Posts from the “Books” Category

James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time

Posted on August 2, 2017

Photo: James Baldwin joined the fight for equality in the South. Mostly, he offered a passionate voice for justice and a plea for a nation’s salvation. In Mississippi in 1963, he visited the NAACP’s Medgar Evers, who was slain later that June, following President Kennedy’s landmark televised address on civil rights. This photo was recently discovered in the photographer’s contact sheets. © 2017 Steve Schapiro.

James Baldwin penned fire to purify truth and liberate it from the lies that have clouded United States history ever since Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence. With every sentence, Baldwin burned away the toxic stench of injustice, oppression, and pathology that so many cling to until their dying day.

One of Baldwin’s greatest works is The Fire Next Time, a collection of two essays originally published by The New Yorker and subsequently published by Dial Press in 1963 in book form. The essays, “My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation,” and “Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind” address the issues facing African Americans during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, as they faced down the horrors of the past and present each and every single day.

Now, Taschen introduces James Baldwin. The Fire Next Time, a collector’s edition of 1,963 copies reprinted in a letterpress edition with more than 100 photographs taken by Steve Schapiro while he was on assignment for LIFE magazine. Schapiro was on the frontlines of the movement as it marched across the South facing down the system of apartheid under Jim Crow.

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Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Naomi Klein: No Is Not Enough

Posted on August 1, 2017

Donald Trump is not an anomaly in any shape or form. His rise to power reveals the ugly truth about a nation that prides itself on whitewashing history and spouting disinformation in its place. His election sent those who clung to these illusions into a state of shock, unable to make sense of the inevitable culmination of neoliberal policy, celebrity/CEO worship, and dog-whistle politics aligned under the banner “Make America Great Again.”

Scandalised, they began to deflect, pointing fingers to avoid the facts. Shadowboxing with lies became the order of the day as mainstream media outlets debated false paradigms and fake news, keeping misinformation alive and well. Talking heads wouldn’t shut up, fomenting confusion, rage, and fear – all in a day’s work for the merchants of trauma and confusion.

After decades of reporting on large-scale political and corporate exploitation of society, award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein saw through the deception and set to work penning No Is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics (Penguin Press). Here, Klein charts Trump’s ascendancy as a product of our time and offers a bold plan of action to fight back against an administration entrenched in the brutal oppression and destruction of the people, democracy, economy, and environment.

What we need, Klein argues, is a paradigm shift that goes beyond policies and takes root in values that will protect life on the planet from the scourge of rampant corruption, hatred, and greed that the administration exhibits with pride and impunity. Klein shares her vision and her wisdom with us below, providing insight into the issues at hand and how we can resist, reorganise, and fight back.

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Categories: Books, Dazed

TBW Book Series No. 5

Posted on July 27, 2017

Image courtesy of Susan Meiselas and TBW Books, 2017

Perhaps you’ve been gazing upon Susan Meiselas’ Prince Street Girls for so long you, you didn’t realize they had never been published in book form. It just seemed so obvious and yet it’s taken four decades for these iconic works to be printed and bound into one sumptuous volume when Soho was an Italian neighborhood.

Remnants of the era have been all but erased by the broad sweeping brush of gentrification. But for a lone street named “Carmine” you might not ever know—well, that and Meiselas’ photographs taken one summer long ago. The photographs were taken during the era of hot pants and wedges, tube tops and high socks, back when you and your crew used to stroll the block for kicks before hightailing it to the beach—when you used to go outdoors in the summer because there was nothing to do indoors, and it was just too damn hot to be inside.

These magical moments of yesteryear have finally been published in the TBW Book Series No. 5, a four-book set that includes Mike Mandel: Boardwalk Minus Forty, Bill Burke: They Shall Take Up Serpents, and Lee Friedlander: Head.

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Categories: 1970s, Books, Photography

Karlheinz Weinberger: Swiss Rebels

Posted on July 27, 2017

Photo: © Swiss Rebels by Karlheinz Weinberger, published by Steidl, Steidl.de

“My life started on Friday events and ended on Monday mornings,” Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger (1921-2006) said in 2000, on the occasion of his first major exhibition at the Museum of Design Zurich. This was the time when he could leave the daily grind behind, forgetting about his work as a warehouse manager at a factory day in and out from 1955 through 1986. It was on the weekends when he picked up his camera and came into himself.

