There is a world of letters just waiting to be discovered in the world around us—if we know how to look for it. In this engaging and delightful book, photographer Elliott Kaufman reveals the “secret” life of the alphabet through his photographs, showing how letters can be found in things we encounter everyday. Each letter of the alphabet is represented by multiple images, each unintentionally created by the intersection of architectural details, shadows, light, or natural elements as caught by Kaufman’s keen eye. Some are obvious, while others demand a little more imagination to recognize, inviting the readers to start their own game of hunting for letters! This fun approach also reinforces the notion that learning to see the familiar in new ways encourages visual literacy and creativity.
Text in English and French.
Ifa Brand never felt satisfied as a model. The dissatisfaction stemmed from not being able to represent her true identity: ‘I fell “between styles”: alternative but not alternative enough; fetish but not in a typical sense. I also disliked photographers telling me how I should look, pose, behave; telling me no to red lips, no to precious lingerie and all the things I loved.’
In 2017, she decided to go her own way. She saw photography as an opportunity to be her own creative director, to follow her own storylines, and to explore her own vision of sensuality, eroticism and fetish.
Hers is a quest for personal empowerment through the art of self-portraiture: ‘I find it very important to present a strong, independent woman. There needs to be an element of being untouchable. The message to the viewer is: yes you can look but solely on my terms.’
Painter, photographer, cinematographer, Paolo Gioli (Rovigo, 1942) is one of the most innovative Italian artists of recent decades, especially for his ability to experiment across multiple fields, and through his reworked devices.
Published on the occasion of three exhibitions held in Italy and China, this book examines the films and photographic works – polaroids, photo finishes, silkscreen canvases and lithographic plates – created over a 50-year period, suggesting a theoretical-iconographic path that revolves around four sections: Nature, Body, Face, and Medium.
This volume is accompanied by a rich array of colour illustrations, with film datasheets commentated by the author himself, and gives a detailed account of all of the works presented, along with critical contributions from leading international scholars.
Text in English, Italian, and Chinese.
Japanese screens (byobu) are made of wooden lattices with two to twelve panels, covered with a canvas of paper or fabric. Artists, embracing the dynamic format of screens, incorporated shadows and other elements on the canvas to direct the viewer’s eye from one panel to the next. Screens are unique for being beautiful artworks as well as lightweight, portable objects, acting as backdrops for court ceremonies or partitions for intimate tea services.
This sumptuous book explores the 1,300-year history of screens created in Japan. In the text, leading experts on Japanese art and culture describe how screens developed from the 8th to the 21st century, from their ceremonial use in royal residences and Buddhist temples to their functional and decorative use in the homes of samurai and aristocracy. The authors examines the stylistic evolution of screens and the wide variety of subjects depicted, such as flying dragons, the passing of seasons, monumental battles, and The Tale of Genji.
This book includes 250 colour illustrations, many that are reproduced to full page, and shows the screens to their best advantage with a landscape orientation and large-format size. It features Japanese-sewn binding and is kept in a clamshell box, which contains foldout poster reproductions of six screens housed in a separate pocket inside the box. This volume is an elegant addition to the library of any admirer of Japanese art.
The South of France in the Golden 1950s. The sun is shining and palm trees cast jagged shadows on a polished motor purring up the drive to the Grand Hotel. Irish photographer Edward Quinn delighted in these scenes of Côte d’Azur splendour. Like no other, Quinn captured the essence of the Riviera high society, revealing its glamorous social and cultural life with a subtle and fine sense of humour. This new edition of his Riviera Cocktail has all the fabulous and fascinating ingredients of the era: movie stars and starlets, gamblers and musicians, business magnates and faded nobility — captured out and about on the sparkling Riviera and in more intimate moments.
Text in English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian.
Aenne Biermann (1898–1933) was one of the leading figures of photography in the 1920s and 1930s. Today, she is considered one of the most important avant-garde photographers of the 20th century. In just a few years of practice, the self-taught artist became a well-known representative of German photography, participating in almost all the important exhibitions of her time. She captured plants, objects, people, and everyday situations in pictures that have to this day lost none of their allure and poignancy. By means of clear structures, precise compositions of light and contrast, as well as narrow framing, she drew a special kind of poetry out of the motifs of her personal environment and developed her own, distinctly modern pictorial style.
