ARTIST
BOOKS
The books
in this section are artist books by individuals that use the photography
book format as an art form or to augment their art. Many of the books
listed here are in very limited editions.
The
books are available through our association with Amazon.com If you are
interested in a book that is not available through Amazon.com, we most
likely have an alternative source or a copy in our collection that you
may inquire about.
A
B C D E F
G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V
W X Y Z
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The
Telephone Book (with Pearls),
John Baldessari
1992, Distributed Art Publishers
8.5" x 5.75", 64 pgs.
(used copies available) |
Inquire
about the 1988 first edition, published in Belgium. |
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VB
08-36, Vanessa Beecroft Performances
Vanessa Beecroft
2000, Hatje Cantz Publishers
11.25" x 8.74", 200 pgs.
List price: $39.95 |
This extraordinary
book of photographs documents a series of performances held at art
museums and galleries around the world. These performances staged
by Ms. Beecroft features women in a variety of poses. |
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Vanessa
Beecroft: Performances 1993-2003,
Marcella Beccaria
2003, Skira
11.35" x 9.5", 456 pp.
List price: $75.00 |
"Inventor
of a unique artistic language in her performance pieces, the Italian
artist Vanessa Beecroft directly addresses themes central to contemporary
culture everywhere: identity, multiplicity, the body and sexuality,
and in the process, mixes glamour with the history of art. Known
for pieces during which multiple, beautiful models stage a ritual
of being and appearing, mostly in the nude, Beecroft involves the
audience in a direct confrontation, pushing to the limit the tension
of a happening that is simultaneously unique, real and abstract.
This book
is the catalog of the Fall 2003 exhibition at Castello di Rivoli
in Turin and is the most complete publication of the artist's
work to date and includes critical text as well as a detailed
biography and bibliography. This major retrospective of the artist
will present an original interpretation of her work, and will
feature a new large-scale performance along with photographic
and video works." |
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Oliver
Boberg,
Oliver Boberg
2004, Hatje Cantz Publishers
11.5" x 9.75", 144 pp
List price: $39.95 |
Essays by Stephan Berg and Martin Engler
Interview by Marc Mayer.
One of the most interesting artistic personalities of his generation,
Oliver Boberg has, since the late 80s, been making small models
of urban settings, which he then photographs in such a way that
their model quality almost totally disappears. The reality presented
in his photographs of underpasses and flat-roofed buildings is one
of a non-location, a place which is so familiar that it could be
anywhere and nowhere. Boberg's videos from 2002 and 2003 show nocturnal
landscape views which seem to be based on film scenarios, but these
works, too, reproduce scale models. The 16mm films transferred to
DVD show eerie situations which are devoid of people: a foreboding
cliff or a country road seen at twilight during a dreary rainstorm.
The model of this non-location here becomes a detail of a story
which is rich in allusions, charged with a cinematic suspense and
fearful expectation. This publication brings together for the first
time the photographs, video stills, and drawings by this young German
artist. - 55 color and 23 black-and-white illustrations |
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James
Casebere,
The Spacial Uncanny,
James Casebere
2001, Charta
12.34" x 9.8", 176 pgs.
List price: $49.95 |
Essays
by Anthony Vidler, Chris Chang, and Jeffrey Eugenides
For the last
twenty years, James Casebere has constructed increasingly complex
small-scale architectural models that are carefully built and
then subtly lit and photographed in the studio. These table-sized
models are made of simple materials, pared down to essential forms,
empty of both extraneous detail and action. |
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The
Architectural Unconscious,
James Casebere
2000, Addison Gallery of American Art
11.81" x 9.09", 80 pgs.
List price: $19.95 |
Collaboration,
James Casebere and Glen Seator
The Architectural
Unconscious brings together two contemporary artists who address
similar issues in architecture-architecture as sculpture, as site,
and as image-in very different ways. James Casebere is known for
the black and white and monochromatic color photographs he makes
using small-scale tabletop models. These models are then subtly
lit and photographed to create disconcerting, archetypal spaces
reminiscent of prisons, monasteries, tunnels, and factories. The
work of Glen Seator recreates architectonic forms-offices, facades-based
on already existing buildings; lifted out of context, the works
provoke a sense of dislocation, causing viewers to reconsider
the social use of the original site, as well as the space in which
the work is displayed. This visual diary places these two innovators
and their works in dialogue through notes, sketches, plans, snapshots,
and related works, as well as images of the final pieces. |
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Dali's
Mustache
Salvador Dali
1994, Flammarion
7" x 5.44", 128 pgs.
