Preview our Spring 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
TRAPART BOOKS
Ruby Ray: Kalifornia Kool
Photographs 1976-1982
Introduction by Carl Abrahamsson.
Punk and industrial culture in late '70s and early '80s San Francisco
Spanning music, art and literature, the industrial and punk scenes of San Francisco in the late 1970s and early 1980s were diverse but united by a DIY, anti-authoritarian attitude. Photographer Ruby Ray was there to capture it all in the same spirit. With her work appearing in the legendary punk zine Search & Destroy and its successor RE/Search, Ray was at the epicenter of, and a key participant in, a vital cultural moment vibrant with provocation and creativity. A local experimental music and art scene supported artists like Bruce Conner, William S. Burroughs and Louise Nevelson and attracted groundbreaking bands like Devo, the Mutants, Boyd Rice and the Dead Kennedys, as well as established international bands like Throbbing Gristle, the Clash and the Sex Pistols (in fact, Ray was there to shoot their famous final concert at the Winterland Ballroom).
Ruby Ray: Kalifornia Kool collects the photographer’s images from this time: live shots, backstage parties, apartments overflowing with youthful exuberance, elegant portraits of key people and photographic experiments. Her work captures a time and a place where West Coast open-mindedness, youth, art, music and electricity merged. As Carl Abrahamsson puts it in his introduction to this volume, “Ruby’s images open up a portal to a mythic and frenzied scene and show that it’s true: all mythologies are real.”
Ruby Ray (born 1952) is an American photographer, well known for her photography of the early punk, post-punk and industrial movements in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She began her photography career in 1977, when her photographs began appearing in Search & Destroy.
Featured photograph is of artist and filmmaker Bruce Conner with his wife, the artist Jean Conner, under a cobweb in their yard, 1979.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Creative Boom
Katy Cowan
Ruby Ray: Kalifornia Kool is a new book that collects the photographer’s images from this time: live shots, backstage parties, apartments overflowing with youthful exuberance, elegant portraits of key people and photographic experiments. Her work captures a time and a place where West Coast open-mindedness, youth, art, music and electricity merged.
Huck
Miss Rosen
Spanning the late ’70s and early ’80s, Ruby Ray’s photography captured the DIY misfits of music, art and literature.
Bookforum
Alex Jovanovich
[Kalifornia Kool] is a glamorous yet melancholy jaunt down memory lane.
Interview
Sarah Nechamkin
It’s a time capsule into an era when fun could be weaponized against an establishment that was giving out poison Kool-Aid and instituting “no dancing” rules in clubs.
Mother Jones
Mark Murrmann
Ruby Ray’s new book, “Kalifornia Kool,” reminds us what made the early scene so special.
CNN
Ryan Prior
[Ray's] book is a living record of the ‘70s punk scene, which almost by its very definition, was ephemeral.
Guardian
Photographer Ruby Ray found herself at the epicentre of a movement in late-70s San Francisco and started to capture the bands, artists and writers who defined it. In a new book, Ruby Ray: Kalifornia Kool, her greatest shots have been assembled, opening up ‘a portal to a mythic and frenzied scene.'
in stock $39.95
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"Late 70s, early 80s… Ruby Ray and her camera, capturing the movers and the shakers of the San Francisco punk and industrial scenes… And then some… Performance art, music, literature, photos, videos made with a 'fuck you' and 'do it yourself' attitude." So begins Carl Abrahamsson's introduction to Ruby Ray: Kalifornia Kool, launching tonight at City Lights Books in San Francisco. "Ruby sees and Ruby captures," Abrahamsson continues. "Knowns and unknowns, winners and losers, sane and insane, constructive and destructive… William Burroughs with his gun, Bruce Conner being fueled by punk energy, Sex Pistols' last ever gig in San Fran, Throbbing Gristle, The Cramps live at Napa Mental Hospital, Search and Destroy Magazine and bands and gigs galore…" Featured image is captioned, "Exene at Tire Beach, 1978. Exene Cervenka, poet and singer of LA band X, finds repose at the tire dump on the shores of the San Francisco Bay." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.25 x 8.25 in. / 200 pgs / 12 color / 160 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $55 GBP £35.00 ISBN: 9789198451238 PUBLISHER: Trapart Books AVAILABLE: 2/19/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Trapart Books. Introduction by Carl Abrahamsson.
Punk and industrial culture in late '70s and early '80s San Francisco
Spanning music, art and literature, the industrial and punk scenes of San Francisco in the late 1970s and early 1980s were diverse but united by a DIY, anti-authoritarian attitude. Photographer Ruby Ray was there to capture it all in the same spirit. With her work appearing in the legendary punk zine Search & Destroy and its successor RE/Search, Ray was at the epicenter of, and a key participant in, a vital cultural moment vibrant with provocation and creativity. A local experimental music and art scene supported artists like Bruce Conner, William S. Burroughs and Louise Nevelson and attracted groundbreaking bands like Devo, the Mutants, Boyd Rice and the Dead Kennedys, as well as established international bands like Throbbing Gristle, the Clash and the Sex Pistols (in fact, Ray was there to shoot their famous final concert at the Winterland Ballroom).
Ruby Ray: Kalifornia Kool collects the photographer’s images from this time: live shots, backstage parties, apartments overflowing with youthful exuberance, elegant portraits of key people and photographic experiments. Her work captures a time and a place where West Coast open-mindedness, youth, art, music and electricity merged. As Carl Abrahamsson puts it in his introduction to this volume, “Ruby’s images open up a portal to a mythic and frenzied scene and show that it’s true: all mythologies are real.”
Ruby Ray (born 1952) is an American photographer, well known for her photography of the early punk, post-punk and industrial movements in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She began her photography career in 1977, when her photographs began appearing in Search & Destroy.
