West published 2008. by Boot publishers. This is an eye opening book dealing with West South African struggles with apartheid with all of its complexities. For more go to, http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/newphotography/mikhael.html
5/ Kenro Izu published 2007. Nazraeli Press. The DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts) in their newly opened deSalle Gallery of Photography featured Izu’s work with many of the photographs in this book. Not only are the photographs made from a 14 x 20 inch view camera, which is remarkable in itself but the prints are of the Platinum process, as well. In September, this year Kenro gave a lecture at the DIA to discuss his modus operandi and sign books. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak which was much like the work, subtle and
full of meaning.
I am not including the myriad of websites that sell ‘most’ of these books, however, the internet browser is a good source of consultation for them. It is also suggested that we support our local book stores rather than the online outlets.
Have a healthy and peaceful holiday season.
~B
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Art & Photography books can be both enjoyed for their content and as a good investment at the same time. Here are some highlights of artbooks for the 2008 season that are currently in print, worth owning and offer excellent value as beautifully designed objects and as quality investments. In choosing a book it is always important to buy only what you love -there is no guarantee that a book will increase in value, but due to their small printings many unique qualities, art and photo titles tend to disappear quickly, and are often impossible to locate, unless you are willing to pay top price. These choices were based on design quality, content and current availability as of November 2008. Most of these books are now widely available, some may have been issued in the past few years or have appeared again as reprints. They won’t remain available forever at these prices. The reprint is often a “second chance” at owning a book once difficult to find. The recent New York Art Book Fair is an excellent place to browse and shop recent offerings from independent small press and art book publishers. Our choice selection:
 MURAKAMI Takashi Murakami is one of contemporary art’s most innovative and important figures. Drawing from street culture, high art, and traditional Japanese painting, Murakami takes the contemporary art trend of mixing high and low to an unprecedented level (critics call him the new Warhol), producing original paintings and sculptures as well as mass-produced consumer objects such as toys, books, and most famously, a line of handbags for Louis Vuitton. A committed supporter and spokesperson for Japanese artists and a powerful commentator on postwar culture and society, Murakami has organized influential exhibitions of Japanese art as well as a biannual art fair in Tokyo.
 ARAKI “This book reveals everything about me. It’s been a 60-year contract. Photography is love and death-that’ll be my epitaph.” -Araki The subject is Japanese photographer Araki, a man who talks about life through photographs. His powerful oeuvre, decades’ worth of images, has been pared down to 540 pages of photographs which tell the story of Araki and comprise the ultimate retrospective collection of his work.
 Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love: Deploying an acidic sense of humor, Walker examines the dialectics of pleasure and danger, guilt and fulfillment, desire and fear, race and class. This landmark publication, which is sure to win international design awards, accompanies Walker’s first major American museum survey. It features critical essays by Philippe Vergne, Sander L. Gilman, Thomas McEvilley, Robert Storr and Kevin Young, as well as an illustrated lexicon of recurring themes and motifs in the artist’s most influential installations by Yasmil Raymond, more than 200 full-color images, an extensive exhibition history and bibliography, and a 36-page insert by the artist.
 PETER BEARD (slipcased edition) Photographer, collector, diarist, and writer of books Peter Beard has fashioned his life into a work of art; the illustrated diaries he kept from a young age evolved into a serious career as an artist and earned him a central position in the international art world. This collection is the best one volume Beard edition available and is a super bargain compared to the lavish 50 lb signed limited published a few years back.
 Gerhard Richter ATLAS: At 864 pages, this monumental and comprehensive publication maps the ideas, processes, life and times of one of the most important painters of the late twentieth century. Conceived and closely edited by Gerhard Richter himself, Atlas cuts straight to the heart of the artist’s work, collecting more than 5,000 photographs, drawings and sketches that he has compiled or created since the moment of his creative breakthrough in 1962. The images closely parallel, year by year, the subjects of Richter’s paintings, revealing the orderly but open-ended analysis that has been so central to his art.