List price: $12.95 (Reprint) |
"Warning!
This book is preposterous," says the back cover. This collaboration
between the flamboyant Spanish painter and the Latvian-born portraitist
is also a surrealistic work of art. Halsman understood the extroverted
Dali better than any other photographer; their talents and personalities
were the perfect complement to each other. In the course of this
witty and inventive homage, the artist's celebrated whiskers tie
themselves in a knot, are pressed into service as a paintbrush,
become the hands of a clock and blemish the face of the Mona Lisa. |
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The
Artist and the Photographer,
Joan Fontcuberta
2000, Actar Editorial
9.63" x 6.78", 144 pgs.
List price: $35.00 |
Imagine
that the great Spanish masters-Picasso, Mir, Dali, and Tpies-used
photography to play with and re-form their own works. What would
these photographs look like? A convincing fictional answer is provided
by Joan Fontcuberta, who after parodying various scientific disciplines
(botany, zoology, astronomy) has taken to reinventing the history
of art itself-by posing as the curator of such an exhibit, which
was shown in the United States and Europe. Beyond the irony and
humor of such a project, Fontcuberta explores such hot-button issues
as the symbiotic relationship between art and photography, concepts
of authenticity and authorship in an age of mechanical reproduction,
and ever-changing notions about tradition and avant-gardism in the
art world. |
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Anthony
Goicolea,
Anthony Goicolea
2003, Twin Palms Publication
9.25" x 13", 160 pp.
List price: $60.00
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"This
fantastic new book from Twin Palms Publishers, with accompanying
DVD of video-shorts, brings to a much broader audience the work
of Brooklyn-based multi-media artist Goicolea. His work is entirely
self-portraiture, presented in very carefully staged cinematic tableaux's
in which he plays a host of characters. "Through digital manipulation,
I am able to clone myself and create scenarios in which I act out
childhood incidents such as fight scenes, first kisses, and deranged
play dates. These works are simultaneously rooted in nostalgia and
science fiction. While hinting at the past and early Freudian developmental
stages of youth, they also refer to new medical and technological
breakthroughs in fertility drugs and gene cloning with biting cynicism
and humor."-Anthony Goicolea. The book itself is magnificent,
as are all Twins Palms projects. The work is psychological and metaphorical
at one and the same time, seamlessly presented." |
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Robert
Heinecken: A Material History,
Robert Heinecken
2003, Center for Creative Photography
11" x 10", 112 pp.
List price: $30.00 |
Essays by
Mark Alice Durant and Amy Rule.
"Over the last four decades, Robert Heinecken has amused, educated
and often shocked viewers with his pointed, irreverent photographic
works. So provocative are Heinecken's subjects and obsessions--the
Vietnam War, pornography, masculinity and femininity, the media
marketplace--that many critics and other observers rank either as
avid fans or staunch detractors. In recent years, the impact of
Heinecken's career within and beyond the world of photography has
been indisputable. His manipulations and iterations of mass-produced
imagery are echoed by artists as eclectic as Barbara Kruger, Cindy
Sherman, Richard Price and others. In today's media-saturated environment,
Heinecken's work with its wit, know-how, and focus on media materials,
is as relevant now as when he made it. The Robert Heinecken Archive
at the Center for Creative Photography, with its extensive collection
of fine prints, papers, support materials and random objects, provides
the inspiration for this reassessment. Robert Heinecken: A Material
History positions Heinecken less as a fringe element of photographic
practice and sensibility and more as a pioneer of the visual, helping
to integrate alternative methods as part of the canon." - 56
color, 29 duotone illustrations. |
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Robert
Heinecken: Photographist,
Robert Heinecken
1999, Museum of Contemporary Art
11" x 9", 176 pp.
List price: $34.95 |
"A photographic
innovator and conceptual artist, Robert Heinecken played an important
role in the development of contemporary art practice. That role
is critically assessed in this exhibition catalog, which accompanies
a major traveling retrospective organized by the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Chicago. This volume, the first comprehensive book on Heinecken
since 1980, illustrates all the major work in his thirty-year career,
and features essays by leading photography critic and historian
A.D. Coleman and exhibition curator Lynne Warren." |
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Full
Moon
Michael Light
1999, Knopf
11.68" x 11.73", 236 pgs.
