CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/28/2019

Sandra S. Phillips on Michael Jang

"Untitled, San Francisco," from Michael Jang's 1983 Summer Weather series of photographs of aspiring TV weather forecasters, is reproduced from Who Is Michael Jang?, the photographer's first major monograph—and what a great one it is. A favorite of artists and photographers like Alec Soth, Barry McGee, Ryan McGinley and Ed Templeton, Jang brings spontaneity and humor to his remarkably unaffected pictures of the 1970s and 80s. "The joyful spirit, the craziness of those times, the absurdity and unrestrained sense of fun evident in the pictures he made of his family and the communities in which he traveled are perhaps more precious today, and more needed," Sandra S. Phillips writes. "We as a people seem less spontaneous and less carefree now, and we are reminded of these useful attributes when looking at Jang's early pictures."