 Henry Wessell not only chronicles the idiosyncrasies and anomalies of Southern California and the American West, but demonstrates over and over that photography can surpass its documentary role to speculate and to suggest narratives within and beyond the frame. Ultimately, he challenges not only our expectations of his medium, but our ways of seeing and our preconceptions about the familiar. Sandra Phillips, Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, writes of his emergence from the era’s pack, “Wessel’s remarkable work, witty, evocative and inventive, is distinctive and at the same time a component part of the great development of photography which flourished in the 1970s.
 Yoshitomo Nara: LULLABY:Â At first sight, the childlike figures for which Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara is now famous seem altogether cute and appealing. On closer examination his creations are robust, angry, and vulnerable creatures, standing up defiantly to the world of adults–self-confident, stubborn, and sometimes violent. Nara’s work is influenced by Japanese comic books but he is unique in the contemporary art scene for tapping into horror through the medium of the innocent child–this is particularly poignant in Japan’s controlled society of rigid language and social structures, especially considering recent shockingly violent crimes in Japan involving children as the aggressors.
 Cindy Sherman: Complete Untitled Film Stills, a series of 69 black-and-white photographs created between 1977 and 1980, is widely seen as one of the most original and influential achievements in recent art. Witty, provocative and searching, this lively catalogue of female roles inspired by the movies crystallizes widespread concerns in our culture, examining the ways we shape our personal identities and the role of the mass media in our lives. Sherman began making these pictures in 1977 when she was 23 years old. The first six were an experiment: fan-magazine glimpses into the life (or roles) of an imaginary blond actress, played by Sherman herself. In 1995, The Museum of Modern Art purchased the series from the artist, preserving the work in its entirety. This book marks the first time that the complete series will be published as a unified work, with Sherman herself arranging the pictures in sequence.
 FRIEDLANDER: Lee Friedlander is one of the most important of the 1960s generation of photographers for whom the posture of disinterested objectivity served as a vehicle for passionate personal inquiries. His large body of work–he most often produces extended series of pictures on a chosen theme, then publishes them in book form–is broad in subject matter and supple and complex in style, and focuses on what he calls America’s “social landscape.†At the same time, he has pursued a playful dialogue with artistic tradition–as though open-eyed curiosity about the world, and a sophisticated taste for the wiles of picture-making were one and the same thing.
 Cameron Jamie: Backyard teenage wrestlers, spook houses, eating contests, and a winter visitation by mythical beasts are just some of the fringe rituals Cameron Jamie explores through his art. Working across materials and media, he frequently collaborates with street-portrait artists and celebrity impersonators as well as musicians such as the Melvins and Japanese guitarist Keiji Haino. The resulting work conflates investigative strategies, autobiography, mythologies, vernacular traditions, and urban folklore to examine contemporary life, our fascination with the outlandish, and our need for escapism—what one critic has identified as “backyard anthropology†or what the artist calls “social theater.â€
 THE BOOK OF SHRIGLEY: Pop artist David Shrigley’s work is immediate, sometimes rude, and very funny. His darkly brilliant, addictively hilarious scrawls from the subconscious have already made him a star in the UK, with a growing legion of fans around the globe. This is the most extensive — and the first widely available — showcase of his edgy but accessible off-kilter vision.
