Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Myles Little. Text by Geoff Dyer, Joseph Stiglitz.
To be able to simply drift in the infinity pool on the roof terrace of the 57-floor Marina Bay Sand Hotel, while enjoying in the background the urban soundscape of Singapore’s imposing sea of high-rises; or to be personally welcomed to a private champagne party after an extended hot-air balloon ride over the Kenyan wilderness: the extravagant pleasures of the wealthiest 1% of the earth’s population represent an extreme contrast to those of the remaining 99%. Describing the gaping disparities in images is a challenge that has been taken up by photographers such as Nina Berman, Peter Bialobrzeski, Guillaume Bonn, Greg Girard, David Leventi, Michael Light, Andrew Moore, Matthew Pillsbury, Mikhael Subotzky, Brian Ulrich and many others. This volume provides visual evidence of the blatant discrepancy between people’s living conditions, which can be as fascinating as it is shocking.
Arthur Danto has described Lynn Saville as New York's answer to Eugène Atget, because she "prowls her city at the other end of the day, picking up pieces of the past in the present, just before it is swallowed by shadows." For her new monograph, Dark City, Saville focused on vacant spaces--shuttered storefronts, back alleys, blank billboards, empty lots--with the occasional ghostly figure hurrying through the frame. Working at twilight and dawn with a medium-format camera (setting up her tripod quickly so as not to attract police attention), Saville captured busy city streets depopulated and emptied out, industrial spaces and storefronts alike gone quiet. Color and light come from the sky, streetlights, neon signs or surveillance lighting. Seemingly otherworldly, the images in Dark City also tell a more pragmatic story of the changing urban landscape--vacancies caused by financial crisis, and construction projects spurred on by economic recovery, gentrification and development. Dark City includes an introduction by acclaimed author Geoff Dyer and photographs taken across the US, including in Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Maine; Lowell, Massachusetts; Jersey City and the Meadowlands, as well as around New York City. Lynn Saville is a New York-based photographer who specializes in photographs taken at twilight and dawn--"the boundary times between night and day," as she calls them. Saville studied at the Pratt Institute and Duke University and is represented by Yancey Richardson in New York.
Published by Hayward Gallery Publishing. Foreword by Ralph Rugoff. Text by Geoff Dyer. Interview by Stephanie Rosenthal.
Originally trained as a photojournalist and bookmaker, Dayanita Singh (born 1961) has exhibited widely both in India and abroad. Her work often takes a curious view of the everyday, and is characterized by an unsparing view of her subject matter. Best known for her portraits of India’s urban middle and upper classes, her images of people working, celebrating or resting depict everyday life without embellishment, capturing insights that often challenge exotic stereotypes in the West. Published alongside an exhibition at Hayward Gallery, Dayanita Singh: Go Away Closer<\!s>marks a turning point in the career of this artist. For the first time in print, this publication presents a detailed overview of Singh’s Museums--wooden structures that introduce a radical new way of experiencing Singh’s work and photography in general. The book includes images from throughout Singh’s career, a new essay from Geoff Dyer and an in-depth interview with Singh by Hayward Chief Curator, Stephanie Rosenthal.
Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Edited by Michael Juul Holm, Mathias Ussing Seeberg, Poul Erik Tøjner. Text by Minik Rosing, Geoff Dyer, Robert McGhee, Peter Davidson, et al.
Looming large in the cultural imagination as a wild territory to be conquered and the ultimate perimeter of human power, the seemingly untouched landscape of the Arctic has been an inspiration to artists from the Romantic age to the present. Arctic, published to accompany a major exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, brings together a range of artists responding to the terrifying sublime of the Arctic, from Caspar David Friedrich to Sigmar Polke, Sophie Calle, Mark Dion and Joachim Koester. With contributions from geologists, historians, archeaologists and glaciologists, as well as a new essay by Geoff Dyer about the photographs from the nineteenth-century expeditions that provided some of the first glimpses of the region and its inhabitants, this catalogue considers the place of the Arctic in the history and culture of the West at a moment when the region is taking on a new significance as a threatened, vanishing space.
Published by Kerber. Edited by Katharina Dohm, Max Hollein. Text by Katharina Dohm, Geoff Dyer, Christoph Ribbat.
