Category: Books
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'Dry Storeroom No. 1 – The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum,' by Richard Fortey
We meet, for example, Leslie Bairstow, an expert on belemnites (the fossil remains of ancient squid-like beings) who joined the museum in 1932. During his tenure at the museum, Bairstow published nothing but collected everything, including the string from parcels that had been sent to him. When he retired, the string turned out to have…
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What it takes to self-publish a book (Conscientious)
Needless to say, this type of self publishing seems to require a fair amount of work – but then, the photographer is in full control of the final product (and I’ll take a book produced this way over any on-demand book at any given time – if you’ve ever seen examples of both types you…
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Shooting War: graphic novel about blogger embedded in Baghdad – Boing Boing
Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman’s Shooting War is one of the strongest graphic novels I’ve read in years, a tough anti-war comic that provides trenchant, spot-on commentary about the relationship of the news-media to all sides of modern war. Check it out here.
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Juliana Hatfield Feels Her Way Beyond the Spotlight – NYTimes.com
Back in the mid-1990s, while on a short college tour, the singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield found herself looking for windows to jump from if her depression became too much to bear. She didn’t want to kill herself but to “not feel anything anymore,” she said. Check it out here.
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China: The Unforgotten Past
Liu Heung Sheng (or HS as he is widely known) is a Pulitzer-prize winner who came to photography by a circuitous route, but one which has helped him produce the new book China: Portrait of a Country (Taschen), a remarkable study of the rich but virtually unknown history of Chinese photography since 1949. Check it…
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eBoy x ROJO Book – Josh Spear, Trendspotting
eBoy is everywhere. If you’re a geek, you saw their poster for MakerFaire. If you like beats, you picked up the latest issue of BPM. And if you collect toys, you have an opinion on their Peecol figures. Now eBoy has teamed up with JoshSpear favorite ROJO for the production of a limited edition monographic…
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Strobist: Coming in November: Annie's 'On Assignment' Book
Her upcoming book, Annie Leibovitz: At Work, looks to be a behind-the-scenes study of some of her more famous shoots, including the royal shoot referenced above. Check it out here.
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Book Review – 'My Guantánamo Diary,' by Mahvish Rukhsana Khan
The fact that many of the prisoners Khan describes appear to have been innocent of the vague accusations against them, were imprisoned for years without formal charges or fair hearings and were eventually released by the United States without apology or compensation makes the abuse they suffered during years of imprisonment all the more outrageous.…
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Little People – a tiny street art project: Antscape Painting
The book is out on the 5th of September but we are having a book launch event on Sunday 31st August in London – The Little People Treasure hunt! I will be placing four installations at various locations around London and it is up to YOU to track them down and find them. Check it…
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Book Review – 'Iron Fists,' by Steven Heller – Review – NYTimes.com
Three of Heller’s dictators considered themselves artists and eagerly participated in marketing their brands. Mao fancied himself a poet and master calligrapher; Mussolini wrote a pulp novel and portrayed himself as a hypermasculine sex symbol. Hitler was an aspiring architect and avid watercolorist before adopting what Heller calls his “sociopolitical art project.” The Führer sought…
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Across the Universe – 'Elric – The Stealer of Souls,' by Michael Moorcock – Review – NYTimes.com
Rather than immediately leaping to the woman’s rescue, our protagonist tells the intruder to find a safe haven of his own. It is only when the barbarian refuses to leave that our hero draws his sword, attacking with such swiftness and ferocity that the would-be rapist is cleaved in two. Who said chivalry is dead?…
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A Photo Editor – Darius Himes, Publisher- Radius Books
DARIUS HIMES, PUBLISHER- RADIUS BOOKS Check it out here.
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The Notebooks of Albert Camus, 1951-1958, Are Translated Into English – Review – NYTimes.com
In his notebooks Camus excoriates “the newly achieved revolutionary spirit, nouveau riche, and Pharisees of justice.” He names Sartre and his followers, “who seem to make the taste for servitude a sort of ingredient of virtue.” He mocks their conformism: cowardly, besides, he implies, citing the story of a child who announced her plan to…
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Cody's Books of Berkeley, RIP – Boing Boing
Cody’s Books, the half-century-old Berkeley bookstore that has long been an East Bay institution — one of the truly great west coast stores — has closed its doors forever. Check it out here.
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Alexandre Orion Book and Hand Cut Art
We’re proud to announce that the Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion is the latest artist to participate in our “Wooster Special Edition” project. Alexandre follows sold out editions from such artists as Faile, Shepard Fairey, Space Invader, BAST, and Darius and Downey. Check it out here.
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No Wave, a Brief, Noisy New York Moment That Still Echoes – NYTimes.com
Of all the strange and short-lived periods in the history of experimental music in New York, no wave is perhaps the strangest and shortest-lived. Centered on a handful of late-1970s downtown groups like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA and James Chance’s Contortions, it was a cacophonous, confrontational subgenre of punk rock, Dadaist in style…
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National Geographic Photographer Brings Her Kids to Work
Balancing work with a social life can be a challenge even for single photographers, but adding a husband and two kids to the mix can lead to disaster, or worse, a desk job. Annie Griffiths Belt found the perfect solution, bringing her family along for the ride. After 20 years of marriage and 18 years…
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Wacky Packages Book Design, Foreword by Art Spiegelman
Wacky Packages—a series of collectible stickers featuring parodies of consumer products and well-known brands and packaging—were first produced by the Topps company in 1967, then revived in 1973 for a highly successful run. In fact, for the first two years they were published, Wacky Packages were the only Topps product to achieve higher sales than…
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The Online Photographer: 'The Americans' is Reprinted at 50
Today, May 15th, is the 50th anniversary of the day Robert Frank’s The Americans was first published by Robert Delpire in Paris. That was 1958. Today we realize that The Americans has more in common with beat poetry and club jazz than it has with many other kinds of photography; it’s one of the high…
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NOTIFBUTWHEN #2: Photography.Book.Now Blurb Competition
Photography books seem to be finally having their heyday. With access to the distribution, promotion and production of books through online sources, it seems weekly I’m dazzled by another self published photographer and at the same time overwhelmed that I’m being so finicky about putting out my own. One could trace the enthusiasm to the…