 Jim Shaw Distorted Faces & Drawings: Almost 16 inches tall and 12 inches wide and jacketed in a 53 x 37-inch foldout poster of Jim Shaw’s deeply disturbing black-and-white oil painting of Ronald Reagan’s distorted face (layered with smaller, ghostlike figures of American violence like Charles Manson and Rambo), this darkly riveting limited-edition artist’s book contains works from five series of portraits made over the course of the artist’s four-decade-long career…
 Tom Ford has become one of fashion’s great icons. In the past decade, he transformed Gucci from a moribund accessories label into one of the sexiest fashion brands in the world. His designs have increased sales at Gucci tenfold and have helped build the Gucci brand into the luxury goods conglomerate that it is today. Ford brought a hard-edged style synonymous with 21st century glamour to his clothes, and Hollywood sat up and took note…. Tom Ford features more than 200 photographs by Richard Avedon, Mario Testino, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Terry Richardson, Craig McDean, Todd Eberle, and numerous other photographers including many previously unpublished images. Â
 Louise Bourgeois is among the most prominent contemporary sculptors. Strongly influenced by surrealism, abstract expressionism, and minimalism, her work focuses on the exploration of her psyche. A recurring theme is her troubled childhood and difficult relationship with her father. Despite early success, she did not receive widespread acclaim until the ’70s. Her 1982 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art was the museum’s first-ever retrospective of a woman artist.
 Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons A serious comprehensive overview of Cy Twombly’s art has been much in demand for many years, and in this publication we at last have one. Accompanying a major touring retrospective to mark Twombly’s eightieth year, it surveys a vast output of paintings, drawings and sculpture by an artist whose indifference to supposed distinctions between Pop and abstraction, between writing, drawing and painting, and between literature and art had, for many years, brought his work severe neglect.
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Guy Bourdin: My Message For You: With the eye of a painter and the freedom of a photographer, Guy Bourdin created images full of fascinating stories, compositions, and colors. Using fashion and fashion photography as his vehicle, he explored the realms between the absurd and the sublime, taking cues from the theater and Surrealism. Along the way he became famous for his suggestive narratives and fantastic aesthetics–he broke conventions of commercial photography with a relentless perfectionism and sharp humor… The late 1970s, recognized as the highest note in Bourdin’s career, are the focal point of this two-volume edition. |
 KOUDELKA : Stark, impassioned, and singularly intense, the work of the itinerant and fiercely independent Czech photographer, Josef Koudelka, has received deserved acclaim over the past three decades for having made a uniquely significant contribution to the language of photography. This major new monograph presents the most comprehensive survey of Koudelka’s work to date, bringing together more than 150 of his most eloquent images–from his earliest, many published here for the first time, to his most recent: mesmerizing studies of the European landscape made with a panoramic camera.
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“One of the most delightful and innovative pop-up books I have ever seen.”–Robert Sabuda
“The forthcoming “ABC3D,” by Marion Bataille, a French book designer, does for paper what Claymation did for mud. It’s a three-dimensional, interactive, cinematic treat for the littlest fingers right on up to the oldest eyes, easily the most innovative alphabet book of the year, if not the decade. It’s virtually impossible not to find something to manipulate, admire, chuckle over or just plain play… Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) with between the holographic covers of this visual feast. Watch O and P transform themselves into Q and R with the flick of a translucent overlay; see C flip over to become D and back again merely by moving the page; marvel as V becomes W through the magic of reflections; smile as the two round centers of S spin like barber poles; play U like a many-stringed instrument and imagine the music. Beyond clever, it’s a whole new way for young learners to see both connections and differences as well as for adults to rediscover the magic that lurks below the everyday. A short video of two disembodied hands flipping through the pages has garnered more than half a million views on YouTube. Wonderful fun for one and all.” — Kristi Jemtegaard, Washington Post Book WorldÂ
Prepare to be amazed. From the lenticular cover that changes with the angle of your hands all the way to the Z, ABC3D is as much a work of art as it is a pop-up book.
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Posted in: Architecture & Design, Book Collecting, Children's Books, Film & Video, Pop-up Books | 1 Comment » |
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Interesting how last week on August 1st, Amazon.com announced it bought ABEbooks, one of the largest resellers of out-of-print books (over 100 million books they claim). ABE was a Canadian outfit that began seven years ago as a service to booksellers who wanted to post their listings online and remain fairly independent about it. Book Beat was one of those thousands of small independent retailers who used the service. We left ABE last year as we saw them become more demanding and greedy. They no longer allowed booksellers to process their own orders, inflated credit-card processing fees and took a larger cut from the already slim margins of booksellers. Bookselling collectives popped up mainly in Europe to combat the oppressive conditions online. Many are now jumping ship under the Amazon announcement of August 1st (at least those who don’t feel the need to give Amazon their share).
