Duane Michals at Strand Books NYC

If you happen to be in New York tonight, Thursday November 29, there is a chance to go along to Strand books (between 7.30 and 8.30pm ) and listen to the incredible Duane Michals who will be signing his new book Empty New York. As a long time fan of Mr Michals I wish I could be there...

Strand Books say this: join us in the 2nd Floor Art Department as Duane Michals publshes his new book, a collection of photographs documenting the still and empty moments on various iconic New York City locales. 

Having discovered his vocation for photography in 1958 while on holiday in the USSR, in 1964-65 Duane Michals began to document New York City in a tantalisingly unfamiliar guise, virtually empty of inhabitants at dawn or dusk. In deeply evocative black-and-white images he depicted storefronts and interiors; deserted stations, subway cars, funfairs and arcades; derelict markets, vacant theatres and diners.

Already the hallmarks of his mature style were apparent: a fascination with the sequencing of his images as a way of establishing a narrative, an understanding of the emotive power of locations as sites of epiphany, an instinctive ability to frame the subject within the view-finder and to draw out its atmosphere from the available natural lighting, and a concentration on incidental details and amusing juxtapositions. He soon recognised the potential of these locations as stage sets for the human dramas that he began to make a few years later and on which his reputation as an artist was to rest. It is no exaggeration to say that through his Empty New York images, only a very few of which have been published or exhibited before, he discovered his voice as an artist photographer whose work is full of poetry and a yearning for spiritual fulfilment.

Day after day Michals would rise at dawn to capture unpeopled sidewalks, bridges and parking lots, architectural fragments, the Hudson River, cityscapes in the mist, skyscrapers and urban nature reflected in the puddles of Central Park.

Beautifully realised and now achingly nostalgic, the photographs in Empty New York show us the city frozen in time, just as Eugène Atget, one of Michals’ heroes, commemorated Paris in the early years of the twentieth century. A social history and also a photographic reportage, Duane Michals’ pictorial poem reminds us with every frame how he has earned his place among the greats of American photography.

Quentin Bajac returns to Paris to head the Jeu de Paume

Harvey Benge - Quentin Bajac, Auckland, January 2012

Quentin Bajac chief curator of photography at MoMA New York, a position he has help for nearly 5 years, is returning to Paris to take up the directorship of the Jeu de Paume. Bajac succeeds Marta Gili, who was director at the Jeu de Paume from 2006 to 2018. Located on Place de la Concorde, the Jeu de Paume is a center of contemporary art,  dedicated to photography and image. 

While at MoMA Bajac organized numerous exhibitions including the Stephen Shore mid career retrospective which closed in this last May, “Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection” (2015), ”A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio” (2014), and ”Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, 1909–1949” (2014). Bajac also co- curated the exhibition "Being Modern: The MoMA in Paris at the Louis Vuitton Foundation" (2017).

Born in 1965, Quentin Bajac graduated from the Institute of Political Studies of Paris and the National Institute of Heritage. Bajac became curator of photography at the Musée d'Orsay in 1995, he then joined the Center Pompidou in 2003 and in 2010 was promoted to head the Cabinet of Photography at Center Pompidou. While at Center Pompidou Bajac curated various exhibitions on modern and contemporary photography, he notably organized "William Klein" (2005), "The Subversion of Images: Surrealism, Photography, Film" (2009), and "Here is Paris: Modernities Photographic, 1920-1950- The Christian Bouqueret Collection "(2012). 

Bajac has written a number of books, including Le Mélange des genres with Martin Parr (2010), Brassaï, the nocturnal loafer with Sylvie Aubenas (2012) and Robert Doisneau: Image fisherman (2012). He is also the author of a history of photography in three volumes (Discoveries Gallimard, 2000-2010). He has devoted articles to photographers and artists using photography such as Alexander Calder, Man Ray, Lucien Herve, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Luigi Ghirri, Karen Knorr, Mimmo Jodice, Lise Sarfati, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Luc Delahaye. 

Laia Abril - On Abortion: winner of the Aperture Photobook of the Year Award and nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019

Laia Abril (b. 1986, Spain) for her bookwork A History of Misogyny, Chapter One: On Abortion (Dewi Lewis Publishing - November 2017) has won the Paris Photo - Aperture Photobook of the Year Award and has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019.

On Abortion is a visual research project that draws on the past, present and current history of abortion to highlight the continuing erosion of women’s reproductive rights. For centuries, people have searched for ways to terminate unsafe or unwanted pregnancies. Despite the fact that today safe and efficient means of abortion exist, many women are still forced to resort to ancient, illegal or risky home methods resulting in approximately 47,000 deaths due to failed procedures each year. In this meticulously researched project, Abril documents the physical and psychological dangers caused by the continued lack of legal, safe and free access to abortion. Her collection of visual, audio and textual evidence graphically represents the consequences of unsafe procedures. It raises complex questions around the ethics and morality involved in any consideration of this subject, while exposing the myriad social triggers, stigmas and taboos that still persist around abortion and female health.