His business card said it all: “My favorite hobbies: the individual portrait and The Extraordinary. Always reachable by telephone after 7 PM.” He refused to photograph people who did not pique his interest, throwing them the ultimate curve with lines like, “It’s easy to snap the shutter, but I’m so busy you’ll have to wait for maybe three to six months to get the photo.”

It takes nerve—and nerve is where Weinberger excelled. He dedicated himself to the raw sexuality of rebels, construction workers, athletes, and Sicilian youths, as well as men who regularly came to his home, undressed, and gave the camera a show.

As an outsider working in a milieu he created exclusively for his own pleasure and delight, Weinberger amassed a body of work is much a portrait of the artist as the subjects he photographed. Weinberger’s love of the human form was not limited to the bare flesh; he captured the raw sensuality in the very spirit of youth, fully dressed and perfectly coiffed, striking an exquisite balance between teenage lust and campy poseurdom.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Fashion, Photography

The Best New Books on Contemporary African Art

Posted on July 27, 2017

Photo: Nana Kofi Acquah: Afro on purple. Silhouette of my daughter. Accra, Ghana. @africashowboy. From Everyday Africa: 30 Photographers Re-Picturing a Continent (Kehrer Verlag).

In recent years, contemporary African art has risen to the fore with some of the most original, creative, and inspiring visions of life today. Drawn from a vast swath of tribes and cultures across the continent that date back for hundreds and thousands of years and brought up to date for the new millennium, the arts of Africa defy all expectation—except that they remain on the cutting edge.

Crave has compiled the best new publications showcasing African art today, capturing the spirit of the peoples, reflecting on the issues at hand, and crafting innovative solutions to the challenges facing the nations rising out of the struggles incumbent 0n achieving independence from foreign imperialists.

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Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power

Posted on July 26, 2017

On June 16, 1966, Stokely Carmichael stood before a crowd of 3,000 in a park in Greenwood, Mississippi, who had gathered to march in place of James Meredith, who had been wounded during his solitary “Walk Against Fear” in an effort to integrate the University of Mississippi.

Carmichael, who had been arrested after setting up camp, took to the stage with fire in his gut. “We’ve been saying ‘Freedom’ for six years,” the newly appointed chairman of the SNCC announced, “What we are going to start saying now is ‘Black Power!’”

With those words, Carmichael did more than change the paradigm for Civil Rights, he transformed the language of race itself. Up until that time, Americans had been using the word “Negro,” taken from the Spanish slave trade. It’s linguistic resemblance to the “N” word was all-too evident; the Spanish word for “Black” that was commonly used had been corrupted by English speakers and infested with pathological hatred, fear, and rage.

Carmichael embraced the word “Black” while simultaneously making the case that “Negro” was the oppressor’s term of diminution and disrespect. Malcolm X, who had had been killed a year earlier, was also a proponent for the word “Black.” By the decade’s end, Ebony was using it exclusively, helping to guide the group towards a self-chosen identity that the rest of the nation came to use.

Why does this matter? Because we think in words; the very terms we use to describe the world, and the connotations they hold, inform our beliefs and perceptions, whether we realize it or not. “Black Power” began in the very naming of the act. It was a means of transforming identity from one that was given to that which was claimed.

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Artwork: Betye Saar, Rainbow Mojo, 1972. Paul Michael diMeglio, New York.

Artwork: Emma Amos, Eva the Babysitter, 1973. Courtesy of the artist and Ryan Lee Gallery, NY.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography

Keith Haring: Posters

Posted on July 20, 2017

Artwork: Keith Haring (1958-1990). Ignorance = Fear, Silence = Death, Fight Aids Act Up, New York, USA, 1989. Offset lithograph, 61,1 x 109,5 cm. © Keith Haring Foundation.

Keith Haring (1958-1990) was more than a Pop artist—he was a populist. He made his name in 1980 when he went underground, descending to the subterranean level that New Yorkers know all too well: the subway platform. It was here that Haring set to work, creating a series of white chalk drawings on black paper that had been placed over unrented advertising spaces.

