PhotoNOLA Multi-Artist Book Signing
Sunday, December 15, 2013
4:00 – 5:00pm
Artists with recent publications will be available to sign books immediately following the Literally Speaking: Photography Books presentation.
Featuring:
Jane Fulton Alt – The Burn + between fire/smoke
William Greiner – Show and Tell
Russell Lord – Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument,
the Foreword for Burtysky: Water, and the Foreword for Inventing Reality
Deborah Luster – Tooth for an Eye
Louviere + Vanessa – Oblivion Atlas
Tammy Mercure – Twelve Nashville Waffle Houses + Some Long Hotels
Multiple Artists – Inventing Reality: New Orleans Visionary Photography
Christopher Porché-West – New Orleans: What Can’t Be Lost
Jared Ragland – Aggregates
Josephine Sacabo – The Nocturnes
Clayton Spada and Jacques Garnier – The Great Picture: Making the World’s Largest Photograph
Mary Virginia Swanson – Publish Your Photography Book
The Burn
By Jane Fulton Alt
Kehrer Verlag, 2013
$50
“These photographs are part of a series begun in 2007 when I observed my first controlled prairie burn. I was immediately struck by the burn’s visual and expressive potential, as well as the way it evoked themes that are at the core of my photographic work. A controlled burn is deliberately set; its violent, destructive force reduces invasive vegetation so that native plants can continue to prosper. (…) These images of regenerative destruction constitute a universal metaphor: the ephemeral moment when life and death are not opposed but are harmonized as a single process to be embraced as one.”
between fire/smoke
By Jane Fulton Alt
$1800
“between fire/smoke” is an unfolding visual and textual journey through a landscape of liminality – leading to a place where all that is unresolved is imaginable… The limited edition of 18 / artist made book includes a unique encaustic piece.
Show & Tell
By William Greiner
Hardcover, 184 pages
UL Press, 2013
$35
The great mystery of photography has always been that the process shows us how something looks but leaves us to our own devices to figure out what it might mean. Show and Tell not only embodies this dichotomy but celebrates it.
Photographer William Greiner presented writers with a trio of photographs, asking that they choose one on which to base a story. Twenty-eight photographs and some 46,000 words later, the collaborative results make up his new book, which includes pictures from six of the themes that have marked his career to date: Picturing People, UKOK, Cruise, Baton Rouge Blues, Oh Augusta, and Snapshot.
Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument
By Russell Lord
136 pages, Hardback / Clothbound
Steidl 2013
$45
In 1948, Gordon Parks began his professional relationship with Life magazine that would last twenty-two years. For his first project, he proposed a series of pictures about the gang wars that were then plaguing Harlem, believing that if he could draw attention to the problem then perhaps it would be addressed through social programs or government intervention. As a result of his efforts, Parks gained the trust of one particular group of gang members and their leader, Leonard “Red” Jackson, and produced a series of pictures of them that are artful, emotive, poignant, touching, and sometimes shocking. From this larger body of work, twenty-one pictures were selected for reproduction in a graphic and adventurous layout in Life magazine.
At each step of the selection process—as Parks chose each shot, or as the picture editors at Life re-selected from his selection—any intended narrative was complicated by another curatorial voice. Featuring contact sheets, proof prints and the published Life article, Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument traces this editorial process and parses out the various voices and motives behind the production of the picture essay. Co-published by The Gordon Parks Foundation and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
The Oblivion Atlas
Photographs by Louviere + Vanessa. Stories by Michael Zell.
Lavendar Ink, 2013
$25
The Oblivion Atlas, a collaboration between photographic artists Louviere+Vanessa and writer Michael Allen Zell, features duotone photographs, short stories, fold-outs, and vignette illustrations.
The book first came about as a constraint determined by Zell from the initial lines of Jacques Prevert’s To Paint A Portrait Of A Bird (“First paint a cage/with an open door”) and by the inspiration of L+V’s art. The second ballast was formed by L+V’s response to Zell’s short stories, with the challenge to embrace elements of interest and uniquely portray them.
The Oblivion Atlas explores and accumulates an aviary of themes, including time-sculpting, memory, madness, nihilism, and infinity in a finite space.
L+V were named in Oxford American’s 2012 “Superstars of Southern Art.” Zell’s first novel Errata was a Times-Picayune top 10 book of 2012.
Tooth For An Eye
By Deborah Luster
Casebound: 64 Pages, with 30 Duotone Plates
Twin Palms, 2011
$75
The city of New Orleans is a topographical/ architectural/material/cultural phenomenon with a diverse population participating in raucously colorful and fascinating pursuits and rituals. Homicide is a cultural fact of the life in the city as well. In her second book, Tooth for an Eye: A Chorography of Violence in Orleans Parish, Deborah Luster explores the city in a new way, creating a compelling portrait in the form of a photographic archive of contemporary and historic homicide sites. Following on from her first book, Prisoners of Louisiana, Tooth for an Eye explores the themes of loss and remembrance in a series of tondo photographs that offer an opportunity for the viewer to enter deeper into the idea of the city, a place where life and death coexist, neither free of the other’s influence.
SOME LONG HOTELS
By Tammy Mercure
TCB Press, 2013
$16
Seven photographs printed with an Indigo printer and Japanese Stab Bound. 6″x12″. Edition of 50.
Premiering at PhotoNOLA.
TWELVE NASHVILLE WAFFLE HOUSES (2nd Ed.)
By Tammy Mercure
TCB Press, 2013
$16
Inspired by the glowing yellow icon that lights up Nashville, Ed Ruscha, the smell of maple and pecan, and the elusive light of dusk…. Twelve photographs printed with an Indigo printer and Japanese Stab Bound with a custom WH pattern. 6″x9″. Edition of 50.