This is the first substantial new book in English on this exceptional artist since the 1930s, published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in fall 2021. The large-format volume features some 100 of Aenne Biermann’s photographs in colour and duotone reproduction, several of them published here for the first time ever. This impressive selection is complemented by essays on Biremann’s photography in art-historical context and on selected aspects of her oeuvre.
Text in English and Hebrew.
An exhibition featuring the work of Aenne Biermann is taking place at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art from 5 August 2021.
A luxurious book featuring 250 stunning photographs representing rare or exotic plants and flowers
Botanica Magnifica features 250 stunning photographs representing – in the words of an ARTnews critic – rare or exotic plants and flowers “in large scale and exquisite detail, emerging from the shadows in a manner evocative of Old Master paintings.”
The original edition of Botanica Magnifica, consisting of five lavishly hand-bound volumes, was limited to just ten copies, the first of which was recently donated to the Smithsonian Institution. The extra-large “double-elephant” format of that edition was chosen in homage to the famous double-elephant folio of The Birds of America, and indeed, Botanica Magnifica is one of the few works of natural history ever to rival Audubon’s magnum opus in its scope and artistry. In praise of the double-elephant folio of Botanica Magnifica, the Smithsonian’s Chairman of Botany attested, “Everyone who has seen the photographs…has been tremendously impressed with the power, scale, and depth of the work.”
Now Singer’s remarkable images are available to the public for the first time in this hardcover with slipcase, baby-elephant folio of Botanica Magnifica. This volume is organised into five alphabetically arranged sections, each introduced by a gatefold page that displays one extraordinary plant at a luxurious size. Each pictured plant is accompanied by a clear and accessible description of its botany, geography, folklore, history, and conservation.
Botanica Magnifica is one of the most impressive volumes of natural history ever published.
“A point, a hole, a gap. A cut, a gash, a wound. The gaze stretches out towards openings, discovers small and large concavities, focal lines converge and branch out between chromatic shadows and traces of light: we go with our eyes towards what wants to be looked at, the object of perceptive desire. […] The work as the starting point of a venture between what exists and what can only be imagined.”
This book is a moment of reflection on Paolo Scheggi’s (1940-1971) multidisciplinary research and his intense investigation developed over little more than a decade: a seemingly insignificant stretch of time in the slow and irrevocable evolution of the history of modern and contemporary Western art which defines him as a very young protagonist of the Italian spatialist and monochrome neo-avant-garde, and pioneer of contemporary languages.
Text in English and Italian.
Joel Denot (b.1961) is a French photographer. His images are centred on the essential elements of photography: light, colour and shape. They are neither figurative nor abstract, with coloured surfaces floating in a void, framing each other and projecting shadows of overlapping colours: orange then pale pink then blue then bright pink; red then green then pink then grey-blue. Produced entirely during the shoot, they are a purely photographic gesture, created without laboratory work. This is the first monograph on his career.
Text in English and French.
Over her forty-plus-year career, Gunderson has tackled subjects from clouds to royalty to the cosmos.
Widely collected in Hollywood and New York, artist Karen Gunderson is perhaps best known for her work since the 1980s, when she transitioned from painting in colour to working only in black. Over her forty-plus-year career, Gunderson has tackled subjects from clouds to royalty to the cosmos. Her long-developed, labour intensive technique, including rigorous brushwork and paint layering, employs a range of black shades that create a unique three-dimensional effect: The multiple textures from the paint catch light and make the paintings shimmer and appear to move, alternating with shadows and highlights that illuminate her subjects—historic royal figures, bodies of water, mountains, and constellations—depending on how the viewer moves in front of each artwork.
With an eye-catching die-cut hardcover, Numbers Everywhere will inspire number-hunters of all ages, and appeal to both children’s and gift buyers.
Star and Moon presents the daily life of the Hui people and expresses a kind of “emptiness” that transcends time and meaning. Lonely, mysterious, quiet and elegant, the simple images are like a faded postcard, bringing a deep Zen feeling to the heart. At first glance, the images of Star and Moon are plain and seemingly picturesque. However, if you sit quietly for a moment and feel the breath conveyed by the black and white shadows, you will experience a heavy breath running through it, adsorbing the viewer’s eyes tightly, following the photographer’s lens in the cycle of the stars and the moon, experiencing the destiny of the Islamic nation together.
