]]> http://81press.net/2011/05/16/a-new-mission-for-aperture/feed/ 0 http://81press.net/2010/09/03/d-a-p-fall-2010-catalog/ http://81press.net/2010/09/03/d-a-p-fall-2010-catalog/#comments Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:20:11 +0000 Carla http://81press.net/?p=1059 I just went through the Distributed Art Publishers Fall 2010 New Books on Art and Culture. There are only a couple of titles by black photographers, but several that include black artists and curators. Here are the titles of interest:

Aperture 200, Aperture, Fall 2010. Edited by Melissa Harris. Includes the feature Heroes of the Storm: Five Years after Katrina by Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick written by Deborah Willis, paperback, 9.5 x 11.25 in., 80 pages, illustrated throughout, ISBN 978-1-59711-150-8, $14.95.

In issue 200 of Aperture magazine, the English critic David Campany considers the dynamic work of British photographer Clare Strand; poet Max Blagg discusses Barney Kulok’s latest project and writer Aaron Schuman revisits Mike Mandel’s photo-baseball card project from the 1970s. Other features include portfolios of emerging photographers and a series on New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward, five years after Katrina. Author Michael Lesy contributes a media watch piece, and exhibition reviews include La Subversion des Images: Surrealism, Photography and Film; Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940-1959; and international photography festivals in Lianzhou, China and Bamako, Mali, among others. The issue is available in two covers, one by Cindy Sherman, the other by Clare Strand.

Malick Sidibé: La Vie en Rose. Silvana Editoriale, August 2010, edited and text by Laura Incardona, Laura Serani, hardcover, 6.75 x 9.5 in., 160 pages, 70 tritone, ISBN 978-88-366-1716-6, $60.

Acclaimed for his black-and-white photographs of 1960s youth culture in Bamako, Mali, Malick Sidibé (born 1936) is today the African continent’s best-known photographer. Sidibé was recently awarded the Venice Biennale Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (2007)–the first time this award was presented to a photographer–and the Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement (2008), in recognition of his contribution to documentary photography and the historical record. Malick Sidibé: La Vie en Rose provides a survey of this work, focusing primarily on Sidibé’s images of Mali’s buzzing youth culture and family life in Bamako in the 1960s and 70s. Laura Serani’s foreword contextualizes Sidibé’s work in a wider survey of African photography; the book also includes an interview with the photographer by Laura Incardona and an appendix with Sidibé’s famous “chemises” (photographic dossiers), which documents his working methods.

A Useful Dream: African Photography 1960-2010, Silvana Editoriale, August 2010, Edited and with an introduction by Simon Njami. Text by Frank Vanhaecke, paperback, 9.5 x 11.25 in., 192 pages, 250 color, ISBN 978-88-366-1659-6, $45.

Photography has proved a particularly essential art in the African continent’s postcolonial era, both for recording the numerous seismic moments in its recent history, and for reclaiming the imagery of Africa from its colonial portrayers. As Africa has begun to step beyond its colonial subjugation, photography has also assumed a leading role in providing African countries with individual identities. Tracking the blossoming of postcolonial photography in Africa from 1960 to the present, and accompanying an exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, A Useful Dream: African Photography 1960-2010 celebrates 50 years of African photography. Among the 34 photographers gathered in its pages are Rui Assubuji, Nabil Boutros, Loulou Cherinet, James Depara, Samuel Fosso, David Goldblatt, Bob Gosani, Pierrot Men, Zwelethu Mtethwa, Eileen Perrier, Ricardo Rangel, Malick Sidibé and Patrice-Félix Tchikaya. The volume includes an introduction by Simon Njami and a text by Frank Vanhaecke.

L.A. Object & David Hammons Body Prints. Tilton Gallery/Roberts & Tilton, January 2011, edited by Lindsay Charlwood, Connie Rogers Tilton, Jack Tilton, hardcover, 10.25 x 12.25 in., 300 pages, 200 color, 100 b&w, ISBN 978-1-4276-1374-5, $65.

