Link: photo-eye

Brian Ulrich’s book is great, and a real downer. If you resisted President Bush’s exhortations to shop America back to health after the events of 9-11-01, you may already be in line with the photographer. His Copia series, dating from 2001–2011, makes up the meat of this book. With mordant glee, the photographs insinuate that a decade of shopping has made us no better off; in fact, the rock we’ve been trying to shoulder up hill is flattening us.

Link: Vimeo

Photographs Not Taken is a book about photography in which there is not a single photograph. It’s a collection of essays by 62 photographers about the ones that got away: the images — burned to memory and conscience — that, for one reason or another, the photographer could not make.

Link: It’s Nice That

This is Real Art have carved out a reputation for quality creativity across advertising, design and branding, but late last week they moved into new territory with the publication of their first book. Adam Hinton’s Shibuya is a collection of the photographs he took of Tokyo commuters, shot at the world’s busiest subway station over four days capturing intensely personal moments among the mass daily migration.

A new book, Photographs Not Taken, conceived and edited by photographer Will Steacy compiles personal essays written by more than 60 photographers about a time when they didn’t or just couldn’t use their camera.

One to Nothing depicts an Israel we do not see on the news. These images go beyond politics: they do not defend a side or critique the conflict. Here, Israel is seen in an unexpected light, a mythological backdrop to the age long struggle between man and the dusty, sun bleached landscape of his origin. The score to this existential battle is locked at 1– 0, with no finish line in sight. A loose, subtle, and open-ended narrative One to Nothing describes a historic tension with striking and unusual observations.

Link: Boing Boing

My kids and I have become deeply engrossed with the book Garbage Pail Kids, a fond look at the Topps bubblegum trading cards that were art directed by Art Spiegelman 25 years ago. This book, published by Abrams ComicArts, has all 206 images from the Garbage Pail Kids stickers produced in 1985 and 1986.

Link: photo-eye

I am not an expert on Norwegian Black Metal. This review will deal strictly with the book True Norwegian Black Metal, as I read and processed it over a number of days. Clearing my mind in this manner gave me the space to think about the work, and just the work, on the printed pages. It is not the music or the musicians, but Peter Beste’s interpretation of them that I am coming to grips with.

Link: British Journal of Photography

Jörg Colberg focuses on an overlooked aspect of the photobook, discussing the role of design in the making of five modern classics.

Anouk Kruithof is one of the recipients of this year’s ICP Infinity Awards. Over the past few years, she has produced a string of cutting-edge books, many of them self-published. So there were many reasons why I wanted to talk to her about her work.

My headline is slight disingenuous: There actually is no simple recipe for photobook making. If you asked ten people about how to make a photobook, you’d probably end up with ten different answers. That said, from what I can tell, most photobook makers seem to agree on quite a few things. So I thought I’d throw my own thoughts into the mix. I hope that some people might find them useful

Link: La Lettre de la Photographie

Jakob Tuggener’s Fabrik, published in Zurich in 1943, is considered to be a milestone in the history of photography books. The series of 72 photographs in this Photo Epos of Technology is oriented toward the expressionist aesthetic of the silent movie. It imparts a sceptical view of the destructive potential of unbridled technological progress, at the time the Swiss military industry was producing weapons for World War II.

Link: Photo Booth

Gervasio Sánchez’s book “Disappeared” explores the nightmare of forced disappearance not just in South America but around the world: Cambodia and Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Spain. The countries span the globe, but “the violence, the tragedy, the pain and loss and suffering, however, are the same,” Carmen Contreras Gomez, the managing director of the Obra Social Caja Madrid, writes in the introduction

Link: La Lettre de la Photographie

20 Now: Contemporary Photographers is a book that presents 20 western photographers to South East Asia. From Adam Fuss to David Hilliard’s Panoralic photography, the book shows different approaches and ideas to the medium of contemporary photography.

Link: LightBox

Reprints of older photobooks, commonly known as second editions, have been one way for newer generations of photographers and students of photography to become familiar with and learn from artists who came before them. Books have served me by informing and inspiring me throughout my own photographic practice for more than two decades.

Link: Feature Shoot

Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography celebrates the nexus of these two phenomena in a one-of-a-kind collection that features more than two hundred works by more than forty postwar artists and photographers. Thematically grouped into topics ranging from the rise of celebrity culture, suburbia and dystopia, avant-garde architectural landscape design, and the cult of the body, these images offer a rich study of the cultural connotations of the swimming pool.

Link: L E N S C R A T C H:

Eric is a modern day typologist, with an amazing range of projects. His website is an incredible reflection of the potential of looking at our world. Eric works and lives in Paris and has a long roster of international exhibitions

Link: photo-eye

But by God, I can’t stop picking up The Place We Live, and it’s my turn to write for the blog, so here we go.

Link: photo-eye

From Aperture and The Cleveland Museum of Art, Is This Place Great Or What by Brian Ulrich is the publication of his ten-year Copia project, documenting the consumer-centric atmosphere of contemporary America. The project grew from Ulrich’s curiosity at whether the 9-11 request of George W. Bush for Americans go out and shop to support the country was truly taken to heart. As economic turmoil overtook the country, it was clear that what Ulrich was documenting was a massive story. Separated into three sections, Is This Place Great Or What is a triptych of the collapsing American consumer system.

Link: Lens

This week, while Mr. Ríos Montt is under house arrest, Ms. Simon is reprinting her book “Guatemala: Eterna Primavera, Eterna Tirania,” a chronicle of the worst of the war years that builds upon her 1988 volume “Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny.” This time, she has raised $20,000 through Kickstarter to help produce 4,000 copies on glossy stock and with sewn bindings that will be sold for about $10 each. More important, she has set aside some 1,000 copies to be given away to schools and teachers in Guatemala.