Yang Yankang expands the scope of experimental exploration of the language of modern Chinese photography, and creates a revelatory way of perceiving the art of practical photography. His works on the three major religions have historically placed them in a prominent position in the history of modern Chinese art, and he has become one of the leading photographic artists in China and even in the world.
“I have never read a text which goes even half as far as this one in expressing the particular poignancy which lay at the heart of the impressionist movement. I say this as an art critic. As a novelist I would simply like to pay my tribute to the mastery of language, portraiture and storytelling which Figes has now at her command.” – John Berger
“A small masterpiece” – Susan Hill
“A luminous prose poem” – Joyce Carol Oates
This shimmering novel is an extraordinary portrait of a day in the life of an artist at work and at home. In prose as luminous as the colours Monet is using to portray his garden, Eva Figes guides us from dawn (‘midnight blueblack growing grey and misty’) through midday (‘the sun was high now… shrinking what little shadow remained, fading colours, the pink rambler roses on the fence by the railway track looked almost white’) to evening (‘the tide of shadows rising as the sunset glow faded outside.’) Monet’s wife, grieving for a lost daughter; a living daughter, fretting that she will not be able to marry the man she loves; their friend the abbé, eating and drinking with them; two children playing, closest to Monet in the freshness and certainty of their vision; all experiencing in different ways the richness of the light that Monet works unceasingly to pin down in his last, great paintings.
“Among the most, probably the most, unique, exciting, ambitious, innovative and eye-catching exhibitions here this summer is “Marc Hom: Re-Framed,” “ — Allotsego.com
Marc Hom’s inaugural museum exhibition, RE-FRAMED, debuts at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, opening on May 24, 2024. Serving as both a retrospective featuring many of his iconic photographic works and a collection spanning from the early 1990s to the present, it aims to offer a new viewing experience. Departing from traditional gallery conventions of framed pictures on walls, the exhibit prioritises an immersive viewing experience both indoors and outdoors. The indoor segment offers a controlled, intimate setting with smaller prints, while outside, photographs are showcased in massive 20 rotating frames measuring 3.66 x 2.4 metres, featuring black and white prints, subject to the elements including wind, sun, shade, and rain. Titled RE-FRAMED, the exhibition presents a novel approach to outdoor photography, offering viewers unique daily interactions and perspectives, symbolising a fresh start and a new way of envisioning the future.
Caroline Broadhead (b. 1950) is a highly versatile artist who started in jewellery in the late 1970s. Since then she has extended her practice from “wearable objects” and textile works to dance collaborations and installations in historic buildings. Broadhead’s work is concerned with the boundaries of an individual and the interface of inside and outside, public and private, including a sense of territory and personal space, presence and absence and a balance between substance and image. It has explored outer extents of the body as seen through light, shadows, reflections and movement.
Published to accompany the Exhibition at CODA Museum Apeldoorn (NL), 4 February – 15 April 2018 and the Exhibition at Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins, London, 11 January – 2 February 2019.
Over the past twenty-five years, the Austrian artist Margit Hart has created an extremely diverse oeuvre of contemporary jewellery. Mindscapes, the name of her latest group of works, is synonymous with her ever changing jewellery objects. Since 2009 Margit Hart’s work – parallel to her jewellery has extended into abstract photography, resulting in a mutual dialogue between both disciplines. In her Schattenflug [Fleeting Shadows] works, she goes beyond illustrating the purely representational to create imaginary three-dimensional pictorial spaces that immerse us in mysterious worlds of light and shade. This monograph showcases the interplay between both modes of artistic expression in a tangible way.
Text in English and German.
Michael Glancy is widely recognised as a prominent innovator in the field of studio glass. After studying with the critically acclaimed glass artist Dale Chihuly, he found his own artistic personality by combining different techniques: Glancy works with cold glass, which he sculpts through sandblasting and acid-cutting, and then coats with electroformed copper, silver or gold. Elegant and exceptional in their quality and beauty, Michael Glancy’s sculptures reveal the artist’s pursuit for perfection; fascinated by microscopic landscapes, Glancy translates cellular structures and geological stratifications into impressive sculptural objects. The lattice patterns etched into the glass suggest latitude and longitude, while the organic and undulating vessels allude to topography. Glancy’s own very specific mode of presentation – that of a base of sheet glass which shadows or connects to the standing vessel – has become his signature style. It is as if the two-dimensional world of the sheet of glass has developed and warped itself into a three-dimensional object.