List price: $50.00 |
The most thrilling
of all journeys--the missions of the Apollo astronauts to the surface
of the Moon and back--yielded 32,000 extraordinarily beautiful photographs,
the record of a unique human achievement. Until recently, only a
handful of these photographs had been released for publication;
but now, for the first time, NASA has allowed a selection of the
master negatives and transparencies to be scanned electronically,
rendering the sharpest images of space that we have ever seen. Michael
Light has woven 129 of these stunningly clear images into a single
composite voyage, a narrative of breathtaking immediacy and authenticity
that begins with the launch and is followed by a walk in space,
an orbit of the Moon, a lunar landing and exploration, and a return
to Earth with an orbit and splashdown.
Graced by five 45-inch-wide gatefolds that display the lunar
landscape, from above the surface and at eye level, in unprecedented
detail and clarity, Full Moon conveys on each page the
excitement, disorientation, and awe that the astronauts themselves
felt as they were shot into space and then as they explored an
alien landscape and looked back at their home planet from hundreds
of thousands of miles away.
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100
Suns,
Michael Light
2003, Knopf
13.68" x 10.78", 208 pgs.
List price: $45.00 |
"The
title, 100 Suns, refers to the response by J.Robert Oppenheimer
to the world’s first nuclear explosion in New Mexico when
he quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, the classic Vedic text:
“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at
once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One
. . . I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This was
Oppenheimer’s attempt to describe the otherwise indescribable.
100 Suns likewise confronts the indescribable by presenting
without embellishment the stark evidence of the tests at the moment
of detonation. Since the tests were conducted either in Nevada or
the Pacific the book is simply divided between the desert and the
ocean. Each photograph is presented with the name of the test, its
explosive yield in kilotons or megatons, the date and the location.
The enormity of the events recorded is contrasted with the understated
neutrality of bare data. Interspersed within the sequence of explosions
are pictures of the awestruck witnesses. The
evidence of these photographs is terrifying in its implication
while at same time profoundly disconcerting as a spectacle. The
visual grandeur of such imagery is balanced by the chilling facts
provided at the end of the book in the detailed captions, a chronology
of the development of nuclear weaponry and an extensive bibliography.
A dramatic sequel to Michael Light’s Full Moon, 100
Suns forms an unprecedented historical document. |
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Making
Good Time
Mike Mandel
1992, University of Mexico Press
10.8" x 10.8", 72 pgs.
List price: $27.50 |
Preface
by Edward W. Earle
Making
Good Time,
includes Scientific Management, The Gilbreths, Photography and
Motion, and Futurism. Here Mandel's photographic study time,
time management, and issues relating to the study of time. This
book includes images both 'found' and created by the artist.
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One,
Ken Ohara
1997, Taschen America
10.5" x 9", 496 pgs.
(Out of print, used copies available) |
This
is a reprint from the original artist's book published as a limited
edition in 1970.
"There
is an expression that if one were to stand at the corner of Seventh
Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan, everyone you know would eventually
pas by. Ken O'Hara'sONE follows that concept. Shot in
the mod 1960s on the streets of New York, it is a compelling visual
meditation on mankind. O'hara's full bled images study those small
things that make mankind unique. Stripped down to essentials,
each page is eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair. Each page shows both
the human mask and what lies beneath it. What is expressed in
the mouth? What are eyes saying? Each page is a visual equation
and a riddle to which you will consistently return" - from
the book jacket |
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CRACKERS,
Edward Ruscha
1969, Heavy Industry Publications
8.75" x 6", 240 pgs.
(inquire about availability) |
"This
is Ed Ruscha's photo-illustrated narrative featuring noted Los
Angeles fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, his frequent model Leon
Bing, artist Larry Bell, and Tommy Smothers as models based on
Mason Williams' text "How to Derive the Maximum Enjoyment
from Crackers" (which is printed on the inside rear flap
of the dust jacket). Intentionally photographed as if a collection
of film stills, this project served as the basis for Ruscha's
1971 film "Premium". - 115 b&w illustrations. |
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Royal
Road Test,
Edward Ruscha
1967, Self Published
9.3" x 6.25", 60 pgs.
(inquire about availability) |
With Mason
Williams & Patrick Blackwell. Spiral Bound Wrappers.
