Black Venus 2010: They Called Her “Hottentot”. Edited by Deborah Willis. Temple University Press, 288p, ISBN 978-1-4399-0205-9, $34.95.

Publishers Weekly Jan 4 2010 review:

Her name was Sarah Baartman. Born in South Africa in 1789, she died in Paris in 1815—after five years of being displayed (sometimes in a cage) for entertainment and “scientific study”; her pickled buttocks and genitalia remained on public display at the Musée de l’Homme until 1974 and her remains were finally returned to South Africa in 2002. During her period of fame and exploitation, she was known as the “Hottentot Venus.” Willis (Posing Beauty) offers a comprehensive, inclusive, and coherently organized anthology that embraces “scholarly and lyrical, historical and reflexive” responses to Baartman, as a woman, as a black woman, as an object, as an icon, as an inspiration to creative artists, and as a catalyst to scholars. The book moves from Baartman’s life and times to an assessment of the figure of the “Hottentot Venus” in contemporary art and a broader consideration of the historic public display of black women. Appended is a photo gallery that is as essential and diverse as the texts. This remarkable volume satisfies the academic reader with scholarly essays and moves the general reader with its creative expression, making it fascinating and accessible to any one. (Mar.)

What are your top photography books, those game-changing, influential books, the ones you return to again and again for inspiration and edification?

So I decided to start with 4 of my own favorites:

4. Tulsa by Larry Clark (Lustrum, 1971) – fearless, jaw-droppingly honest and unflinching. I regard this as a true artist’s book—no accompanying essay, spare, gritty, powerfully sequenced. I don’t know a lot about this book’s design and production, only that it hasn’t lost any of its impact in the 40+ years since its publication. It has nothing to do with African American photographers or subjects; it’s just an amazing book by an addict with a camera and the wherewithal to honestly record the lives of his friends.

LaToya Ruby Frazier is reportedly working on a monograph; I recently likened her work, Notion of Family, to Clark’s and with the right editorial direction I think her book would rival Tulsa in its cultural and photographic significance.

It took me years to buy a copy; I could only do so once it had been reprinted. First editions of Tulsa sell for more than $700.

3. Suffering the Ideal by F. Holland Day (Twin Palms, 1995) – Though I was always interested in Day’s photographs (including his striking portraits of African American subjects), I purchased this oversized book because it is such an aesthetically striking publication. It showed me how seductive the book object could be—the heavy cream paper, the sumptuous four-color reproductions, the yellow cloth cover with graphic, embossed designs by illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, whose work Day published—Twin Palms in the 1990s was the high-water mark for fine art book publishing (they may still be, though I no longer live in Santa Fe so I can’t go peruse all the new titles in their small showroom on the Plaza). The first edition is still available through the Twin Palms backlist online.

2. Jungle Fever by Jean-Paul Goude (Xavier Moreau, 1981) – it took me years to positively acknowledge this book’s importance—educated in postmodernism, post-colonialism, and feminism, I was much more comfortable criticizing it, but I couldn’t deny how important is has been to my thinking about the representation of black women in photography. It was certainly the first photography book I ever saw that was largely devoted to the image of black women; my undergraduate library (where I worked) had a copy on the shelf, and that’s where I first saw it. Of course, it was never taught or even acknowledged in the classroom, but when I was an undergrad it was a relatively recent publication (it was published in 1981; I entered college in 1982) and the library had it. I never asked anyone about it.

How to describe it—salacious, outrageous, titillating, infuriating. I didn’t know much about Grace Jones then but I definitely liked what I knew; I was also very familiar with Toukie Smith—I used to covet her brother’s clothes (designer Willi Smith)—she of the baby voice and bodacious body who used to model for her brother, dated Robert DeNiro (who, everyone knew, only dated black women), and co-starred on 227. There they both were, fetishized and deconstructed and in some ways made glorious by Goude. There were singing pussies in a peep show and a woman using her ass as a table and as twisted and awful and stereotyped as it all was, underlying it was nonetheless a celebration of black women, their bodies, their sexuality, and there it was, immortalized in print. As a teenager becoming a photographer photographing myself I couldn’t look away. I still can’t.

The book has been long out of print; I eventually bought my used copy for $95 at a small art book store on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica—the most money I had ever spent on a book, but I figured it wasn’t going to get any cheaper. Today copies under $100 abound at bookfinder.com.

1. Black Photographers Bear Witness: 100 Years of Social Protest (Williams College Museum of Art, 1989) – this is a slender catalog from the traveling exhibition of the same name; Deborah Willis was the guest curator. Christian Walker’s photograph Performance Counts #2 is on the cover; within is work by Walker, Pat Ward Williams, Carrie Mae Weems, Moneta Sleet, Jr., James Presley Ball, and Gordon Parks, among others—13 photographers in all. It was the first time I saw most of this work; I even made the pilgrimage to NYC from Albuquerque, where I was in grad school, to see the installation of the exhibition at the Schomburg Center. It was right in the front window of the Center as you entered; I had never seen so much work by black photographers, particularly contemporary black photographers who weren’t working in traditional documentary styles, and I was blown away. I don’t remember if I already had ordered the catalog over the phone (no Internet then!) or bought my copy during that visit, but it remains one of the few sources of some of this important work.

Nowadays, it’s difficult to find Williams’ or Walker’s work online; while Williams does have a slim monograph it’s unlikely that Walker’s work will ever be gathered in a single publication (rumors were that his family was not interested in preserving his work upon his death), which makes this book all the more valuable. Used copies are easy available for less than $20.

It’s particularly fun to read the curator’s acknowledgements to see names like Melissa Rachleff, who now writes for exposure; and Kathe Sandler, who’s working toward her PhD—no wonder this was such a great catalog.

From the publisher:

Photography and video are powerful tools for shaping perception and effecting change, as is convincingly portrayed through the images in this catalogue. Featuring the works of sixteen South African photographers and video artists from 1950 to the present, the catalogue was conceived to accompany the exhibition of the same name at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The cultural and political turbulence of South Africa has lent particular urgency to the role of these media. The eight sections of this catalogue explore a broad spectrum of social and aesthetic themes that have not been brought together in this way before in the United States or abroad.

Darkroom focuses on four generations of artists, including those who lived and worked primarily in South Africa during the apartheid era (1948-1994) and a younger generation that has gained wide international prominence since apartheid’s end. The title refers to both literal and metaphorical dark rooms: the actual place where photography and video is made or seen; the artistic isolation created by apartheid; and the psychological and physical hardship of making meaningful work under threat of imprisonment, torture, and exile.

The images appear as they are organized in the galleries: eighty-six photographs, eight photo-based installations, and six video installations. The artists include native South Africans and long-term South African residents from Germany, the United States, and England.

Contributing Artists
Roger Ballen * Ian Berry * David Goldblatt * William Kentridge * Peter Magubane * Thando Mama * Senzeni Marasela * Santu Mofokeng * Zweiethu Mthethwa * Robin Rhode * Tracey Rose * Jürgen Schadeberg * Berni Searle * Andrew Tshabangu * Nontsikeleio Veleko * Sue Williamson

Distributed for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

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Tosha Grantham is the Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. She was the curated the exhibit on which this catalogue is based. Deborah Willis is an art photographer as well as a leading historian of African American photography and a curator of African American culture. She is a MacArthur Fellow and a past recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation award. Isolde Brielmaier is a Professor of Art at Vassar College and the founding director of the Brooklyn Institute of Contemporary Art. Tumelo Mosaka, originally from South Africa, is Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

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.