Preview our Spring 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
APERTURE
Olivia Bee: Kids in Love
Interview by Tavi Gevinson.
Olivia Bee (born 1994) is celebrated for her dreamy, evocative portraits and landscapes rich with implied narratives of intimacy, freedom and adventure. Olivia Bee: Kids in Love showcases two bodies of photographic work, including the series Enveloped in a Dream that first brought Bee recognition as a teenager. This first series offers a visual diary of girlhood friendship and the exploration of self, showcasing Bee’s unique ability to convey the bittersweet nostalgia of adolescence on the brink of adulthood and new possibilities. The second set of images, Kids in Love, is drawn from recent work and continues Bee’s photographic chronicle of her circle of friends and new loves, capturing both the pleasures and terrors of the fleeting passage of romanticized youth. While the work continues to evolve, what remains constant is her seductive use of color and photographic artifact, as well as the immediacy and charge of each image. Bee gives voice to the self-awareness and visual fluency of the millennial generation. Experiences are sharply felt, and easily communicated and shared, generating visual records that render these memories as significant as the moments themselves. Tavi Gevinson, founding editor of the online magazine Rookie and Bee’s frequent collaborator and model, writes about the work and about the role of images as social currency in today’s image-driven world.
Featured image is reproduced from Olivia Bee: Kids in Love.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Bust
Danniah Daher
The moments she captures are the little, bittersweet memories that find us and flood our thoughts before we fall asleep.
Feature Shoot
Ellyn Kail
Because Kids in Love is a book about firsts— first kisses, first heartbreaks— every image within is impressed with the knowledge that these rites of passage can never be lived again... Nostalgia for Bee is like a drug, it’s that imminent sense of loss that amplifies the volume on her otherwise hushed encounters.
New York Magazine, The Cut
Catie L'Heureux
The collection traces adolescence as a two-part story, from female friendship to first-time experiences, like sex and drugs, while holding onto a certain nostalgia.
American Photo Magazine
Jack Crager
Olivia Bee shows an eye for striking, unexpected moments combined with the sort of nonchalant candor found in the work of predecessors like Nan Goldin and Ryan McGinley.
Dazed
Alice Nicolov
Evolving and growing as both she and the subjects of her work do, what remains the same, however, is Bee's touching, compassionate visual documentation of young people caught in a moment. As a montage “Kids in Love” stands as a testament to the ever-changing nature of youth
USC Annenberg Media
Dale Chong
Ethereal, dreamy images of today's youth experiencing life and love.
The Portland Mercury
Megan Burbank
Has the rare duality of being a mature body of work delivered from a young perspective.
"At the age of eleven, I was put into a photography class by accident. Frustration with the medium turned into interest, which turned into addiction, which turned into breathing. The images inside this book were created during those moments one only experiences at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—moments that feel like forever. This is the story of magic; of how memories, real or imagined, touch us." Olivia Bee's Foreword and "Baller" (2011) are reproduced from Kids in Love, which Bee will be signing this Wednesday night at Bookmarc, New York. continue to blog
"When I take someone's photograph, it's very difficult for me to lie about how I feel about them," photographer Olivia Bee is quoted in her new Aperture book, Kids in Love, launching this Wednesday night with a signing at Bookmarc, New York. "I think my photos reek of love. It's almost disgusting. But I would also like the images to have a life of their own, detached from my own experiences." Featured image is "Max Jumped Off a Train" (2012). continue to blog
"Pre-Kiss" (2010) is reproduced from Oliva Bee: Kids in Love, Aperture's seductive new collection of photographs by the 22-year-old photographer whose work so perfectly represents the self-awareness and visual fluency of her generation. Rookie founder and style icon Tavi Gevinson writes, "Olivia's photos echoed my own teen emotions, while also making them seem aspirational: the mundane could be a moment: feeling was an act. Even when I was in pangs of heartache over all the photographs I didn't know the emotions of—self-actualizing through kissing, or falling asleep in heaps of friends—I still felt as though her work was meant for dreamers, and like I was exactly where I should be, just by desiring what they captured." If you're in New York, be sure to stop by Bookmarc Wednesday for the New York launch! continue to blog
Saturday, May 14, Arcana: Books on the Arts presents a launch and signing for Olivia Bee: Kids in Love, just out from Aperture. From 5-7PM, Bee will sign copies of the book, joined by her friend and very special musical guest, BØRNS, who will present an acoustic set as part of the evening's festivities! continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8 x 10 in. / 136 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $50 ISBN: 9781597113458 PUBLISHER: Aperture AVAILABLE: 3/22/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: No longer our product AVAILABILITY: Not Available
Published by Aperture. Interview by Tavi Gevinson.
Olivia Bee (born 1994) is celebrated for her dreamy, evocative portraits and landscapes rich with implied narratives of intimacy, freedom and adventure. Olivia Bee: Kids in Love showcases two bodies of photographic work, including the series Enveloped in a Dream that first brought Bee recognition as a teenager. This first series offers a visual diary of girlhood friendship and the exploration of self, showcasing Bee’s unique ability to convey the bittersweet nostalgia of adolescence on the brink of adulthood and new possibilities. The second set of images, Kids in Love, is drawn from recent work and continues Bee’s photographic chronicle of her circle of friends and new loves, capturing both the pleasures and terrors of the fleeting passage of romanticized youth. While the work continues to evolve, what remains constant is her seductive use of color and photographic artifact, as well as the immediacy and charge of each image. Bee gives voice to the self-awareness and visual fluency of the millennial generation. Experiences are sharply felt, and easily communicated and shared, generating visual records that render these memories as significant as the moments themselves. Tavi Gevinson, founding editor of the online magazine Rookie and Bee’s frequent collaborator and model, writes about the work and about the role of images as social currency in today’s image-driven world.