The photography of Philip-Lorca diCorcia achieves a marvelous balance of artifice and the everyday. Over the past three decades, diCorcia has developed a unique and influential style, in which a realistic, almost documentary style of representation is subverted or countered by visibly staged composition. This combination of seemingly opposite qualities endows his images with a mysterious eeriness. In his Hustlers series (1990–1992), diCorcia made portraits of male prostitutes in minutely composed settings, and for Heads (2000–2001)--probably his most famous series--he depicted passersby on the street in New York (who were oblivious to his photographing them) as though they were film stars. Alongside the series Streetwork (1993–1999), Lucky 13 (2004) and A Storybook Life (1975–1999), this volume, published for a major European retrospective and produced in close collaboration with diCorcia, also features works from his new and ongoing East of Eden project.
Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Text by Sandra Ruffin, Erik Steffensen, Geoff Dyer. Interview by Mette Markus.
Danish photographer Jacob Holdt is internationally revered for his vision of America, as portrayed in classic volumes like American Pictures and United States 1970-1975. It is a vision which has inspired many, both in its extremity (the director Lars von Trier is reputedly a fan) and in its tenacity. Holdt arrived in the U.S. in the early 70s with almost no money, and hitchhiked all over the U.S., earning a living by selling blood, and proceeded to build an amazing portrait of the margins of America over the course of his 100,000-mile journey. This monograph continues Holdt's fascination with American society, with a portfolio of photographs from the 70s to the present. Holdt's photographs document the social realities of the people he travels with, spanning the demographic from poor families to millionaires, junkies and even members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Published by Walker Art Center. Edited by Siri Engberg. Interview by Bartholomew Ryan. Text by Geoff Dyer, Barry Schwabsky, Britt Salvesen, Siri Engberg, August Kleinzahler.
From Here to There: Alec Soth's America is the first exhibition catalogue to feature the full spectrum of the work of Alec Soth, one of the most interesting voices in contemporary photography, whose compelling images of everyday America form powerful narrative vignettes. Featuring more than 100 of the artist's photographs made over the past 15 years, the book includes new critical essays by exhibition curator Siri Engberg, curator and art historian Britt Salvesen and critic Barry Schwabsky, which offer context on the artist's working process, the photo-historical tradition behind his practice and reflections on his latest series of works. Novelist Geoff Dyer's "Riverrun"--a meditation on Soth's series Sleeping by the Mississippi--and August Kleinzahler's poem "Sleeping It Off in Rapid City" contribute to the thoughtful exploration of this body of work. Also included in the publication is a 48-page artist's book by Soth titled The Loneliest Man in Missouri, a photographic essay with short, diaristic texts capturing the banality and ennui of middle America's suburban fringes, with their corporate office parks, strip clubs and chain restaurants. This full-color publication includes a complete exhibition history, bibliography and interview with the artist by Bartholomew Ryan. Alec Soth was born in 1969 and raised in Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1999, 2004) and Jerome Foundation (2001), was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and was short-listed for the highly prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. His first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. Since then Soth has published Niagara (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), Dog Days, Bogotá (2007) and The Last Days of W (2008). He is a member of Magnum Photos.
Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Edited by Michael Juul Holm. Text by Geoff Dyer, Judith Thurman, Christoph Ribbat, Jeffrey Fraenkel, Rune Gade, et al.
In August 2007 Denmark's renowned Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presented Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946–2004, the first major retrospective devoted to Avedon's work since his death in 2004. This beautifully produced catalogue, designed by the renowned Danish graphic designer Michael Jensen, features deluxe tritone printing and varnish on premium paper. It includes 125 reproductions of Avedon's greatest work from the entire range of his oeuvre—including fashion photographs, reportage and portraits—and spans from his early Italian subjects of the 1940s to his 2004 portrait of the Icelandic pop star Björk. It also features a small number of color images, including what must be one of the most famous photographic portraits of the twentieth century, "Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent" (1981). Texts by Jeffrey Fraenkel, Judith Thurman, Geoff Dyer, Christoph Ribbat, Rune Gade and curator Helle Crenzien offer a sophisticated and thorough composite view of Avedon's career.
Lynn Saville: Dark City
Dayanita Singh: Go Away Closer
Arctic
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Jacob Holdt's America: Faith, Hope and Love
From Here to There: Alec Soth's America
Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946–2004