New Orleans: What Can’t Be Lost
Anthology with photographs by Christopher Porché West
UL Press, 2010
$30
The eighty-eight stories and traditions in New Orleans: What Can’t Be Lost are the piano keys in a love song to the city. Playing alongside the alluring black-and-white photographs of Christopher Porché West note by note, New Orleans’ culture bearers pay tribute to the city they call home. From Storyville to the Super Bowl, from cover to cover you’ll read from those who win our Pulitzer Prizes–four of them gathered on these pages; cook our Creole food; design our floats and costumes; flip forward over tourists lying on the pavement like matchsticks across from Jackson Square; protect our historic landmarks; teach our children; write our poems and articles and novels and plays; and pass down our traditions in the performance of New Orleans culture. The proceeds will be donated to Sweet Home New Orleans, a local nonprofit supporting the individuals and organizations that will perpetuate New Orleans’ unique musical and cultural traditions.
AGGREGATES
By Jared Ragland
Red Hollow Press, 2013
$15
AGGREGATES is a self-published book comprised of a collection of Google image search results that have been selectively cropped and placed within a single, extended sequence. Through the resituation of both the familiar and the obscure my aim is to question the roles of authorship and authenticity in a photograph and by undermining a picture’s original intent exploit visual archetypes and create possibilities for new personalized narratives.
Nocturnes
Photographs by Josephine Sacabo. Poems by Dalt Wonk.
116 pages, black & white illustrations throughout
Luna Press, 2012
$125
Nocturnes in an elaborately designed book that harmonizes a series of stunning black & white photographs with a series of eloquent poems. Each poem, printed on a sheet of vellum, serves as a portal to related, mysterious photographs. True meaning only exists deep down in the observer’s reservoir of nostalgia, the place where we all want to go swim at night, an unpredictable dreamscape where figures and objects pose as symbols of one’s experience. The rhythmic juxtaposition between word and image is like a tango — complimentary partners creating a new, unique excitement. The photographs were made by internationally-known photographer Josephine Sacabo. The poems were written by Dalt Wonk.
The book opens with a poem titled, ‘The Moon,’ which laments for this glowing satellite: ‘Doomed to perpetual return, like the oceans, who grieve on her white marble steps,’ and ends, wondering: ‘What draws you to us, angel of evil tidings, bearing the scent of the eternal whom you flee, like a migratory bird fleeing the death of summer?’ Turn the vellum page and you encounter a woman’s figure writing in the moon. She is someone, a memory taking form.
The Great Picture: Making the World’s Largest Photograph
By The Legacy Project
Essays by Lucy Lippard and Tyler Stallings, Text by Dawn Hassett
196 pages; 152 plates; hardcover with slipcase
Hudson Hills Press, 2011
$75
“The Great Picture: The Making of the World’s Largest Photograph” is a 196-page book, published and distributed by Hudson Hills Press, that accompanies the exhibition with essays by Stallings, Dawn Hassett, and Lucy R. Lippard, and features photographs documenting this monumental and unprecedented project. Lippard is the author of 21 books on contemporary art and cultural criticism, which include Partial Recall: Photographs of Native North Americans (ed., 1992), The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered America (1997) and On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place (1999). Hassett has been a working writer all her life, working in journalism for community-based newspapers and radio programs in Canada. She earned a Master of Professional Writing degree at the University of Southern California where she served on the editorial board of the Southern California Anthology.
Publish Your Photography Book
By Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson
Paperback: 224 pages
Princeton Architectural Press, 2011
$29.95
We live in the golden age of the photography book. Since the early 1990s, the number of photography book publishers has continued to grow while technological developments have placed more tools for bookmaking directly in the hands of photographers. For the students and working artists who have chosen photography as their primary means of expression, having their own photography book is seen as a passport to the international photography scene. Yet, few have more than a tentative grasp of the component parts of a book, an understanding of what they want to express, or the know-how needed to get a book published. Publish Your Photography Book is the first book to demystify the process of producing and publishing a book of photographs.
Industry insiders Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson survey the current landscape of photography book publishing and point out the many avenues to pursue and pitfalls to avoid. This expert guide is organized in six sections covering the rich history of the photo book; an overview of the publishing industry; an intimate look at the process of making a book; a close review of how to market a photo book; a section on case studies, built around discussions and interviews with published photographers; and a final section presenting a wealth of resources and information to aid in the understanding of the publishing world. Publish Your Photography Book also includes a number of additional interviews and contributions from industry professionals, including artists, publishers, designers, packagers, editors, and other industry experts who openly share their publishing experiences.
INVENTING REALITY: NEW ORLEANS VISIONARY PHOTOGRAPHY
23 photographers. Author & Curator: D. Eric Bookhardt
Foreword by Russell Lord
136 pages, 95 photographs
Luna Press, 2013
$45
Inventing Reality: New Orleans Visionary Photography is an anthology highlighting the work of twenty-seven contemporary New Orleans photographers. The collection, curated by D. Eric Bookhardt, presents a vision that is both subjective and representative of a broad spectrum of techniques, providing an overview into the creative renaissance that is taking place in the city today.
Bookhardt’s insightful essay details the rich history of photographic arts in New Orleans, and his individual introductions to each photographer’s series provide context for the works of 2013 Guggenheim Fellow Deborah Luster, David Halliday, Josephine Sacabo, and Louviere+Vanessa, among other established and emerging artists. The array of photographic practices used by the artists ranges from wet-plate collodions, orotones, photogravures, x-rays, and silver gelatins, to modern digital processes. The resulting anthology is a lyrical insight into personal visions, dazzling in their variety of approaches. As Russell Lord notes in the book’s foreword: “It is a story about identity, tension, perception and the psychic mystery of photography in New Orleans.”
