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PUBLISHER
The Ice Plant

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 5.25 x 7.5 in. / 122 pgs / 67 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 26   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780999265512 TRADE
List Price: $25.00 CAD $34.50 GBP £22.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

TERRITORY
NA LA UK EUR ASIA AFR ME

THE FALL 2025 ARTBOOK | D.A.P. CATALOG

Artbook | D.A.P. Catalog Cover Link
Preview our FALL 2025 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
  

THE ICE PLANT

Voyagers

Edited by Melissa Catanese.

Voyagers

A charming collection of vintage photographs of readers lost in thought

Where do our minds go when we read books, magazines and letters? Do we seek an escape, a portal to another world? A secret, a truth, a pleasant distraction? Voyagers, edited by Melissa Catanese (author of Dive Dark Dream Slow), consists almost entirely of anonymous black-and-white snapshots of people in various postures of reading in living rooms, on beds, at the beach, eating breakfast.

We can't see what these readers are thinking, but Catanese occasionally breaks the hypnotic typological rhythm to reveal a new photographic element—a pyramid, a starry night, sunlight blindingly glowing through a window—giving us brief glimpses of the readers' potential narrative journeys.

A wordless book with the size and feel of a vintage paperback found at a flea market, Voyagers reminds us of the power and intimacy of our relationship to reading devices, and evokes an exotic nostalgia for our recent predigital culture.

As with Catanese's prior books (Dive Dark Dream Slow [2012], Hells Hollow, Fallen Monarch [2016]), the images were judiciously selected from the collection of Peter J. Cohen, a celebrated trove of more than 20,000 vernacular photographs from the early to mid-20th century. Gathered from flea markets, dealers and eBay, these images have been acquired, exhibited and included in a range of major museum publications.


Featured image is reproduced from 'Voyagers.'

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Paris Review

Their bodies are left behind, vulnerable to our gaze, while their minds travel to places we cannot imagine.

MetroSource

There is a certain serenity that descends while flipping through the pages in Melissa Catanese’s book of pictures of people reading books. It’s quite the little treasure.

Lenscratch

Lisa McCarty

Reading can be an escape from reality, but it can also be an engagement with it; a revelatory practice. Reading can lead to moments of introspection, interconnection, and empathy.

Voyagers

in stock  $25.00


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FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/9/2019

Celebrate National Book Lovers Day with Voyagers!

Celebrate National Book Lovers Day with Voyagers!

Featured image is reproduced from Voyagers, editor Melissa Catanese's dreamy, enigmatic selection of 67 unattributed early- to mid-century vernacular photographs of people blissfully lost in the act of reading—all culled from the renowned Peter J. Cohen collection. No explanatory or congratulatory essay weighs the book down. However, the front and back covers are printed with an excerpt from Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. It ends, "the book should be the written counterpart of the unwritten world; its subject should be what does not exist and cannot exist except when written, but whose absence is obscurely felt by that which exists, in its own incompleteness." continue to blog


FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/1/2018

Dashwood Books celebrates The Ice Plant with Melissa Catanese, Michael Schmelling & Jake Longstreth signings

Dashwood Books celebrates The Ice Plant with Melissa Catanese, Michael Schmelling & Jake Longstreth  signings

Saturday, December 8 from 4–6PM, Dashwood Books presents Ice Plant authors Melissa Catanese, Michael Schmelling and Jake Longstreth signing copies of their new books, Voyagers, Your Blues and Tulare: Scenes from California's Central Valley, respectively!
continue to blog


FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/11/2018

Arcana presents new books from The Ice Plant and Deadbeat Club

Arcana presents new books from The Ice Plant and Deadbeat Club

Saturday, October 13 from 4–6 PM, Arcana presents Ed Panar, Jake Longstreth, Melissa Catanese and Michael Schmelling signing new books from The Ice Plant and Deadbeat Club! In addition, Arcana will be serving Jacques Marlow's signature Ice Plant Margarita alongside the renowned accordion stylings of Ms. Erin Schneider.
continue to blog


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