L.A. Object offers a historical overview of the Los Angeles assemblage movement of the 1960s and 70s. It focuses on works by artists often omitted from mainstream gallery and museum historical exhibitions who were working during the civil rights movement, the 1965 Watts riots and the era’s general social and cultural upheaval: Ed Bereal, Wallace Berman, Nathaniel Bustion, Alonzo Davis, Dale Brockman Davis, Charles Dickson, Mel Edwards, David Hammons, George Herms, Daniel La Rue Johnson, Ed Kienholz, Ron Miyashiro, Senga Nengudi, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, Joe Ray, Betye Saar, Kenzi Shiokava and Timothy Washington. Central to this book are the unique body prints of David Hammons–ironic, often political commentaries relevant to the African-American experience that are for the first time presented within the art historical context from which they arose.

How Many Billboards? Verlag für moderne Kunst, June 2010, edited by Peter Noever. Text by Kimberli Meyer, Gloria Sutton, Lisa Henry, Nizan. Shaked, paperback, 12 x 9 in., 160 pages, 50 color, ISBN 978-3-86984-039-0, $40.

In an urban zone crisscrossed by multilane freeways and gridded with broad boulevards, the roadside billboards of Los Angeles may well be the city’s most visible platform for art. How Many Billboards? documents a 2010 project in which billboards in Los Angeles were turned over to 23 artists to do with as they wished, asserting the ongoing legacy of California Conceptualism and its combination of language-based strategies with Pop-inflected aesthetics. “Astonish!” declares Kenneth Anger’s billboard, in commanding upper-case orange lettering, recapitulating Diaghilev’s famous advice to Cocteau. “I Look Good, I Know,” says Yvonne Rainer’s billboard; “I Can’t Hear, I Can’t See, But I Look Good.” Martha Rosler’s collaboration with Josh Neufeld makes a plea for spending on higher education in California, and Renée Green’s image of a darkened shore with silhouetted figures gathered near a tourist ferry is accompanied by the two-line commentary “Strangers begin again/Native strangers hosting.” Other artists participating in this occasion are Michael Asher, Jennifer Bornstein, Eileen Cowin, Christina Fernandez, Ken Gonzales Day, Kira Lynn Harris, Larry Johnson, John Knight, David Lamelas, Brandon Lattu, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Kori Newkirk, Allen Ruppersberg, Allan Sekula, Susan Silton, Kerry Tribe, Jim Welling and Lauren Woods. Essays by Kimberli Meyer, Gloria Sutton and Nizan Shaked, who co-curated the project, contextualize the works in relation to Conceptual and Pop art idioms, provide background material on the artists and outline the MAK Center’s plans to enliven public space.

Phyllis Galembo: Maske. Chris Boot, October 2010, Introduction by Chika Okeke-Agulu, hardcover, 8.5 x 9.5 in., 208 pages, 108 color, ISBN 978-1-905712-17-5, $45.

The clothes we wear invariably telegraph information about our identity, our place in society and the stories we wish to convey about ourselves. The fantastically colorful costumes specific to African and Caribbean rituals and celebrations go several steps further, transforming ordinary people into mythic figures and magicians, tricksters and gods, and symbolizing the roles their wearers play in the ancient dramas that form the cornerstones of their cultural heritage. Phyllis Galembo began photographing the characters and costumes of African masquerade in Nigeria in 1985, and since then she has continued developing her theme throughout Africa and the Caribbean. This volume collects 108 thrilling carnival photographs from Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Zambia and Haiti. In magnificent color shots, Galembo’s subjects pose in striped bodysuits that cover the entire body, including the face; or outfits made entirely of bunched greenery; or a lacquered wooden mask topped with a headdress featuring full-body models of other characters; or an oversize misshapen animal head and plywood wings. The carnival characters, rooted in African religion and spirituality, are presented in chapters organized by tribal or carnival tradition and are accompanied by Galembo’s personal commentary, shedding light on the characters and costumes portrayed, and on the events in which they play a pivotal role. Maske is a serious contribution to ethnographic study, a photo-essay about fashion and an assembly of superb images.

The Fair hosts over 200 international presses, booksellers, antiquarian dealers, and independent artist/publishers presenting a diverse range of the best in contemporary art publications.

I wanted to see what kind of titles were going to be featured and to get a sense of the scope and focus of this book fair. My interest, of course, was books by African Diaspora photographers, though any African Diaspora artists would do. As it turned out, this was a really long journey to discover just a couple of new titles,* though I was hardly surprised that there were so few. I came away with the persistent question that pesters me (and many others)—where are the publications by and about black artists?

