Thomas Allen, Uncovered Aperture Foundation, 2007 Foreword by Chip Kidd Thomas Allen selects the pulpiest of pulp paperbacks and then lovingly slices out a figure from the cover, gently folds it into position, and constructs a witty scene around it. In Thirst, a sultry dame reaches from her cover toward a guy with a bottle on a nearby volume; in Teeter a man careens toward the edge of a stack of paperbacks ready to topple. Inspired by a love of pop-up books, Allen revels in taking on different roles in creating his scenarios: "In addition to being a photographer, I play talent scout, casting director, stage manager, lighting supervisor, and film editor." He photographs these engaging tableaux in shallow focus, rendering his prints with the dreamy effect seen in the View-Master stereoscopic toy that also inspired him. Well suited to the three-dimensional heft of a board book, the images in Uncovered are combined into an almost toylike object that will delight photography lovers, graphic designers, and bibliophiles with a sense of humor. 24.95 Signed Alexander Orion, Metabiotica Via Das Artes, 2006 Alexandre Orion wants his graffiti to remain simple and understandable. He comes from the Brazilian tradition of pichacao (from piche, meaning tar) with its simple, bold and black line lettering. Traditional pichacao is a kind of shout for visibility, with no ambitions of being art. It is an attempt to protest against the way Brazilians live as a third world culture, but is often seen as too agressive and illegible. Orion is part of a new generation of graffiti artists who expand upon this notion and search for greater artistic meaning while still reflecting on cultural disparity in the metropolis. Orion strategically creates these graffiti paintings and then hides himself, waiting to photograph the precise moment when an unknowing subject meets his image. His contemporary means of urban intervention turns the day-to-day life of passers-by into moments of unsuspecting joy, anguish, elation and danger. The photograph is the record of the event. His graffiti acts as a backdrop for a much larger conceptual ploy, which translates into a photograph as its resonant document. Paperback, 12 x 12 inches, 77 pages 45.00 Signed Kent Rogowski, Bears powerHouse Books, 2007 Bears, the first book by Kent Rogowski, is a series of portraits of the most unusual sort: ordinary teddy bears that have been turned inside out and restuffed. Each animal's appearance is determined by the necessities of the manufacturing process. Simple patterns and devices never meant to be seen are now prominent physical characteristics, giving each one a distinctly quirky personality: their fasteners become eyes, their seams become scars, and their stuffing creeps out in the most unexpected places. Together these images form a topology of strange yet oddly familiar creatures. They are at once hideous yet cuddly, disturbing yet endearing, absurd yet adorable, while offering a metaphor for us all to consider. These bears, which have lived and loved and lost as much as their owners, have suffered and endured through it all. It is by virtue of revealing their inner core might we better understand our own. Hardcover, 8.25 x 10.25 inches, 72 pages 25.00 Signed New Releases, Thomas Allen Foley, 2006 This catalogue accompanies Allen's exhibition "New Releases". Inspired by a View-master and "pop-up" books as a child, Allen became interested in recreating these three-dimensional experiences by using old books and pulp fiction paperbacks as still-life subjects. Allen gently cuts around the shape of his figures, physically releasing them from their two-dimensional surface. They are brought to life from their pages and covers with detailed lighting and a thin focus. Pulled and positioned, their intended drama comes to life. In his newest body of work, Allen explores more detailed narratives involving love triangles and relationships accentuated with moments of voyeurism, homoeroticism, and unrequited love. Paperback, 5 x 7 inches, 34 pages 10.00 Signed Polixeni Papapetrou, Haunted Country Monash University, 2006 Inspired by real and fictional accounts of children who have gone missing in the Australian bush, Papapetrou revisits the sites of the most notorious disappearances and stages scenes proposing what the physical and psychological circumstances may have been like for these lost and wandering children. Her work also explores the European settlers' relationship with this wild land and foreign culture. Similar to North American colonial history, the British occupied a landscape completely different from their home, and treated it as if it were a familiar place. Their errors are exemplified in these cases, as they discovered the bush to be a place haunted by the spirits of an ancient culture, and a new place that would not be as welcoming as they had thought. Essays by the artist and Robert Nelson. Paperback, 8 x 8", 32 pages 10.00 Signed Stephen Aldrich & Walton Mendelson, Metaphysics in Jars Nazraeli Press, 2001 Using 19th-century Victorian woodcuts as their source material, scissors, film and paper as their tools, and metaphysics as their master, Aldrich and Mendelson create mind-bending worlds of rhythm and narration. Metaphysics in Jars is published in a first edition of 1,000 copies, printed in duotone and bound in cloth with a tipped-in cover