These works, known collectively as Subway Drawings, were an instant hit among people from all walks of life. Because they were made in chalk, rather than marker and spray paint, and depicted recognizable figures rather than hard-to-read graffiti tags, they instantly caught on with people who found the Wild Style of the times simply too taxing to their nervous system.

He softened the punch that graffiti aimed at one and all, and in doing so he was well-received by the art world and the mainstream. But Haring was no punk; he had a message and a style all his one, one that he quickly honed into an industry. In 1982, he began producing posters, one of the most democratic forms of visual culture at the time with its ability to use the systems of mechanical reproduction to distribute reproductions at an affordable price.

Haring seized these opportunities to spread the word, to use the highly popular mode of poster art to reach the broadest audience possible. Of the approximately 100 posters he made during his life, less than 20% were for his shows; instead he focused his efforts on collaborating with like-minded organizations and companies to bring their message to life in a way that was emblematic of the 1980s: bold graphics, bright colors, and good vibes.

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Artwork: Keith Haring (1958-1990). Montreux 1983, 17ème Festival du Jazz, Juillet 8-24, 1983. Silk-screen print, 100 x 70 cm © Keith Haring Foundation.

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions

Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album

Posted on July 19, 2017

Photo: Dennis Hopper, Selma, Alabama (Full Employment), 1965, Gelatin silver print mounted on cardboard, 6 2/5 x 9 4/5 inches. Courtesy of The Hopper Art Trust and Kohn Gallery.

Dennis Hopper (1949-2010) is best known to the world as an actor and director whose films sharpened the cutting edge, whether appearing in Rebel Without a Cause (1954), Easy Rider (1969), or Blue Velvet (1986). Hopper didn’t play by the rules that Hollywood wrote, and quickly earned the reputation of being “difficult.” Finding himself ostracized by a studio system that loved to sell rebellion but couldn’t tolerate it within its own ranks, Hopper turned to photography.

His first wife Brooke Howard gave him a Nikon, and he began documenting the world in which he lived—and he lived hard. He attended the March on Washington in 1963, the Selma to Montgomery March in 1955, hanging out with outlaw biker gangs, art stars, musicians, and actors. He created the cover art for the Ike & Tina Turner classic “River Deep – Mountain High,” released in 1966, and was described as an up-and-coming photographer by Terry Sothern in Better Homes and Gardens (of all places).

“But I tell you the truth,” Luke wrote (4:24). “No prophet is accepted in his hometown.” And so it was for Hopper, who showed his work around the globe, that his first major photography retrospective in Los Angeles only occurred after his death. Yet this is where our story begins, for it was at the exhibition preview at the Museum of Contemporary Art that Julian Schnabel introduced Petra Gilroy Hertz, author of his book of Polaroids, to Hopper’s daughter, Marin.

In an interview with The Telegraph in 2012, Marin indicated she did not feel the museum had done Hopper justice. She decided to partner with the Hopper family to create another exhibition and was invited to the family home in Venice Beach. It was here, in the garage, when luck struck and an additional five boxes containing 429 prints that Hopper had exhibited at the Fort Worth Museum in 1970, were rediscovered.

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Photo: Dennis Hopper, Ike and Tina Turner, 1965, Gelatin silver print mounted on cardboard, 6 2/5 x 9 4/5 inches. Courtesy of The Hopper Art Trust and Kohn Gallery.

Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Sanne De Wilde: The Island of the Colorblind

Posted on July 18, 2017

Photo: Jaynard (achromatope) climbs a tree in the garden, to pick fruits and play. I took the picture while he was climbing back down. The sun comes peeking through the branches; bright light makes him keep his eyes closed. Sadly local people are often not growing their own food. But the trees around them naturally grow coconuts, breadfruit, bananas and leaves used to chew the betelnuts. © Sanne De Wilde.

Photo: On the way back from a picknick to one of the uninhabited small islands around Pingelap with the colorblind Pingelapese and all the children of the one school of the island. The bay is now protected, islanders are no longer allowed to fish for turtles. Because of the infrared colors the scene looks very romantic, at the same time there’s the visual connotation of the boats full of refugees setting off for a better future. © Sanne De Wilde.