To be fair, NYABF does include some really interesting vendors as well as some terrific work by an international group of artists. After a great chat with cartoonist/activist Rebecca Migdal about her collaboration with the Yes Men, I picked up a copy of World War 3, to which she contributed (I’m really interested in the idea of graphic novels and comics), and also Andrew Laties’ Rebel Bookseller: How to Improvise Your Own Indie Store and Beat Back the Chains and had a good chat with him; he told me about Myles C. Pinkney’s photo-illustrated children’s books which I’ll be adding to the list of titles by black photographers. I also fell in love with Lubok Books‘ gorgeous letterpress-printed volumes and it’s probably a good thing for my budget that he didn’t take credit cards or checks, because I wanted them all, athough if they continue to weigh on my mind I have two more days…I also loved virtually all of the small titles from Coracle—I could have bought them all as gifts.

Henry Roy, Spirit, 2009

One photographer whose name I didn’t recognize was Henry Roy, so I wrote down his name to, well, check to see if he is black. It sounds crass but I have a budget and would rather keep my collecting focus narrow to either black artists or black subjects, which aren’t always one and the same. Roy’s new publication is titled Spirit, and now that I see his site I may have to go back and get his book. A glance at Amazon.com reveals another Roy title, Out Of the Blue, which isn’t listed on his site, so Roy was a real discovery for me.

Gregory R. Miller & Co. had Lyle Ashton Harris’ Blow Up from 2008 displayed; I asked about the forthcoming title, Excessive Exposure: The Complete Chocolate Portraits, and Eva, the rep, let me know that although the book won’t be out until spring there is a PDF review copy available now, so I’ll be requesting that to review here. I’m very excited about another Lyle publication; Eva did share with me that Lyle’s eponymous first book with Gregory Miller was also the title that launched Gregory Miller’s press and that he regards Lyle as the reason he’s a publisher. That was great to hear.

Aperture had Hank Willis Thomas’ Pitch Blackness in the inventory at their booth, though not on display; I was so relieved to see it there that I forgot to check for Dawoud Bey’s Class Pictures. As I posted here recently, their Zwelethu Mthethwa monograph is delayed until 2010.

Kehinde Wiley, Black Light

powerHouse Books had the one new title I purchased (though on my way back I stopped at Strand Books and it was about $20 cheaper there [patronize Strand at your discretion]): Kehinde Wiley’s Black Light. It’s a sumptuous yet slender full-color folio, and I don’t think it’s coincidence that Wiley is primarily known as a painter and thus an “artist” versus “photographer,” and a bit of an art star at that. I think this kind of work is more saleable—perhaps it’s more striking on the shelf alongside all of the other new titles out there? But it’s a great-looking book and a great addition; I can’t wait to delve further into it. I also picked up powerHouse’s Fall/Winter 2009-2010 catalog but haven’t had a chance to peruse it. Hopefully it will yield some more titles.

*Luckily, I was able to pick up the DAP catalog and while they aren’t strictly photographers, artists-who-use-photography Glenn Ligon and Rashid Johnson both have new monographs:

Glenn Ligon, Some Changes

Glenn Ligon, Some Changes

Glenn Ligon is one of the preeminent members of a generation of American artists who came to prominence in the late 1980s with conceptually-based paintings, photographs and text-oriented works concerning the social, linguistic and political constructions of race, gender and sexuality. Incorporating sources as diverse as photographic scrapbooks and Richard Pryor’s stand-up comedy routines–his lush coal-dust paintings of excerpts from James Baldwin’s 1955 essay “Stranger in the Village,” for instance–Ligon’s art is a meditation on representation of the self in relation to culture and history. Handsomely designed with a hardcover slipcase, Some Changes is the artist’s first significant monograph. Well-illustrated texts by critics and curators Wayne Baerwaldt, Huey Copeland, Darby English, Wayne Koestenbaum and Mark Nash survey Ligon’s works from 1982 to 2005, and a candid interview with Toronto artist Stephen Andrews delves into Ligon’s personal insights and professional experiences.