plate. Hardcover, 10 x 12 inches, 92 pages, 52 duotone plates 75.00 Signed Rosalind Solomon, Polish Shadow Steidl, 2006 Rosalind Solomon made her first pictures in Poland in 1988 during a time of political change, and returned there in 2003, a time of increasing violence and inhumanity in the world. All of the images are of individuals, their relationships and environments and are observations and commentaries on Poland itself, as well as on the rest of the world. Polish Shadow at times evokes the darkness of an earlier era and recalls the ghosts of ethnic violence, but also gives a human view of modern Poland. For over 30 years Solomon has been producing emotional imagery which pulls the viewer into a world of sun and shadow where past and present intersect. As one commentator put it: "Rosalind Solomon embraces her subjects with unusual warmth, a combination of candor, curiosity and concern." Her photographs provoke a physical, gut reaction and her empathy and sensitivity inform her images, giving them substance and power. Her photographs are influenced by the films of Luis Buñuel and Satyajit Ray, whom she met and photographed in Calcutta. Hardcover, 8 x 8.5 inches, 80 pages 25.00 Rosalind Solomon, Chapalingas Steidl, 2003 Essays by Ingrid Sischy, Susanne Lange and Gabriele Conrad-Schol Rosalind Solomon takes pictures of people and their relationships with each other. Whether well-known figures or ordinary people, her subjects appear as they go about their daily lives, celebrating at parties, engaging in moments private and public. Cultural and social contrasts characterize the photographer's images, captured during numerous trips across the United States and around the world since the 1970s. The pictures tell tales of rootedness and loneliness, poverty and affluence, moments of hope and moments of happiness. In Chapalingas, Solomon has grouped her photographs into associative categories such as Food, Wheels, Splits, Hearts, Play and Faith, prompting the viewer to compare the motifs present in her more than 160 images. Accompanied by Solomon's poetic text, which sheds light on the contexts in which her photographs were taken and the personal thoughts they engendered. Hardcover, 9.75 x 11.25 inches, 461 pages, 204 duotone plates 65.00 Signed Jona Frank: High School Arenas Street Publishing, 2004 Forward by Gus Van Sant For nearly a decade, award-winning filmmaker and photographer Jona Frank has examined the American Adolescent experience. In her first large-format book of portraiture photography, High School, Frank examines the identity and conformity issues of our formative years. Innocent, revealing and fresh, these color portraits capture the turbulent period of experimentation and role-playing teenagers confront as they attempt to find their place in the social landscape. Hardcover, 10 x 13 inches, 132 pages 35.00 Signed Jessica Dimmock, The Ninth Floor Contrasto, 2007 Foreword by Max Kozloff The Ninth Floor is just like any other floor in a Manhattan building. But in this case it is the apartment where a group of addicts buy and sell drugs, sleep, argue, make love and fight. For almost three years Jessica Dimmock followed the stories of the ninth floor and of its residents. Many have photographed the tragedy of the world of drugs, but the strength of these images gives a new and extraordinary account, both intimate and raw. The 3 bedroom apartment was leased by Joe Smith, 68. In the 70's Joe had been a player in the downtown art scene. Joe subleased a room to a young hustler named Joey; soon Joey was joined by his brother Mike, Mike's girlfriend Jesse, and many others. When I met this group in the fall of 2004 Joe no longer had a bedroom in his apartment. He stayed on the couch in hopes of gaining rent. In exchange for use of his apartment, people contributed money at first, then just bags of heroin, several cigarettes, a teaspoon of methadone or a daily beer. Unable to inject himself, Joe grew dependent on these young residents to shoot him up. Mike and Jesse occupied the largest room in the front of the apartment, Dionn another, Joey the third. Charlie, then Natasha slept in a hidden closet behind a moveable bookcase. And in every corner, of every room, there were others, all of whom were users. The mood inside was muffled, slow, secretive and sick, becalmed by a septic hush. Hardcover, 10.5 x 8 inches, 165 pages 38.00 Signed Polixeni Papapetrou, Games of Consequence 2008 Essay by Natalie King A young girl lost in thought emerges from a dark shadow, walking stridently and purposefully along the banks of Melbourne's Yarra River. She is clutching a skipping rope that trails off with a knot suspended mid-air. Gum trees glisten in the distance, reflected in the inky depths of murky water. Dressed in knee-high socks, pleated skirt and old-fashioned white sneakers, her eyes are downcast. Perhaps it is twilight - an eerie foreboding pervades the image as she steps perilously close to the river's edge. What are her preoccupations? Polixeni Papapetrou has photographed her daughter Olympia in Dreams are like water, luring us into the mysterious and enchanting world of childhood. With the watchful observation of a photographer and mother, Papapetrou's intimate knowledge of her subjects lends a sense of complicity and trust to each image. A glance or gesture evokes the capacious realm of childhood with