New books recently published include Geoff Dyer's novel set both during the Venice Biennale and in Varanasi in India (below); Roger Ballen's five-year 'Boarding House' project; Walker Evans' collection of postcards; Nicolas Bourriard's 'Altermodern' accompanying this year's Tate Triennial; and The Mug by Sarah Lucas and Olivier Garbay. 
Among the photography books published this year, not to be missed are Mikhail Subotzky's 'Beaufort West' (below), Dayanita Singh's refreshignly intimate 'Sent a Letter', Sarah Moon's 5-volume visual memoir, Miroslav Tichy's obsession with the female form, and Anders Petersen's unflinching series of pictures entitled 'French Kiss'. 
Lucky Kunst: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art by Gregor Muir is a new book that pretty much does what the subtitle says. A lot of the writing is plodding sludge summarising London, Marcel Duchamp, Neo-Conceptualism, fashion, music and the changing state of the British economy. These parts are like the commentary in a promo film on an international flight about the city you're just about to land in, but extended for millions of years instead of the usual twenty-five second bursts. Reading cliché-ridden paragraphs of inept journalese, which must have been hell to write (or maybe the whole point of never getting involved with anything that has any urgency of original thought is to avoid pain) I kept asking myself, "Why am I reading this?" What does the word 'important" mean, or the word "remarkable," if they're applied automatically to artists and artworks like marmalade on toast? 
Saatchi Online artist Amy Stein has her first book,Domesticated, coming out this year. This is a limited edition of just 600 copies and is already one of the bestselling books on Photo-eye's website where you can purchase the book. An exhibition of seven prints from the series is on view at the Print Center in Philadelphia through 14 February. 
As global warming melts the Antarctic ice, slash and burn reduces the forests, rivers die of industrial pollution, and grassland gives way to cities as the human population grows, 20 photographers, including Joel Sternfeld, Edward Burtynsky and Robert Adams, have contributed to a new book about the impact of climate change on the natural environment. Friedrich Tietjen, who has written one of the essays in the book, discusses here the way photographers have been drawn to documenting the landscape from William Henry Fox Talbot to Hiroshi Sugimoto. 
Continue reading "FRIEDRICH TIETJEN ON PHOTOGRAPHING THE WORLD'S VANISHING LANDSCAPES" »
In this extract from curator Paco Barragan's new book on art fairs - several of which open in London today (Frieze, Scope, Zoo) - he argues that it is the curator who holds the key to reinventing these economically driven events and injecting them with cultural and social content. 
'Working from Memory', a new monograph of stories and photographs by acclaimed American artist William Christenberry, is now out on Steidl. Catch an exhibition of his work at the University of Mississippi, his alma mater.
Cedar Lewisohn, the curator behind the Tate's exhibition 'Street Art' which takes place on the walls of the Tate and neighbouring buildings until 25 August, defines the genre and its roots in graffiti writing. 
'Private Collection', published by Damien Hirst's publishing wing and launched last week in London, is a unique and fascinating publication of over 250 pornographic photographs from Danny Moynihan's personal collection, including images made by some of the earliest erotic photographers, up to the 1940s. The book visually documents attitudes about sex and pornography, and by so doing shows how they developed alongside a 'correct' social and cultural code of restraint. The book and a selection of exclusive 19th-century erotic prints are available from Other Criteria. 
Among the best of the new books out this spring are a monograph on Stephen Shore, a book to accompany the second part of the New Museum's inaugural show, 'Unmonumental', about collage, a survey of current trends in photography, and an in-depth exploration of contemporary art since 1980. 
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez reviews Huber's latest book, a revealing look at a usually invisible subject that appropriates for a living: the so-called 'rubbish people' living in the city's biggest slum, the world's biggest recycling community.
Following their publication of a volume devoted to Matthias Weischer's paintings earlier this year, Hatje Cantz's publication of a second book, devoted to the drawings of the leading representative of the celebrated 'Leipzig school', coincides with a show of the same currently running at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin until December 23, which will then move to the Kloster Bentlage Rheine Gallery from January until March 9, 2008. 
