Stuff it: the video essay in the digital ageUrsula Biemann
Edition Voldemeer, 2003
3211203184, 9783211203187
166 pages
"Stuff it" is a profusely illustrated collection of texts by video artists and cultural theorists who illuminate the video essay in its role as crossover and communicator between art, theory and critical practice in all its variations: from monologues of disembodiment to cartographies of diaspora experiences and transnational conditions, from the essay as the organization of complex social shifts to its technological mutation and increasing digitalization
The Youngest Parents: Teenage Pregnancy As It Shapes LivesRobert Coles
W W Norton & Co Inc, 2000
0393319962, 9780393319965
192 pages
"The Youngest Parents throws a major societal problem into startling focus."-Publishers Weekly Prominent child psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Coles asks us to shed our preconceptions and listen to the compelling voices of young women and men who are soon to become parents though barely out of childhood themselves. These teenage parents are black, white, and Hispanic; city dwellers and residents of small towns. From conversations with these teenagers, Dr. Coles weaves a subtle yet dramatic narrative that reveals the aspirations and apprehensions of these "youngest parents" whose prospects aren't very promising and whose assumptions aren't always those he, or we, share. Young mothers don't have an easy time ahead of them, but many pregnant teens believe that the babies they carry will lead lives very different from their own, that their babies may find the success that eludes them and may escape the limitations they've suffered. Dr. Coles finds that the fathers' confusion and, sometimes, resentment give way to a deep longing for respect and a desire for a way out of lives limited by poverty and poor education.
TravelersWalter Martin, Jonathan Lethem, Paloma Muñoz
Aperture, 2008
1597110736, 9781597110730
95 pages
Within the simple constraints of a glass globe, the captivating images in "Travelers" conjure up entire sequences of imaginary worlds and events. Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz collaboratively create mesmerizing miniature snowbound environments, then record them in chilly color photographs. At first glance the work is playful; on closer observation, it often reveals darker narratives: Lone wanderers survey the frigid landscape, people and creatures exhibit unnatural tendencies and ill-defined crimes are committed. Martin & Munoz create the figures--either adapting ready-mades or shaping them out of clay--then paint and position them within the environments they also construct. The final compositions are then captured in photographs that are meticulously stitched and adjusted digitally for the final effect.
This new book, featuring an original short story by acclaimed author Jonathan Lethem, contains the very best of Martin & Munoz's most notable work, along with their newest series of panoramic narratives, for which they are already receiving accolades from the press--including a recent feature in "The New York Times," Curator Dan Cameron has complimented the artists on their ability to juggle both visual and psychological charges: "At the same time that they produce riddle-like parables about modern existence, they do not shirk the artist's obligation to invent a new formulation of tactile and even sensual pleasure."
UncoveredThomas Allen, Chip Kidd
Aperture, 2007
1597110531, 978159711053
48 pages
In this darkly delightful first monograph--also a board book--Thomas Allen selects the pulpiest of pulp paperbacks and then lovingly slices out a figure from the cover, gently folds it into position and constructs a witty and oftentimes suggestive scene around it. In "Thirst," a sultry dame reaches from her cover toward a guy with a bottle on a nearby volume; in "Teeter," a man careens toward the edge of a stack of paperbacks, ready to topple. Dogs howl; ships sail; punches fly.Inspired by a love of pop-up books, Hollywood noir, westerns and pulp fiction, Allen revels in the different roles he must play to create his scenarios: "In addition to being a photographer, I play talent scout, casting director, stage manager, lighting supervisor and film editor." Once his original tableaux are perfectly composed, he photographs them in shallow focus, rendering his prints with the dreamy effect of the classic View-Master stereoscopic toy, which has been a long-time inspiration. From femmes fatales to hard-boiled gumshoes, Allen's newly enlivened characters seem to burst from the hefty boards of this almost toylike book, apparently unable to contain themselves. Uncovered includes an introduction by Chip Kidd, one of the most innovative graphic designers working today. Kidd has used Allen's work in many cover designs, including a series of James Ellroy novels.
Garfield Minus GarfieldJim Davis, Dan Walsh
Ballantine Books, 2008
0345513878, 9780345513878
126 pages
Come savor the existential adventures of Jon Arbuckle in Garfield minus Garfield. Based on the phenomenon ignited by Dan Walsh's hilarious and wildly popular webcomic (beloved by The New York Times and The Washington Post, and hailed as inspired by Garfield creator Jim Davis), Garfield minus Garfield takes everyone's favorite cat out of the picture, leaving us with only the lonely ennui of Jon as he's left to voice thoughts about his own existence into an empty void
Rona Pondick: The Metamorphosis of an ObjectSusan Stoops, Rona Pondick, George Fifield, Dakin Hart, Nancy Princenthal
Worcester Art Museum, 2009
0936042206, 9780936042206
126 pages
This volume considers Pondick's hybrid sculptures in detail, illuminating their historical relation to art's originating impulses and offering an alternative model for understanding sculpture
The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in PhotographyLyle Rexer
Aperture, 2009
1597111007, 9781597111003
272 pages
From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photographyis the first book in English to document this phenomenon and to put it into historical context, while also examining the diverse approaches thriving within contemporary photography. Author Lyle Rexer examines abstraction at pivotal moments, starting with the inception of photography, when many of the pioneers believed the camera might reveal other aspects of reality. The Edge of Visiontraces subsequent explorations--from the Photo Secessionists, who emphasized process and emotional expression over observed reality, to Modernist and Surrealist experiments. In the decades to follow, in particular from the 1940s through the 1980s, a multitude of photographers--Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind and Barbara Kasten among them--took up abstraction from a variety of positions. Finally, Rexer explores the influence the history of abstraction exerts on contemporary thinking about the medium. Many contemporary artists--most prominently Ilan Wolff, Marco Breuer and Ellen Carey--reject photography's documentary dimension in favor of other possibilities, somewhere between painting and sculpture, that include the manipulation of process and printing. In addition to Rexer's engagingly written and richly illustrated history, this volume includes a selection of primary texts from and interviews with key practitioners and critics such as Edward Steichen, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and James Welling.
The offensive art : political satire and its censorship around the world from Beerbohm to Borat
Leonard Freedman
Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2009.
The Oxford companion to music
edited by Alison Latham
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2002
Trouble in paradise : examining discord between nature and society
[curated and organized by Julie Sasse]
Tuscon : Tuscon Museum of Art, c2009
