Photo Books at RIT Library

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Masahisa Fukase- Solitude of Ravens

"Arguably the post-Provoke masterpiece of Japanese photobooks," write Parr & Badger of this book's original Japanese edition. Fukase's work share's with Provoke "a similar combination of the intensely personal with the metaphorical, another allegory for the state of the country...The raven is a symbol of ill-omen in Japan as in the West...But if Karasu is a bitter indictment of the industrialized country, dehumanized and picked over by the natural scavengers of capitalism, the skies heavy with pollution, it is also a superb demonstration of how the photobook can also deal with the private...Fukase's cry of despair is perhaps one of the most romantic photobooks...The imagery is beautiful, surprising, haunting, but ultimately it is Fukase's masterly handling of the narrative and rhythm that makes it so memorable."

Location: 3rd Floor

Call No: TR729.B5 F8513 (1991)

Link to Record

Michel Campeau- Darkroom

Publisher's Description: “For a photographer like myself, who in fact has not worked in a darkroom for over years, these images are horribly familiar. Those fix stains in the sink, the eerie red light, reminiscent of a brothel, the wonky enlarger and a profusion of different tapes holding the whole thing together. . . I feel lucky to have escaped and yet there is something very alluring about these images. . .” — from the introduction by Martin Parr Darkroom is the first book in a series edited by Martin Parr, for Nazraeli Press, with the aim of presenting work that has never before been published in book form but which most definitely “should have been.” This evocative set of images has risen from visits to over darkrooms in Campeau’s native Canada, and while it might be a stretch to imagine a less promising subject matter, the end result is a superb and fascinating tribute to an increasingly rare working environment. Michel Campeau lives and works in Montreal.

Location: Over Collection 4th Floor

Call No: TR655 .C35 (2007)

Link to Record

Roe Ethridge- Rockaway, NY

Roe Ethridge- Rockaway, NY

Publisher's Description: "The mood of Roe Ethridge’s Rockaway, NY suggests a nostalgic depiction of scenes from a coastal village. The snow covered boardwalk, the cemetery, the shops in town, and a quiet street in late summer all appear at first glance to be genre scenes, revealing Ethridge’s casual application of diverse pictorial modes and themes. The locales blend, imitate and disguise one another. Photographed in disparate geographical sites, from St Barts to upstate New York, Ethridge plays the roles of both a thematic archivist and a wandering narrator, mappin an uncertain ground in which it is unclear if the representation is a blank image, nothing more than the sum of it’s surface, or the fountainhead of some deeper significance."

Kate Bush writes of Ethridge "In his work there appears no cause and no ending, no discrimination between editorial and art, between document and construct, between technology and affect."

Location: Over Collection 4th Floor

Call No: TR655 .E84 (2007)

Link to Record

Friday, March 20, 2009

Henri Cartier Bresson - Man and Machine

This collection of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson on man's continuing dialogue with machines was commissioned by the IBM World Trade Corporation in 1967.

Selection from Forward: "This series of photographs is in its quiet war a partial portrait of mankind–in our close and often subconscious dialogue with technological change...This new relationship appears most dramatically neither in the formal struggle between the engineer and his electronic or mechanical world, nor in the conscious association of the worker with his tools, but rather in the incidental occurrences of everyday life.

I find it funny that IBM commissioned these, because these photographs don't exactly show how wondrous and enjoyable technology has made our lives. They show people befuddled, confused, and fascinated with this new encroachment. I may be projecting my own thoughts here, but I find a certain amount of stress and malaise in these photographs. But most importantly, these are good photographs. H C-B's ability to find the magic in everyday life is undeniable.

Location: 4th Floor
Call Number:TR654.C37 1971
Link to record

Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas © IBM World Trade Corporation

Hanover Fair, Germany © IBM World Trade Corporation

Subway, New York City © IBM World Trade Corporation

Hair Salon, Paris © IBM World Trade Corporation

Panoramic Binoculars, U.S.A. © IBM World Trade Corporation

William Eggleston- William Eggleston's Guide

Publisher's Description: William Eggleston's Guide was the first one-man show of color photographs ever presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum's first publication of color photography. The reception was divided and passionate. The book and show unabashedly forced the art world to deal with color photography, a medium scarcely taken seriously at the time, and with the vernacular content of a body of photographs that could have been but definitely weren't some average American's Instamatic pictures from the family album. These photographs heralded a new mastery of the use of color as an integral element of photographic composition. Bound in a textured cover inset with a photograph of a tricycle and stamped with yearbook-style gold lettering, the Guide contained 48 images edited down from 375 shot between 1969 and 1971 and displayed a deceptively casual, actually super-refined look at the surrounding world. Here are people, landscapes, and odd little moments in and around Eggleston's hometown of Memphis--an anonymous woman in a loudly patterned dress and cat's eye glasses sitting, left leg slightly raised, on an equally loud outdoor sofa; a coal-fired barbecue shooting up flames, framed by a shiny silver tricycle, the curves of a gleaming black car fender, and someone's torso; a tiny, gray-haired lady in a faded, flowered housecoat, standing expectant, and dwarfed in the huge dark doorway of a mint-green room whose only visible furniture is a shaded lamp on an end table.

Location: 3rd Floor

Call Number: TR647 .E3 (2002)

Link to record

Ed Panar- Golden Palms

Publisher's Description: "Golden Palms is a collection of Ed Panar’s photographs of Los Angeles, where he lived for two years without a car. The cumulative effect is a subtly hilarious and beautiful walking tour through generic back streets, showing us a side of contemporary LA that most people speed by. Includes an interview with Ed and Charlotte Cotton." (J&L Books)

Location: 3rd Floor
Call Number: TR655 .P36 2007

Link to record