its associative range of loss, innocence and vulnerability. Infused with an emotional intensity, the series Games of Consequence avoids grand narratives in favor of a taut psychological edge. Captured with a cinematic flair, her staged tableaux present young characters amidst the Australian landscape. Papapetrou's frozen scenes are idyllic yet unnerving depictions of children at play, absorbed in their internal world of imagination, daydreaming and unfettered emotional states. Paperback, 8.5 x 9.5 inches, 32 pages 10.00 Signed Andrea Mastrovito, Paper Tigers 2008 Essays by Paul Ardenne, Andrea Bruciati, Paolo Colombo, Barbara Polla, & Joseph del Pesco Andrea Mastrovito's work can be interpreted on several different levels, whether on a purely sensorial surface approach or from the point of view of a metalinguistic reflection based on the principle of uncertainty. For this most definitely postmodern artist, all human knowledge enjoys the same status and consideration, which makes the non-choice of means of expression understandable. The fact that our world is overpopulated with images, and every creative gesture has already been relentlessly performed and may be presented as a reiteration or distortion, this constitutes the very framework of our modernity where the temporary nature of imagination lends itself so easily to an exhaustion and contortion of the modern. I like to think of Mastrovito's work as a dynamic vision that is both descendant and actual development of a certain cultural context. Every young Italian artist in the "90s embraced the melancholic thinking of philosopher Gianni Vattimo, who presented the notion of ephemerality as the new interpretation of the over-mediated post modern world. Paperback, 8.5 x 6 inches, 128 pages Sage Sohier, Perfectible Worlds Photolucida, 2007 Essay by John Beardsley Perfectible Worlds is about people's private passions and obsessions. Begun soon after 9/11/01, the series portrays people transported into worlds and activities over which they have near-total control. The photographs, made from medium-format negatives, range from portraits of some who make extravagant miniature worlds, to others who have extraordinary collections or who immerse themselves in unusual pursuits. Each photograph is the discovery of a particular world an individual has found or created for himself - a private world that few are privileged to see. The series began with a picture I took of a friend working on his model railroad. Expanding over twenty years he has owned his house, his railroad has taken over the entire basement. When he goes down to work on it, he leaves behind both his professional and family life. He need satisfy only himself, and exercises complete control over what he has made. This kind of absorption - what we do to console ourselves - struck me as a subject worthy of exploration. We're all fascinated with other people's passions - what they do in their spare time to satisfy an inner need. These constructions, collections, or activities are quirky, often beautiful, and almost always ends in themselves. My ambition has been to reveal the particularity and intensity of these acts and creations, and also to capture individuals' engagements in the midst of them. Their worlds - for a fleeting instant, and through their generosity - become mine...and now, perhaps, yours. Paperback, 8.5 x 10 inches, 64 pages 24.00 Signed Martin Klimas, Flowers 2008 Essay by Matthias Harder from the German by Jeanne Haunschlid The florist's bouquet is once again gaining in popularity as a token a guest offers his host, whether friend or relation. Very quickly a suitable vase is sought among the selection of colored or transparent, rotund or angular ones at hand. Suddenly the vase explodes. Is it a calculated shock or a plain and simple provocation when Martin Klimas blows our bourgeois conventions to pieces? The main object in his pictures is an arrangement of lowers in a vase: tulips or carnations, orchids or amaryllis. These are placed squarely at the picture's center against a neutral, mostly monochrome background: no other detail distracts the attention of the viewer. It all reminds us of classical studio and product photography, something Klimas is very well acquainted with. Then with spring-powered firing device, the Dusseldorf photographer himself aims at the vase, which thus bursts into a thousand pieces. Klimas makes just one photo, set off by the noise the projectile makes on impact. In the next fraction of a second, the flowers - without the support of the vase - will be thrown sideways or tumble to the ground, but this is a sight the photographer spares us. A photo directly before the shot, i.e., of the flower sill-life alone, would be photographically just as uninteresting as one that showed the aftermath of the final fragmentation, when flowers and vase shards have fallen to the ground. And within a sequence of the entire event - that is, inclusive of all the aesthetic, in-between stages - viewers would surely decide on the same shot that Klimas favors. However, the photographer does not choose from different variations of the nearly same situation, but accepts the single take as the final image only when the tension between the static and the dynamic is to him in sync. Chance, too, helps bring about the production of the photo. Hardcover, 12.5 x 9.5 inches, 40 pages