Rashid Johnson, Sharpening My Oyster Knife

Rashid Johnson, Sharpening My Oyster Knife

Rashid Johnson belongs to a generation of young African-American artists that takes an extremely critical approach to the search for its cultural roots. His artistic strategies, which include photography, painting and sculpture, performance and beyond, are aesthetically nonconformist and politically provocative.

It was interesting going to this just after having added several new titles to this site in the last week by artists I’d never heard of—that sense of discovery led me to hope that there would be similar revelations at a fair of this size and scope. Let’s say that, on average, each vendor brought 10 books (some had only one while some had dozens)—that would make more than 2,000 titles represented at this fair. To have come away with only two new titles by African Diaspora photographers is beyond under-representation. The fact that among these there are no new titles by black women artists is especially disappointing. I want to think that there are titles about which I don’t know because those artists are just off my radar, or even those who might read these don’t think to send info on their own titles. I think I might have more luck studying the bookshelves of my gracious host this weekend.

Alright, now I’m off to sleep.

Zwelethu Mthethwa. Edited by Isolde Brielmaier, essay by Okwui Enwezor, Spring 2010, 113/4 x 10 in. (29.8 x 25.4 cm), 180 pages, 75 four-color images, Hardcover with jacket
ISBN 978-1-59711-113-3, $65.00; £45.00

Also available
A slipcased limited edition with print.
Please contact Aperture for information.

From the publisher:

Since Apartheid’s fall in 1994, South African photography has exploded from the grip of censorship onto the world stage. A key figure in this movement is Zwelethu Mthethwa, whose stunning portraits powerfully frame black South Africans as dignified and defiant, even under the duress of social and economic hardship. Working in urban and rural industrial landscapes, Mthethwa documents a range of aspects in South Africa—from domestic life and the environment to landscape and labor issues. His work challenges the conventions of both Western documentary work and African commercial studio photography, marking a transition away from the visually exotic and diseased—or “Afro-pessimism,” as curator Okwui Enwezor has referred to it—and employing a fresh approach marked by color and collaboration. Zwelethu Mthethwa is the artist’s long-awaited first comprehensive monograph, providing an overview of his work to-date and featuring the stunning portraits that have brought him international acclaim.
ZWELETHU MTHETHWA (born in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 1960) received his BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, a then white’s only university he entered under special ministerial consent. He received his master’s degree while on a Fulbright Scholarship to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Mthethwa has had over thirty-five international solo exhibitions and has been featured in numerous group shows, including the 2005 Venice Biennial and Snap Judgments at the International Center of Photography, New York. Mthethwa is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

ISOLDE BRIELMAIER (editor) is visiting assistant professor of art at Vassar College, and guest professor at Barnard College/Columbia University as well as an independent curator and writer. OKWUI ENWEZOR (essay) is dean of academic affairs at San Francisco Art Institute, and the former artistic director of both Documenta XI and the second Johannesburg Biennale. He is a pioneering critic and curator.

On February 2, 2000, Songha Thomas Willis was shot to death outside a Philadelphia nightclub. He was 27 years old. The takeaway? A $400 gold chain. It’s the story that lies at the heart of Pitch Blackness, the first monograph by photographer and inaugural Aperture West Book Prize recipient Hank Willis Thomas, Songha’s cousin. It’s also a story that, sadly, occurs all too frequently across America. What makes Pitch Blackness so affecting is that Thomas explores not only the immediate effect of his cousin’s death on his family and friends but also the skewed perceptions of race, sexuality, gender roles, and economic empowerment that contribute to a cycle of violence.

The book consists of six distinct, yet cohesive parts, giving it a novel-like quality. It also includes two illuminating essays on the historical context of Thomas’ work from René de Guzman and Robin D. G. Kelley.

We start with pages from the Thomas-Willis family photo album, which are some of the most powerful images. They set a nostalgic, wistful tone, as they show Hank and Songha transform from babies to toddlers to handsome young men with easy smiles, constantly surrounded by various aunts, cousins, uncles, brothers and sisters. The wistful tone ends abruptly, replaced first by a newspaper clipping reporting Songha’s murder and then images of coffins, graves, tears, furrowed brows, mouths hardened into grim lines, scans of the autopsy report and the medical examiner’s photo of Songha, post-autopsy. It brought tears to my eyes and made me wonder how Hank was able to compose himself enough to take photos throughout that period. Or perhaps taking photos was the only way he could begin to process where he was and why.

