Britt Salvesen

In 1987 Aperture published Lynne Cohen’s first monograph, Occupied Territory, an exploration of space as simulated experience--a sham reality, idealized and standardized. Now, Aperture is publishing a newly expanded and updated reissue of this classic monograph, making Cohen’s pioneering work available to a contemporary audience and situating her within the lineage of Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore and other celebrated New Topographics photographers. In the 20 years of work contained in the book, Cohen turns her view camera toward classrooms, science laboratories, testing facilities, waiting rooms and other interior spaces where function triumphs over aesthetics. What decorations the inhabitants might have added to these rooms to make them more inviting--mostly phony attempts at warmth or individualism--only serve to amplify their artifice and uniformity. In cool, functional offices, futuristic reception areas, lifeless party rooms, escapist motel rooms and haunting killing chambers, Cohen surveys a society of surface, contradiction and social engineering. In her hands, clouds peel off walls, forest glades invade indoor tennis courts and the awkward lives of furniture are revealed. Drawing on a background in sculpture, Cohen records the world’s readymade sculptures, waiting to be framed by the photograph. This new edition of Occupied Territory includes unpublished images drawn from the time period in which the book was made, encouraging a reexamination of Cohen’s deft exploration of Topographic seeing.

W. Eugene Smith (1918–1978) revolutionized the photo-essay form with the works he published in Life magazine between 1948 and 1956. This monograph reproduces images from six classic sequences: Country Doctor, which portrays the selfless and sometimes frustrating work of a doctor in rural America; Spanish Village, the most powerful photographic study of 1950s Spain; Nurse Midwife, which examines the life of a black woman in the American south; A Man of Mercy, which documents Dr. Albert Schweitzer's humanitarian work in Africa; Pittsburgh, Smith's first freelance assignment, previously unpublished; and Minamata, a photo-essay recording the effects caused by a mercury spill in a region inhabited by Japanese fishermen. Writings by W. Eugene Smith, clarifying his field techniques and guiding principles, are included here in an English-language insert, alongside the tale of his most praised photograph, “A Walk to a Paradise Garden,” and an essay on Spain in the 1950s, the setting for his Spanish Village essay.

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.

At the Crossroads of American Photography examines the aesthetic and personal interrelationships of three photographers who helped define the course of American photography after Steiglitz: Frederick Sommer (1905-1999), Harry Callahan (1912-1999) and Aaron Siskind (1903-1991). Although each member of this "holy trinity" (as they were dubbed by photographer and publisher Jonathan Williams) has been honored with individual museum retrospectives, this is the first full comparison of their work, as well as an exploration of their robust, prescient exchange of ideas about photography, abstraction and metaphor over the course of their 25 years as colleagues and friends. Self-taught as photographers, this trio helped shape a national community of peers and the evolution of photography as an art form, creating a bridge between the purity of Group f/64-era photography at midcentury and the hybrid approaches to the medium seen today.

This exquisitely produced exhibition catalogue highlights the powerful role of such camaraderie in shaping photography at this seminal time, before the emergence of a market for photography and before widespread artistic acceptance of the medium. It brings to light contrasting philosophies of the artist/photographer's role (influenced by Existentialism for Siskind and by the writings of Spinoza for Sommer), the interest in chance as an artistic process, the expressive potential of photographic found objects and collage, experimental abstraction, close affiliations with fine art movements (New Bauhaus, Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism), and changing attitudes toward the fine-print tradition.