It may seem a strange move that Amazon bought ABE, as they claim to see the future of the book only in digital terms:
“…over at Amazon they are inadvertently thinking of ways to make the world worse for children and for the grown-ups who love them to pieces. What Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s founder, wants more than anything is to do away with the book as we know it. “Jeff once said that he couldn’t imagine anything more important than reinventing the book,” said Steven Kessel, one of Bezos’s top guys. Kessel is in charge of digitizing everything in sight.” –The Washington Post
Buying ABE works into Amazon’s strategy of owning and destroying the book market. They did it before in 1999 when they bought Bibliofind. (Book Beat were also once members of Bibliofind, one of the best service providers for professional booksellers selling online). Amazon paid over $20 million for it and then quickly closed it down. Buy out your competition and shut it down. American economics 101.
“Amazon.com has suggested that electronic books–the kind viewed on its Kindle device–are the future. Meanwhile, selling popular paper books helps pay the company’s current bills. So isn’t Amazon’s latest acquisition a step toward the past?” -Wall Street Journal
The small bookseller feels in increasing sense of doom and encroachment not from a level playing field but from a system that forces you to pay your own competition in order to survive -a bit like loading ammunition into your killer’s weapon. The public’s love affair with Amazon has created a non-taxed behemoth here in the US that has helped to decimate local economies and culture in favor of convenience and low price. In France (and other European countries) where books are highly valued and ingrained in their culture, they have laws in place to avoid the practice of mass market discounting and preserve their cultural standards. Amazon continues to pay heavy fines and operates at a loss in order to remain in Europe. Amazon was ordered to pay the French government 1,500 Euros each day they remain in business and hand over 100,000 euro ($146,000) to the French Booksellers’ Union, which sued Amazon in 2004 over its shipping policy. “The union said it was pleased with the court’s ruling, which would help protect vulnerable small bookshops from predatory pricing practices.” -The New York Times Â
Another important yet unreported consequence from Amazon buying ABE is that this will also give them 100% owner of Bookfinder.com, the internet’s most powerful booksearch engine. By owning Bookfinder, Amazon will control the most important portal to the access of out-of-print books. Bookfinder is considered the google of the book world. Would Amazon ever consider abusing their stewardship of Bookfinder? You better believe it.
Small publishers too have felt the lopsided and often unjust practices by Amazon a threat to their survival. See: Why I Stopped Selling to Amazon.com . The joke is one huge marketing image and claim that “The World’s largest bookstore” has deviously foisted on the public. Their supply of “virtual books” is about the same available to any bookseller (unless they are no longer in business).
Slate magazine: “In fact, Amazon’s “megawarehouse” in downtown Seattle contains just 200 or so titles. Any other book must be obtained from a wholesale distributor or the publisher. This is exactly what any traditional bookstore does when it doesn’t have a book in stock. The difference is that traditional bookstores start out with a lot more than 200 titles in stock. “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore”? More like “Earth’s Smallest.” --Slate.com on the Amazon Con
 The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove recently published his memoir Books, a title that describes his long-term love for bookstores and bookselling. He has bought the inventory of no less then 30 bookstores for his own shop Booked Up in Archer City, Texas filled with over 400,000 quality “junk free” books. Many chapters are devoted to tales and obituaries of once loved bookstores with not one mention of the the ongoing threat from Amazon. The bookselling profession is one fading fast, like the corner drugstore and most remnants of small town USA, it is a cultural footnote passing away. “Civilization can probably adjust to the loss of the secondhand book trade, though I don’t think it’s really likely to have to. Can it, though survive the loss of reading? That’s a tougher question, but a very important one.” -Larry McMurtry, Books Â
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 An interesting article recently appeared in the Santa Monica Mirror on the vanishing neighborhood bookstore. I wonder what this means for our cultural heritage and the future of the book. A well-known author told me he heard a top executive in publishing say that within ten years all bookstores in this country will no longer exist. Could he be right? I hope not, and wonder what this says about a culture that no longer cares about the written word.