This transformation together with his scientific interests, positions his work between alchemy – at the intersection of physics and metaphysics – and conceptual art. Michael Glancy’s work is represented in numerous international museums and collections. Since 1982 he has taught and worked at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Two decades of experimental multimedia scenography: illustrated by 30 international award-winning projects, the successful Berlin-based studio Tamschick Media+Space provides an insight into the art of converting contents and objects into a three-dimensional, accessible, holistic experience of space by means of multimedia projections and of creating a lasting dramaturgical experience. Elaborate development processes are presented by means of a comprehensive series of images and drafts: for example for Treasure Mainshow (Expo Shanghai), The Ting (Oslo), Time Machine (Wuxi), Kingdom of the Shadows (Trier) and Experience Frontiers (Biel). Well-known international authors from the fields of scenography, architecture, museum and brands share their experience in guest contributions.
Hubert Le Gall is an aesthete with eclectic and unclassifiable talent who refuses to be pigeonholed in a style or trapped by routine. Constantly coming up with new associations of quirky ideas, switching between set design, art, and decoration, Hubert Le Gall takes great delight in playing with traditions and derision, with forms, light and cast shadows, contents and containers, solids and things untied… Pic poissons Pedestal table, Taureau cabinet, Pot de fleurs armchair, Marguerites table, Spot Dog lamp, Dorian mirror, his playful and poetic pieces never fail to enchant or to surprise. Text in English and French.
Luca Blast Forlani leads the reader through a range of urban spaces, places that, notwithstanding passing of time, have still retained their own identity. Although on the surface apparently empty and desolate, they each have a history and a story to tell; the details of identity caught in the lens, the clues of a life discarded but not entirely forgotten. These images are poignant, emotive and thought-provoking; the use of light and shadows, close-up details and wide-angle shots, footprints of the past, captured in the silence and the dust, like a long-forgotten conversation, a whisper of lives remembered. Text in English and Italian.
“I like to paint people. I like reading them simply by watching them” – Sophie Kuijken. At first glance, Sophie Kuijken paints portraits. But these representations are anything but innocuous. The artist constructs her works by collecting images gleaned from the internet. She uses photographs of people who inspire her and by multiplying identities, creates singular personalities. The ambiguity of these images is accompanied by a great concern for precision, revealed by the fold of a garment, the choice of a colour, and Kujiken’s mastery of the play of shadows and lights. Text in English and French. This book accompanies the exhibition at the Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris, running until 10 March 2017, and Art Brussels 2017 (21 to 23 April 2017).
Pratt Sessions presents a series of conversations between notable practitioners and thinkers. It is a distributed symposium that is curated and yet open-ended. Based on an ongoing lecture series at Pratt Institute’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design programme, each session brings together two participants as a means of instigating discourse and dissolving and/or reinforcing the artifice of geographically-based discourse networks. Participants are carefully paired together based on the content of their work and the region in which they reside and/or practice. Participants frame their work around a disciplinary provocation in short, non-standard lecture presentations, and engage in an in-depth dialogue. Pratt Sessions is intended as a book series, each volume featuring six conversations, which originally took place over the course of two academic semesters. The six sessions are divided in two areas of focus, exploring and examining how new mediums and new contexts can be defined, redefined, and understood within the realm of architectural design.
Pratt Sessions presents a series of conversations between notable practitioners and thinkers. It is a distributed symposium that is curated and yet open-ended. Based on an ongoing lecture series at Pratt Institute’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program, each Session brings together two participants as a means of instigating discourse and dissolving and/or reinforcing the artifice of geographically-based discourse networks. Participants are carefully paired together based on the content of their work and the region in which they reside and/or practice. Participants frame their work around a disciplinary provocation in short, non-standard lecture presentations, and engage in an in-depth dialogue. Pratt Sessions is intended as a book series, each volume featuring six conversations, which originally took place over the course of two academic semesters. The six sessions are divided in two areas of focus, exploring and examining how new mediums and new contexts can be defined, redefined, and understood within the realm of architectural design.