The next segment of the book consists of stills from “Winter in America,” a stop-motion animated film that re-enacts the events leading up to Songha’s murder using GI Joe dolls. It’s a creepy and absurd set of images; it shows us how children are taught to normalize violence before they can count to 20, and asks us “What are we teaching ourselves about the value of life?”

This leads us to the sobering “Bearing Witness: Murder’s Wake,” a set of portraits of the people affected by Songha’s life and untimely death. As Hank points out himself, “the impossibility of this task becomes the point” of this project. The truly diverse group of people–young, old, black, white, etc.–are presented as a pair, then a grid of four, then six, then eight, with black squares standing in for the people he couldn’t find and include.

Branded, Priceless #1, 2004 © Hank Willis Thomas from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, October 2008)

The other sets of images, from “Branded,” “Studio X,” and “Unbranded” puts Songha’s death within a larger context about how Black men have been perceived and portrayed in mass media. In “Branded,” he appropriates images, brands, logos and techniques from popular ads to critique a culture that values material wealth above human beings. He illustrates this through images such as “Timberland and Johnnie Walker,” which shows the Air Jordan symbol as a lynching victim, swinging from the Timberland tree logo while the Johnnie Walker mascot stays true to his motto and keeps walking.

There’s also his take on those ubiquitous “Priceless” MasterCard commercials, using a photo from Songha’s funeral and the following copy: “New socks: $2. 3-Piece Suit: $250. Gold chain: $400. 9mm pistol: $79. bullet: ¢69. Picking the perfect casket for your son: Priceless.”

He also appropriates and manipulates ads from Absolut, American Express, the NBA and Chase, combining modern-day ads with images from 19th-century literature depicting slaves. “Branded” is filled with a potent combination of pathos and gallows humor. (”The Original Slam Dunk” is the Air Jordan logo, Jumpman, diving from a slave ship. See what I mean?)

The same combination appears in “Unbranded,” a collection of ads geared toward Black people dating from 1968, the year of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination and symbolic death of the civil rights movement to the present day, 2008.

Hank strips away all logos and copy, leaving the reader with some very disquieting images. The one that stood out to me the most was “OJ Dingo,” depicting O.J. Simpson with a literal third leg, for a boot ad from the 1970s. Incredible. Of course this was created before terms such as “politically correct” entered the lexicon but I also wonder how advertisers were able to get away with the idea that Simpson’s phallus was so huge it needed its own boot.

These images serve to either reinforce ugly stereotypes or undermine the Black Power Movement and the Civil Rights Movement to sell goods no one really needs. One example is a photo of tires rolling through the desert in the shape of the iconic Black Power fist. It is completely perverse and Thomas highlights that perversion again and again, in an engaging and darkly humorous way.

What makes these series so fascinating is Thomas’ argument that not much has changed from the times of slavery and now regarding the way Black people, Black males in particular, are perceived, which is mostly as commodities instead of complex, sentient human beings. During the centuries-long slave trade, propagating the myth that Black people aren’t, in fact, people, made it easier to buy and sell them and keep the system in place. He argues that Black men in 20th- and 21st-century society are still portrayed as 2-D objects, commodities to be bought and sold. He also argues that this perception, along with equating consumerism as a means of empowerment can have dire consequences, such as young men being killed over Air Jordan tennis shoes or cheap gold chains.

The book also includes the series “Studio X,” portraits of young black men and women wearing t-shirts emblazoned with airbrushed photos of their dead friends and family members. While it’s a way to pay tribute to the fallen, you wish that those kind of t-shirt businesses didn’t have so many sales, that their business wasn’t dependent on so many lives being cut short. While I feel “Branded” and “Unbranded” are stronger collectively, and his portraits for “Bearing Witness” are more emotionally resonant, these portraits still probe a tragic subject manner with sensitivity and straightforwardness.

Pitch Blackness runs the risk of appearing maudlin or polemical but Hank Willis Thomas manages to avoid those pitfalls. What comes through loud, clear and strong is a powerful, intimate tribute to a life lost much too soon and a refusal to fall victim to complacency. – Danielle Scruggs