Observations in an Occupied Wilderness.

Observations in an Occupied Wilderness. Photographs by Terry Falke. Introduction by Carol McCusker. Essay by William L. Fox. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2006. 120 pp., 75 color illustrations, two 4-page gatefolds, 11¾x10". Signed copies available at photo-eye.

I've been away since Monday and unfortunately wifi is a bit hard to get hold of, but I will try to update Rare Autumn as much as possible. For now enjoy this beautiful book!

"Falke has been traveling around the Southwest [of the US] for the past decade or so, looking at several things.
Inevitably, he has been documenting the commercialization, building and paving of the West. This includes its large-scale conversion into a theme-park parody of itself: purple mountain's majesty being eclipsed by a three-story blanket slide; tire-tracked "wild" areas plastered with signage and lists of rules; golf courses plunked in parched playas. But Falke's vision is certainly more nuanced-it's more than just another cry of pain. For one thing, the light and space of the West are still as sublime as ever, and captured on 8×10 color negative film, they pop and sing. That crisp lyricism works equally well for Falke whether he's looking at Hoover Dam at sunset or at birds in a pure blue dusk, clustered in a bare tree lapped by the Salton Sea."

The Lazy Lion.

The Lazy Lion. Helen Wang, Jan B. Balet. Copyright 1953. Pen and watercolor illustrations, cover embossed. Images from Book By Its Cover.

This book just looks so sweet and inspiring - and I love the fact that it originally came with a pop-out put together version of the characters!

Found via the ever-great Book By Its Cover - read the very lovely description of the book and how she came across it here. Also be sure you don't miss this great link.

Atget Paris. New Edition.

Atget Paris. New Edition. Photographs by Eugene Atget. Text by Laure Beaumont-Maillet. Gingko Press, Corte Madera, 2006. 788 pp., 840 b&w illustrations, 5¾x7¾".

As I've written a few times before I love architecture and the subjective shapes, shadows and light you can find in looking at its' structure from different angles, in different contexts and conditions.

This book reminds me very much of my and my camera's walks around London over 8 years or so examining and constantly re-discovering the architecture of our familiar routes and every time finding new shapes, light, beauty and different point of views.

"To turn the pages is to take an unforgettable stroll through the eerie, empty streets of Paris 70 years ago. It is a strange, largely unpeopled world where objects project an uncanny density: shoes dangling in a shop window, or the milk cart laden with cans and equipped with whip and reins but no driver."

I also love the thought-process that's gone into the making of the book as an object:

"The shape of this book, which is that of a Parisian cobblestone, is in itself a tribute to Atget the legendary walker, and in its new edition this 'pave' now comes wrapped in a robust cardstock dustjacket."

Patterns in Design, Art and Architecture.

Patterns in Design, Art and Architecture. By Petra Schmidt, Annette Tietenberg, Ralf Vollheim. Birkhäuser Basel, 2005. 332pp., colour illustrations, 12.2 x 9.8 x 1.2" (hardcover). Images from Book By Its Cover.

I love architecture and the shadows, angles and shapes you can find in looking at its' structure in new different ways. I also love bold use of patterns - so it seems pretty obvious that this wonderful book (found via the always excellent Book By Its Cover), which seem to have the perfect mixture of both, would be one I was immediately drawn to.

I especially love that instead of focusing on just wallpaper or interior design they've gone beyond that showcasing a range of different applications (above will give you a sense of this I think).

"Using examples of contemporary work by internationally renowned designers such as Tord Boontje, Michael Lin, Olaf Nicolai and Sauerbruch & Hutton, the diversity of colours, shapes and applications are laid out before the reader, illustrating the impact and influence of technical innovations such as laser engraving and digital milling on patterns and our perception of them."

Campaign to Save Book Reviewing

Bookgirl left me a comment on yesterday's post and on her blog, which is well-worth reading, I saw the link for the National Book Critics Circle's Campaign to Save Book Reviewing.

I've added the banner to the blog, but I also wanted to highlight the plight to stop book reviews getting increasingly less space in newspapers by this posting (also on Absurdity today).

For more info, background and what you can do go here.

