Artbook Image Gallery

Featured image is reproduced from Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Andy Sweet's Summer Camp 1977, the undisputed Summertime Staff Favorite of 2020. Collecting 109 gloriously addictive photographs made over the summer of 1977, when Sweet was the photography instructor and a counselor at Camp Mountain Lake in North Carolina, this is both the greatest memory trigger a former camper could ever wish for, and a book to help us all get through a summer when most kids will have to stay home. Never have feathered hair, terry cloth, sweat bands and tube socks looked so fresh. These are photographs of kids—and counselors—living the high life, at their happiest and most independent, made by a person who was in love with summer camp himself. "The smell of sunscreen and wood cabins wafts from the pages," Nadja Spiegelman writes in this week's T List Newsletter. "High socks and short shorts, amber sunglasses and halos of curly hair—the nostalgia is for all summers, including this one, the summer we may never have."

Beautiful and voyeuristic. Tosh Berman reviews 'Weegee's Naked City'

Featured image—captioned "Odds and Ends. 'A phone booth is a handy place to make a date'"—is reproduced from Weegee's Naked City, the hot, newly remastered facsimile launching virtually tonight at ICP. It is the subject of Tosh Berman's current video review in a new Youtube series for Artbook | D.A.P. "Weegee is by no means a subtle photographer, or a subtle artist," Berman says. "He's a person who is in your face with his images and that's why he's so powerful… This is not New York as an objective viewpoint; this is Weegee's view of New York City… sort of like a painter painting a portrait of himself… And that's what makes Weegee's Naked City such a unique and beautiful work, of sorts. I use the word 'beautiful' as a very loose term because there are a lot of images of dead bodies, people in fires, lovers in the middle of the night. It's very voyeuristic… The beauty of Weegee is that he had an understanding of his landscape. He knew these people, he understood who they were and what they represented."

Tosh Berman on 'The World's Worst: A Guide to the Portsmouth Sinfonia'—a new adventure in its highest form

Featured image—of Portsmouth Sinfonia member Brian Eno and untrained yet "very dandified" conductor John Farley in the 1970s—is reproduced from The World's Worst: A Guide to the Portsmouth Sinfonia, published by Soberscove Press and launching tonight, Tuesday, May 26, from 8–10 PM CST on Twitch TV! In his new video review series for Artbook | D.A.P., Tosh Berman, calls it "a terrific book" on the infamous amateur orchestra (founded by Gavin Bryars) whose "claim to fame is that no one in the orchestra can play their instruments properly." Berman cites the orchestra's "combination of British eccentricity, Fluxus-like behavior and avant-garde visual arts and music," situating it in not just classical, but punk, avant-garde and noise music traditions. "When we think of the classical world, we think of it always in good taste. Even if we don't listen to it, it's a symbol of taste, good taste, having proper taste." In contrast, the Portsmouth Sinfonia orchestra approached classical music as "a new adventure," Berman states. "This book conveys this new adventure in its highest form."

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