 Bookstores, like the Arctic Polar Bear, are an endangered species. Many young students (and even a few aged boomers), no longer cherish reading and collecting books as in the past. The art of browsing through old book and record stores — hunting for that rare treasure, is a fond relic of antiquity. Here then is a small epitaph, a paean to the Los-Angeles independent bookstore from the Santa Monica Mirror editorial, “Goodbye Mr. Pickwick”:
“I don’t remember exactly the order of their closings. It doesn’t really matter; suffice to say they were once here, vibrant and a source of joy to many aficionados, and now most of them are gone. I refer to small neighborhood bookstores – many with wonderful used-book sections. In West Los Angeles there was Papa Bach on Santa Monica Boulevard and Campbell’s and College Book Co., Pettler and Lieberman, and Vagabond Books in Westwood; there was David Morrisey, Krown & Spellman, Moondance, Midnight Special, and Marlow’s in Santa Monica, and Dutton’s in North Hollywood; there was Heritage Books, Book City, Pickwick Books, John Partridge Books – all in Hollywood – and Zeitlin Ver Brugge and Dutton’s in Beverly Hills. And most recently the losses of Other Times Books on Pico in West Los Angeles and, just this month, Wilshire Books in Santa Monica. And probably many more I am forgetting….
 A loss for all of us: these were wonderful stores to browse in, to find treasures on dusty shelves, behind boxes, or standing on ladders to reach the higher-up shelves. As many times as I visited each of the above, as many times as I scoured sections of my interests, I invariably found a book I had overlooked or a recent arrival or a book that reflected a new interest. Now comes the turn, the reversal, the counter-theme: the Internet, Amazon, et al. For as convenient as they are, they can in no way replace what we have lost and are losing. They are great sources for acquiring books or searching topics you already know you want to seek. But the courting of a book, the getting-to-know-you processes, are not possible via the Net. Books, like anything of value in life, need to be experienced in person, hands on. And while Borders or Barnes & Noble have huge in-print, current book sections, they do not offer the unique experience of funky, neighborhood used book stores.
So where is all this leading? I don’t know exactly. Partially, I suppose, I’m guilty of becoming the crusty, old curmudgeon who complains that things today just aren’t as good as they used to be. But beyond that, I think this is a plea to support the few used and neighborhood stores that remain. As they perish, one after the other, I believe we all lose something truly irreplaceable and we lose something of our connection to the past… Dutton’s, Sam Johnson Books (on Venice Boulevard), Village Books (Pacific Palisades), the Bodhi Tree (West Hollywood), and most recently, Kulturas Secondhand Books (on Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica). These and the few others remaining in Los Angeles warrant our support – they in turn support our history as well as our future.” — Paul Cummins, Santa Monica Mirror
Thanks to Shelf Awareness for this source.
 The roll-call of deceased bookstores in the Detroit area is a long one and includes Metro-Books, Paperbacks Unlimited, The Book End, I- Browse, Book People, The Book Hut, Mostly Books, Dickens Den, Yesterday’s Books and most recently Half-Way Down the Stairs. All were unique, well stocked and well-loved neighborhood bookshops, all were decimated by mass merchandising 900 lb. big-box guerrillas, convenient internet price slashing and worst of all: general public indifference. One sign of hope has been the many online lit blogs promoting reading, book collecting and independent bookstores. One of these is LitMinds “a community where readers, authors, and independent booksellers can share their unique reading interests, make new friends, and enjoy stimulating conversations. LitMinds is a free service. LitMinds aspires to be a place for celebration and a catalyst for change. A lot has been said by critics about the apparent decline of reading and the demise of independent booksellers. We see a different future!” Read more about LitMinds.
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