Carta, Inc. and Edizioni Almenodue

I've written about Angela Liguori and her hand bound books and projects Carta, Inc. and Edizioni Almenodue before. She wrote me a very sweet email and was kind enough to send me some more images of her wonderful work (selection seen above and below). Besides the limited edition books, collaborative work, hand bound books and projects Angela also teaches book structures at Paper Source. Her newly started blog gives you and insight into her projects, collaborations and inspiration - as well as some very beautiful images from workshops and book projects. So much more than well worth a visit!

Beci Orpin

Works by Beci Orpin. Images / layout from siagrafica.

Sia left a sweet comment on one of my earlier posts and I've been really eager to explore her blog since! Doing so I really like Beci Orpin above, who I found on Sia's blog called siagraphica...

Beci Orpin is an Australien designer. Her site is lovely and sometimes a little bit hard to navigate. If you do manage to navigate it however you get rewarded with lots of great patterns - besides enjoying the graphics and sweet animation of her site of course!

C'est Vrai! (One Hour).

C'est Vrai! (One Hour). Photographs by Robert Frank. Steidl The Masters, Gottingen, 2007. 96 pp., 14 tritone illustrations, 4x6". Available with dvd at photoeye.

I've been feeling a little bit uncomfortable since the last post. I really do love old photographs - the inspiration found in the texture and composition of the photographs, individuals' aesthetics and interaction, romanticising about the persons and situations depicted - what happened just before the frame was frozen, what will happen after, who the people are, what they are doing there, where they're going. The fact that the pictures comes without context makes them extra intriguing, but at the same time I also feel like I'm violating someone's privacy - especially when the photographs are found and was not necessarily meant to be on public display.

C'est Vrai! (One Hour) is a book that in a sense captures the kind of every day life I find really fascinating, but instead constructs the scenes without using real peoples' private lives in doing so.

Publisher's Description:

Robert Frank’s film One Hour is a single-take of Frank and actor Kevin O’Connor either walking or riding in the back of a mini-van through a few blocks of Manhattan’s Lower East side. Shot between 3:45 and 4:45 pm on 26 July, 1990 the film presents the curious experience of eavesdropping involuntarily on strangers. It appears to be a document of a journey but is also a kind of stream of consciousness retracing the same patterns and spaces. This book is a reprint of a little-known Frank publication first issued by Hanuman Books in 1992, a tiny book, comprising mainly a transcription of the dialogue heard but also two pages of credits: half a dozen production or crew workers and 27 actors. Unravelling the apparent documentary nature of the film, there is also an acknowledgement that the film has a script (by Frank and his assistant, Michal Rovner), that a conversation heard in a diner is written by Mika Moses, and that Peter Orlovsky’s lines (intercepted by Frank roughly halfway through the hour, in front of the Angelika Cinema on Houston Street) are “total improvisation”. The film C’est Vrai (One Hour) will be published as a DVD as part of Steidl’s Robert Frank The Complete Film Works, the first volume of which is published this season.

LOOK AT ME a collection of found photos

I love old photographs and what they convey - both esthetically, the feeling of their texture and quality, and as the kind of incidental every day documentation that I find really fascinating.
It's like getting an insight into an old forgotten world, a place far away, but still somehow connected to you. It's also an immense inspiration found in the angels, composition, lights and shadows of the photographs or in someone's personal style or the way they hold themselves. It's the beginning, middle or end of a story.

LOOK AT ME is a collection of found photographs - sometimes found in the street, lost, thrown away or discovered at flea markets. "The images now are nameless, without connection to the people they show, or the photographer who took them." The original intent unknown.

Paper Folding for Pop-up.

Paper Folding for Pop-up. By Yoshida Miyuki. PIE Books, 2006. 34pp., hardbound with paper jacket, 18.8 x 16.4 x 4 cm. Images from Book By Its Cover.

Oooh I'm just itching to get this book! I don't know when or if I'll ever make a pop-up book, but the bursts of colour and shapes are just very very inspiring on their own I think.