Among the most interesting books out this autumn - Taryn Simon's extraordinary 'inventory' of hidden America, a look at the state of sculpture in the 21st century, a monograph on Olafur Eliasson, Robert Gordon McHarg's hymn to 'HIM' - aka Charles Saatchi, a history of the photographic portrait, and one of the best books to be published about Chinese contemporary art. 
Larry Gagosian's diatribe on pricing Jenny Saville's lugubrious and corpulent nudes will eventually take up its place in the annals of economic warfare... or downright barbaric invasion: "That girl is 29 years old. If she is not going to make it, she is never going to have a career ever. That's like live and die, these are live and die prices, motherfucker. We are going to kill your ass, or you are going to make it, let's see. You want to be famous? We are going to make you famous or you are going to be unknown tomorrow." You have to give a salesman marks for tenacity and aggression, if not for effort and pride of place. 
Francesca Gavin introduces her new book about street art. 
A round-up of books out this summer including photographs by Jacob Holdt, Tod Papageorge, Janne Lehtinen, Pierre Et Gilles, monographs on the work of Yael Bartana, Robert Gober, Cerith Wyn Evans, Fischli & Weiss, Francis Alys, and AES+F, plus thematic explorations of punk art, land art, the art scene in LA, and art at Burning Man in the Nevada Desert. 
In his new book, 'The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp', the London-based art historian TJ Demos finds that what Duchamp referred to as a 'spirit of expatriation' infuses his entire artistic practice. 
Continue reading "BOOK: BILL ROBERTS ON THE EXILES OF MARCEL DUCHAMP BY T J DEMOS" »
To mark the publication of Ice Cream, a global survey of the most significant emerging artists working today, Phaidon Press have joined forces with Ben & Jerry's to help cool down the art world over the summer. During the first two weeks of June, a customised ice cream van will be touring the Venice Biennale, Art Basel, Documenta, and Skulptur Projekte Münster 07. 
Coinciding with a major show of Hannah Collins' photographic and film work, debuting at the Fundacion La Caixa in Madrid and Barcelona before touring Europe, 'Finding, Transmitting, Receiving' presents photographs, found family portraits and childhood drawings by Collins from the last 15 years. Together with complete transcriptions of the artist's film scripts, her diverse body of work explores themes of homelessness, migration and other effects of globalization on the lives of individuals. 
Whether you like taking pictures or looking at them, Stephen Shore's new book The Nature of Photographs: A Primer provides anyone interested in photography with a way of understanding how the three-dimensional world gets translated into the flat plane of a photograph and how 'the visual grammar of photography' functions. Rebecca Wilson reports. 
A newly published collection of essays tackles the subject of how to put on successful exhibitions, scrutinising in particular the role of the curator. As contributor Robert Storr (the commissioner of the Venice Biennale this year) concludes: 'The primary means for "explaining" an artist's work is to let it reveal itself. Showing is telling.'
The New York gallery BravinLee, which specializes in exhibiting works on paper, is launching a new artists' book program. Every two months the gallery will exhibit an artist's book project - either a sketch book, a limited edition project or a collaboration between an artist and a writer - in an attempt to highlight an artistic idiom that is under-represented within the conventional gallery system. Up first are the sketchbooks of Charles Ritchie. 
Just months before his death Kirk Varnedoe (below), who was for 13 years Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MOMA, New York before becoming Professor of the History of Art in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, delivered the 2003 Mellon Lectures in which he ruminated on his personal experiences with abstraction. Now published in book form, Varnedoe's compelling exploration of the question 'Why all these pictures of nothing?' is reviewed here by Steve Pulimood. 