On Abortion is the first chapter of Abril’s long-term project, A History of Misogyny. Laia Abril is a visual artist, photographer and bookmaker from Barcelona. After graduating in Journalism, she enrolled at FABRICA – the Benetton artist residency; where she worked at COLORS Magazine as a creative editor and staff photographer for 5 years. Her projects have been shown throughout Europe, in the United States, and in China and have been published in media worldwide. Her work is held in many private and public collections. Her first book with Dewi Lewis Publishing, the critically acclaimed The Epilogue (2014), was shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture First Book Award, Kassel PhotoBook Festival and the Photo España Best Book Award.

"On Abortion is about as good as it can get, and I hope that more photographers will start working along this line of photobooks. With a world of photojournalism mired in what looks like a morass of problems (gender, diversity, Western-centric views, various photography problems), from which it is unable to extricate itself, another world is possible. And that is what Abril presents with On Abortion: she establishes the new gold standard of the research-based photographic book." – Jörg Colberg, Conscientious Photography Magazine 

"this heartbreaking book is a must have" – Rémi Coignet 

"splendid cohesion between text, ephemera, photography and design" – Rob Hornstra

Hardback / 196 pages / 114 colour and duotone plates / 245mm x 188mm

DEWI LEWIS PUBLISHING at Paris Photo

Paris Photo is in full swing! If you're planning on going, check out UK publisher Dewi Lewis's new photobook offerings... visit Dewi and Caroline on their stand in the publishers' area at the Grand Palais (Stand SE16), you can meet some of their photographers who will be signing books during the week. Here are just a few of the new books:

You can check out the Dewi Lewis Publishing website HERE.

Paris Photo opens tomorrow - check out the book signings

Getting back to something more current, Paris Photo opens to the public tomorrow. Expect crowds. If you're a photobook collector and like the books signed the book signing programme brings together the most renowned artists working in the medium of photography. Visitors have the unique opportunity to meet over the course of the 4 days of the fair more than 250 artists who will sign and dedicate their published works.  Below is just a sampling...

You can see a complete list photographers, days and times HERE.

LA ART BOOK FAIR - April 12 -14 2019

With Paris Photo due to open today, it may be premature to talk about Printed Matter's 2019 edition of the LA Art Book Fair, but why not!

Initiated in 2013, LAABF is the companion fair to the NY Art Book Fair. The two fairs are among the leading international gatherings for the distribution of artists’ books, celebrating the full breadth of the art publishing community. Held at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in downtown Los Angeles over three days, LAABF 2019 will welcome hundreds of exhibitors from around the world, including a broad range of artists and collectives, small presses, institutions, galleries, antiquarian booksellers, and distributors. With a commitment to diversity and representation, the event will serve as a meeting place for an extended community of publishers and book enthusiasts, as well as a site for dialog and exchange around all facets of arts publishing.

 Exhibitor applications are now open for Printed Matter's 2019 LA Art Book Fair (LAABF). Apply through December 11, 201 HERE.

Printed Matter, Inc. presents
THE LA ART BOOK FAIR
April 12–14, 2019
Preview: Thursday, April 11

Susan Lipper - Domesticated Land

Susan Lipper's new book-work Domesticated Land was published by MACK in April of this year. At Photo London in May I acquired a copy. It's a work that haunts the mind.

MACK say this: It was in April 2012 that Lipper began to make pictures in the California desert. This was the beginning of Domesticated Land, her enigmatic finale in a trilogy of books, following Grapevine (1988–1992) and trip (1993–1999). The three-part journey, which spanned nearly thirty years and ended in 2016, saw Lipper travel from the forested Appalachian frontiers in the East of the United States – with a stint across the I-10 highway – to the so-called wilderness of the West. Her expedition was anchored in a dual search for ‘true’ America and her own territory: a personal, female perspective of a male-driven land, and a new fictional account of a well-trodden narrative. Pushing and pulling against the documentary tradition, Lipper’s Land is her last resort in quest of a redeemable future.

Superficially, Lipper's pictures don't appear to say much. They are quiet and understated. And in these days of mid-term hype, piss and political wind that's a valuable position to occupy. And a position I've always liked, images that are simple yet loaded. Lipper's pictures personify this. There is a back story to every picture, something has happened and something else is about to... just what, we are left to work out. In my reading there is also something apocalyptic in this work, something sinister and disquieting. These empty spaces seem to be one gigantic crime scene... who were the victims, who were the perpetrators... If I was to compare Domesticated Land with another book-work that I admire and one that exhibits the same level of restraint and refinement it would have to be John Gossage's book THE POND. John Gossage knows the value of understatement and so does Susan Lipper. And further, Susan Lipper knows what is takes to make something out of nothing, and that's what art that works is supposed to do. Get this book!  

If you're in Paris this week, Susan Lipper will be signing Domesticated Land, at Paris Photo, 5pm Saturday November 10,  MACK stand SE3.