Found via the always fantastic Book By Its Cover, who's description I really like: "I feel in love with it immediately - a book of blank pages that fold open to reveal a burst of popping color." Aah, exactly!

Can be bought here at amazon for example.

Five and a Half - notebooks

Selection of notebooks from Five and a Half. Each cover design, featuring original illustrations or photographs, are limited edition (found via Bloesem).

Five and a Half is a bookmaking and design studio based in New York. Starting in 2006 they make wonderful journals made of sugarcane fiber and post-consumer recycled paper.

Besides the great covers depicting the kind of incidental, universal every-day life I find really fascinating, I also really appreciate the fact that the journals are made using sustainable materials (the reason I normally try to stay paper-free even though I love paper goods of any sort, as well as paper collages). This material reportedly boasts "text-weight surface that is ideal for writing, drawing, and painting."

I also like the added thought that's gone into the journal with inner pockets for loose leafs of paper/photographs and the fact that they have a perfect-bound spine so opens flat, which means that you can write or draw straight across both pages - all making it very very functional whilst beautiful, personal and without adding to the cutting down of trees.

It really isn't surprising that the journals are "made with writers, illustrators, artist and designers in mind"!

Surviving Cambodia.

Surviving Cambodia. Photographs by Jim Krantz. Paper Mirror Press, 2007. 48 pp., 45 illustrations, 6x6". Signed copies available at photoeye.

"Cambodia is a world of extremes. The shattered legacy of broken families and the ghostly remains of dismembered bodies, victims of the Pol Pot regime, haunt the ancient temples that once represented a dynamic, vital civilization. Children playfully dive into opaque rivers that multi-task as sewer, food source and place to bathe. Little boys capture lizards in the Killing Fields; climb trees searching for fruit, all seemingly oblivious to the atrocities that have occurred where they stand. But evidence of the brutal past of the Khmer Rouge persist as the rains and wind erode the land, exhuming the bones, teeth and clothes of countless lives erased during their reign of terror."

A poignant and beautiful visual exploration of a complicated history and its present.

Shorelines.

Shorelines. Photographs by David Burdeny. Introduction by Anthony Collins. David Burdeny, Vancouver, 2007. 48 pp., 33 varnished duotone illustrations, 11x11".

"Vancouver, BC, January 28,2007 - - Shorelines, a book of highly textured and minimal seascape photographs, is the first hardcover monograph of Canadian born photographer David Burdeny. Based in Vancouver British Columbia, Canada, Burdeny has traveled extensively over the last 6 years along the coasts of Europe, Asia, USA and Canada capturing the shifting light and surfaces of the world's oceans and shorelines. Printed by world renowned Hemlock Press the 33 plates faithfully reproduce the technical perfection, visual brilliance and otherworldly atmosphere David's prints are known for. These images describe an oceanscape that is grand and particular using a visual language that lies somewhere between representational and abstract photography."

Tranquil and beautiful. To learn more about David Burdeny go here.

Transitory. The Abstract.

Transitory. The Abstract. Photographs by Sean Perry. Text by Roy Flukinger. Cloverleaf Press, Austin, 2006. 30 pp., 10 carbon pigment prints and 1 platinum/palladium print, 9x8".

"Exploring themes of electricity, shadow and solidity, Transitory is Sean Perry's photographic study of architecture & the built environment. With these images Perry has rendered static structures as symbols, revealing an unexpected beauty and graceful clarity. This project invites brief passage into a world void of linear events, leaving the echo of the places and things felt, not seen."

"Transitory: The Abstract, the first volume in a series of three, is a plate book featuring ten tipped-in artist prints and one free-standing platinum print. Including a foreword by Roy Flukinger, Research Curator of Photography & Film at the Harry Ransom Center, it is letterpress-printed and hand-bound in a quarter leather binding. The book and platinum print are enclosed in a full cloth drop spine box. Handmade by book artist Jace Graf and published by Cloverleaf Press in a limited edition of eighty-seven numbered and signed copies.

In addition to notable private collections, Transitory: The Abstract is held in the permanent collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The Wittliff Collection of Southwestern and Mexican Photography."

For more of this beautiful, evocative book go here or to the artist's page here.