When confronted with the dust covering her studio on Cedar Street, opposite the WTC, soon after 9/11, instead of bringing out the hoover, Del Rivero mourned by plugging in a friend's camera and documenting the inside and outside of the premises in ninety hours of video footage. The result is a historical record, and the book she recently made by editing the footage to make a sort of slo-mo flip-movie of her studio's dust filled topography, a document of something akin to a performance, titled 'The Book of Dust',
It's the time of year for making lists - the top 100 exhibitions, the 10 most powerful artists, the best 5 novels. A new book comes out this month amassing the 1001 paintings to see before you die. Geoff Dyer (below), in his introduction to the book, applauds this generous raising of the catchment for 'implicit in the idea of a 1001 is a 1002, and if there's room for a 1002 then... It's generous - an inclusive kind of exclusivity. And, in all likelihood, in the course of seeing 1001 paintings, you'll accidentally catch ten thousand more.' 
A new book out today explores how art and being an artist can be relevant to the global debate about the future of the planet. With essays, dialogues and commissioned projects by artists, ecologists, cultural theorists, activists and curators, LAND, ART looks at art's varied modes of response to notions of territory, cultural production and the emergencies of the 21st century. 
Lewis Hyde's book The Gift, a brilliantly argued defence of the place of creativity in our increasingly market-oriented society, has come to be regarded as a modern classic. It has been a source of inspiration for writers and artists since it was first published 20 years ago - Bill Viola has praised it as 'the best book I have read on what it means to be an artist in today's economic world. It has shown me why we still use the word "gift" to describe artistic talent, and that selflessness, not self-expression, lies at the root of all creative acts.' We publish here an extract from the book, republished in the UK this month. 
Photographer Jonathan Hollingsworth discusses his most recent project, published this month by Twin Palms, which captures what young people in America think about the war in Iraq. 'Although opinions about the war seemed to abound on bumper stickers, television, and T-shirts. I wanted to create work which expressed the ideas of individuals, relying solely on their words. So one Saturday afternoon in late November 2004 I set out with my camera, a stack of poster-board and some markers and began approaching people.' 
For the last 12 years Dutch artist Marcel van Eeden has been making a drawing a day based on an event that took place prior to the year of his birth, 1965. Exquisitely rendered, van Eeden's drawings in graphite pencil function as a kind of diary in absentia - as the artist explains, 'The first and most important thing that fascinates me is that I wasn't alive at the moment the picture was taken. Then I can see the moment, I can see the light that fell, and even though I didn't exist at the time, I can recreate that moment.' Rebecca Wilson discusses his work and a new book of drawings of a little-known botanist, K M Weigand. 
Following on from its landmark publication Vitamin P, a highly acclaimed survey of contemporary painting edited by the critic Barry Schwabsky, Phaidon this month pulls off another triumph with Vitamin Ph, an equivalent examination of current trends in photography. 
Continue reading "VITAMIN PH: NEW PERSPECTIVES IN PHOTOGRAPHY" »
Good discounts on all the new publications on Steidl this month, including Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin's 'Chicago', which offers new insight into the modern state of Israel.
A new book documents Anderson's powerful photographic study of the people and places of Vidor, Texas, a poor and isolated town in rural Southeast Texas, most known for its long history as a Ku Klux Klan centre.
Continue reading "DAVE ANDERSON'S 'ROUGH BEAUTY' AT CLAMP ART, NEW YORK" »
Two books published this month explore what it is about Berlin and Germany that has generated such exceptional talent and attracted so many internationally acclaimed artists including Thomas Demand, Tim Eitel, John Bock, Jonathan Meese, Thomas Scheibitz, Martin Eder and Norbert Bisky (below). 
'Mexico', currently showing in New York and published in a new monograph by Aperture, presents Parr's journey into and beyond the country's cliches. This limited edition print is now available, just in time for the Day of the Dead..
As Frieze and Zoo get ready to open their gates, the ever-elusive question remains: What makes a good collector? How can a young collector structure a collection? Who gets offered the best work? What should you be looking for and once you have bought it? How best to install and preserve it? Find all the answers you'll need in Owning Art: The Contemporary Art Collector's Handbook , written by two art-world insiders, Louisa Buck and Judith Greer.
Almost 50 artists and presses from the UK, Denmark, France, Ireland and beyond exhibited at this year's artists' book fair in Manchester. Highlights of the fair for Mari-Aymone Djeribi were Anne Rook, Andrew Morrisson and Otto (below). 