More than a thousand years ago, peoples of an unknown origin arrived in Pingelap, one of the 80 atolls scattered through the Pacific Ocean around Pohnpei, in Micronesia. Over a period of eight centuries, the flourished under an elaborate system of hereditary kings, oral culture, and mythology that kept the population of nearly 1,000 thriving.

Then, in 1775, everything changed. Typhoon Lengkiekie swept across Pingelap decimating the island nation. Of the estimated 20 survivors was the king. Of great fortune to the tribe was their extreme fertility. Within a few decades, the population was approaching 100, but with this came the continuation of a genetic condition of the king. He carried the achromatospia-gen; he was colorblind—and soon, so were many people on the tiny atoll.

In Pingelap, an estimated 5% of the population of 700 are colorblind, whereas the figures are closer to an estimated 1 in 30,000 anywhere else on earth. The phenomenon was first documented by neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, who set up a clinic in a one-room island dispensary, where islanders described their colorless world in terms of light and shadow, pattern and tone, transforming their history into the book The Island of the Colorblind (A.A. Knopf, 1997).

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Photo: Jaynard (achromatope) plays with a disco-light-torch I brought from Belgium. I asked him what he saw. He answered ‘colors’ and kept staring into the light. © Sanne De Wilde

Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Rex Ray: We Are All Made of Light

Posted on July 15, 2017

Rex Ray. Platismatia No.2 (detail), 2010, pigment print on Hahnemuhle paper, 42” x 62”, published by Gallery 16 Editions.

San Francisco in the early 1990 was covered by the shroud of death, as AIDS swept through the city, devastating a generation. Those who lived through the epidemic were forced to come to terms with the unthinkable: to carry on understanding the depths of the absence and the lives stolen from us.

Artist Rex Ray (1956–2015) exhibited a piece at the final show at Kiki Gallery titled “Waiting for a Fax from Yoko,” which featured an unplugged fax machine set on a podium. Outside the gallery, Clifford Hengst sang as Yoko Ono, accompanied by Ray’s guitar feedback—and together they performed until the police came to shut the whole thing down.

By the time of the performance, Ray had already been working as a graphic artist, trained before the advent of computer technology. He designed the first ACT UP! logo before they adopted the Gill Sans logo, “Silence = Death.” He abandoned the group when strangers arrived at the meetings talking about using bombs.

Although he work was not overtly political, he understood the stakes and the forces at work. But he refused to abandon the importance of beauty, a central element no matter what he did. His style, which embraced the influences of the Arts and Crafts movement, Fluxus, Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, organic and hard-edged abstraction, pattern and textile design, and Op Art gave his work mass appeal, landing him commissions to design album covers for David Bowie, U2, Björk, Radiohead, and R.E.M., and collaborations Apple, Dreamworks and Swatch, among many others.

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Rex Ray. Wall of Sound (detail).

From REX RAY: We Are All Made of Light by Gallery 16.

Categories: 1990s, Art, Books, Crave

Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore

Posted on July 6, 2017

“Where would fashion be without literature?” Diana Vreeland asked in D.V., her legendary memoir published in 1984. One to pay homage where it is due, Vreeland understood this it is not just the sartorial splendors of the characters that writers have graced us with over the years, but the very nature of the author’s personal style that has influenced the our tastes and sensibilities.

Consider Mark Twain’s white suits versus those of Tom Wolfe, or the lavender ascots and fanciful hats of Quentin Crisp. Reflect on the penchant for men’s wear shared by Fran Lebowitz and Colette in contrast to the flamboyant Victorian get ups of Oscar Wilde. Contemplate the brunette bouffant of Jacqueline Susann, the glorious dreadlocks of Toni Morrison, and the crisp thatch of white hair on Susan Sontag versus the signature beard of Ernest Hemingway.

Terry Newman pulls it all together in the new book, Legendary Authors and The Clothes They Wore (Harper Design), a charming collection that reveals style is more than a way of dressing: it is a state of mind. The book includes chapters of icons from Patti Smith and William S. Burroughs to Marcel Proust and Zadie Smith, along side special sections on signature looks including glasses, suits, hair, and hats of everyone from Robert Crumb and Allen Ginsberg to Bret Easton Ellis and Edgar Allen Poe.

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Categories: Books, Crave, Fashion, Photography