What happens when three artists perform and document a Consumer
Reports style crash-test involving a flying 90 mph typewriter
and U.S. Highway 91..? . Edward Ruscha's wry collaboration is a
must for road-trip and conceptual art enthusiasts alike! - 36 b&w
photographs |
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Twentysix
Gasoline Stations,
Edward Ruscha
1963, Self Published
48 pgs.
(inquire about availability) |
"A travelogue
of decaying Americana, Ruscha deftly documented this vanishing roadside
way of life between his hometown of Oklahoma City, and his newfound
promised land of Los Angeles."
- 26 b&w photographs. |
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Some
Los Angeles Apartments,
Edward Ruscha
1965, Self Published
48 pgs.
(inquire about availability) |
"A photographic
homage to the subtle beauty of the post-war Southern California
rental property construction boom."
- 34 b&w illustrations. |
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Nine
Swimming Pools,
Edward Ruscha
1968, Self Published
64 pgs.
(inquire about availability)
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"A paean
to the beauty of the well appointed Southern California patio, and
the blank, white page."
- 10 color illustrations |
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Various
Small Fires and a Glass of Milk,
Edward Ruscha
1964, Self Published
48 pgs.
(inquire about availability)
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"A humorous
cataloguing of flames and a glass of milk."
- 16 b&w illustrations |
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Records,
Edward Ruscha
1971, Heavy Industry Publications
72 pgs.
(inquire about availability) |
"This
is Edward Ruscha's fifteenth artist book, a charming photographic
inventory of thirty vinyl phonograph records (and their album cover
graphics) from the artist's personal collection at the time."
- 60 b&w illustrations |
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Every
Building on the Sunset Strip,
Edward Ruscha
1966, Self Published
7" x 5.75", 1 pg.
(inquire about availability) |
This
artist book is one long page 296" long. The artist photographed
every building along Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. The book came
boxed in a silver foil wrapped slipcase. - black-and-white illustrations. |
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Colored
People,
Edward Ruscha
1972, Self Published
7" x 5.5"
(inquire about availability) |
Color
photographs of palm trees, cactus, and other desert plants isolated
on a white background. - 15 color illustrations. |
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Samaras:
Photographs by Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras
1988, Aperture
9.75" x 12.5", 184 pgs.
List price: $50.00
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Essay
by Ben Lifson
"Photographer, painter, sculptor, Lucas Samaras is one of
the most influential and provocative artists of our time. Once
again available to readers, this long out-of-print volume presents
a thorough compilation of Samara's photographic work, beginning
with his earliest "Auto-Polaroids."
This exhaustive
body of work paved the way for a generation of contemporary
photo-artists, expanding the expressive possibilities of the
medium. Using Polaroid materials, large--sometimes life-sized--formats,
manipulated imagery, and composites, Samaras helped forge a
vocabulary employed by artists and photographers throughout
the eighties. In his most profound achievement, he adopted one
of photography's basic genres--portraiture--and used it as a
basis for an inquiry into the self, which remains unmatched
in its intensity and boundless in its ramifications. ..."
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The
Box,
Frederick Sommer
1996, Nazraels Press
4.5" x 4.5"
List price: $400.00
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Frederick Sommer first became renowned for his
austere desert landscapes and portraits – a flattened jackrabbit
from 1939, a portrait of Max Ernst merged with the side of a weathered
building. He later turned his fascination with what he termed “elegance
of form” in surprising directions: a series of dramatically
lit paper cutouts from the late 1970s, and his photo-collages from
the 1990s, meticulous works incorporating anatomical drawings. The
Box is a randomly-ordered series of 64 cards which readers
can re-compose into a unique sequence/book of their own.
A limited number of copies from the first printing
of 1,000 hand numbered copies are available. Sixty-four 4 x 4
inch cards, enclosed in a clear lucite box.
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Attracted
to Light
Doug and Mike Starn
2003. powerHouse Books
120 pgs.
List price: $85.00 |
" ...
A sumptuously oversized and exquisitely produced book, Attracted
to Light showcases the Starns' extensive conceptual portrait
series of the nocturnal moths' mysterious journey and the seeming
gravitational force that light has over them, "captured"
in photographs and filmic video footage. ..." |
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top
of page |
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Artists on this
page:
Baldessari
Beecroft
Boberg
Casebere
Dali
Fontcuberta
Goicolea
Heinecken
Light
Mandel
Ohara
Ruscha
Samaras
Sommer
Starn
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