Seems like October might be artists' books appreciation month. With three exhibitions devoted to the past, present and future of the medium, there's plenty here to keep you browsing through to the end of the year.
The first Manchester book art fair is taking place this week, featuring 40 stands of book publishers, many exhibiting outstanding - and inexpensive - artists' books such as this fold-out work by Jacqueline Butler (right), all of which are for sale. Nesta Fitzgerald reports. 
The Midwest Photographers Publication Project (MP3) series, produced in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), Chicago, presents the work of three new emerging talents - Kelli Connell, Justin Newhall and Brian Ulrich, whose work is registered on Your Gallery. 
Continue reading "MP3: MIDWEST PHOTOGRAPHERS PUBLICATION PROJECT" »
In 1940 Henri Cartier-Bresson was taken prisoner by the Germans and 'disappeared' for three years. After he managed to escape it transpired that MoMA had been planning a posthumous exhibition, believing he must have died at war. The exhibition went ahead in 1947 with over 300 photographs selected by Cartier-Bresson. The pictures can be seen again in an exhibition in Paris opening tonight and in a book published by Steidl.
For over 10 years Johnnie Shand Kydd documented the lives of the YBAs, publishing his informal photographs of artists such as Damien Hirst and Sam Taylor-Wood in a book called Spit Fire. Many of the artists he photographed during the 1990s were out in force on Monday at Jay Jopling's gallery White Cube to celebrate the publication of Shand Kydd's most recent photographs of art world luminaries. 
Continue reading "JOHNNIE SHAND KYDD PHOTOGRAPHS THE ART WORLD OFF DUTY" »
'Standing in the crowds at the perimeter, five blocks north of the zone, I raised my camera simply to see what could be seen and was reminded by a police officer that I was standing in a crime scene and no photographs were allowed, so I left. Yet within a few blocks the echo of that reminder turned into consciousness and I saw what I had to do. To me, no photographs meant no history.' Joel Meyerowitz
A highly personal selection of recent publications available at a good art bookstore or gallery near you.
A collection of black plants at Oxford University's Botanical Gardens is the inspiration behind Alison Turnbull's new book made out of a single sheet of A4 paper. 
The first major publication by the American artist Amy Sillman is published in September with an essay by Wayne Koestenbaum. We preview the book here with an exclusive extract from Koestenbaum's illuminating response to her work. Amy Sillman will be in the Your Gallery chatroom on Wednesday to discuss her work and forthcoming book. 
"I first went to Japan in 1977 and found the whole country ablaze with blossom. I went again in 1979, 1981 and 1984, always at cherry blossom time. As far as I knew, Japan was always abloom."
-Lee Friedlander
A new publication on Nicky Coutts' fascinating, latest photo series, re-presentating three of Hieronymus Bosch's triptychs.
The American photographer's new book, winner of the 2006 Golden Light Book Award, captures 'passion and what's left after its inevitable demise'. 
Seedy hotel rooms, mysterious comings and goings, tangled legs under a toilet door, drunk guests asleep in corridors... This is the life that Chris Shaw has observed over the last 10 years while working as a night porter at various London hotels. 
Only a few copies remain of this extraordinary cult classic designed by Damien Hirst. 
An unmissable event bringing some of today´s best photographers under one roof, today.
A new biography of the giant critic of 20th century art draws on personal documents to shed some light on the relationship between the man´s personal and public personae.
The artist will be signing his new book at Art Basel today.
A new book brings together three series of photographs made in the 1970s, a period of redefinition for art and photography. 
At Tuesday's screening of Hollis Frampton's confounding (nostalgia), someone shouted for all of us, 'I think there's something wrong with the sound?' but was wisely ignored by the projectionist.
Last Wednesday multi-talented Paula Rae Gibson launched her new book of photographs Diary of a Love Addict (Kehrer, 2006) at London's Sketch, at a party thrown by restauranteur Mourad Mazouz.
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