Archive for the books tag
Latin American Graphic Design. TASCHEN has just put out a insanely large survey of Latin American-flavored design, historical and contemporary. The book is text + photo heavy and weighs in at 504 pages, lots of profiles on prolific designers past and present. For anyone interested in design south-of-the-border, this is the book for you. Taschen has a full flash-based preview of the book, you can actually leaf through every page. Very impressive.
Comprised of 20 countries located in North, South, and Central America as well as the Caribbean Islands, Latin America is populated by over 500 million people. From Argentina to Mexico, all Latin American countries are Spanish-speaking with the exception of Portuguese-speaking Brazil. Latin America has been producing a very unique form of graphic expression for decades and this historical publication brings together the best examples from the 20th century as well as today. The book begins with an extensive historical essay about the region’s contribution to design, featuring the development of graphic design in the region from 1900 to current times, while the main body of the book features A to Z entries of almost 200 designers and design offices that have built up and continue to champion the Latin design identity. Finally, a handy index facilitates access to key information in the book, such as designers’ names, countries, publications, educational institutions, and famous events.
On a recent trip back to the homeland (NYC), my sister Mosbef hooked me up with It’s All Good by a syrbian photographer living in New York, that goes by the name Boogie. The book is published by powerHouse:
A gritty, graphic, and gripping exposé of the underworld and its inhabitants, It’s All Good, the first monograph by Boogie, presents the predators and the prey in the drug game today. Shot in New York City’s most notorious neighborhoods—Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Queensbridge—Boogie gained intimate access into a world few dare to venture, a world closed to outsiders, a world of crackheads, junkies, and gangsters. From the cops patrolling the project roofs to the addicts overdosing on the streets, It’s All Good chronicles ghetto life in stark, heart-stopping images and intense testimonials. Boogie brings us to a place few will leave and most will stay, a place where escape is one rock, one shot, one glock away.
The photos are intensely candid and close-up. The people being photographed know and confide in the photographer and you can see it in every image. Boogie spent a lot of time getting to know these people and gaining their trust. The book is really powerful and grim.
In photography books / monographs, the images always stand on their own. In the truest sense, the story is told through the images. Text and image don’t often collide. It’s all about the images and most of the time, rightly so.
In ‘It’s All Good’ the images appear one to a page, with an introductory text to each of the characters every few pages. In the back of the book, there is a glossary of images, each one with a comment, from the photographer, on the person being photographed or context that the photo was taken in.
I really enjoyed Boogie’s comments and although the book kinda takes the middle road (by displaying the images by themselves and then including the glossary), I gotta say that I spent a lot of time in the glossary section looking at the thumbnail images and reading the comments. The full size images are gorgeous and raw, but the comments really open the story up and provide the details and context that the photos sit in. I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t just include the text with the photos.
There’s definitely a conversation there, about the role of the image, versus the roll of image and text together. And the intention of the publisher/author to present the images versus the intent of the viewer to understand the context of the images. I’m not sure if my “art discourse” hat is fully on today, so I’ll leave it at that.
A-Side Studio combines beautifully subtle graphic design, illustration and photography. Their work is tight and laced with surf/skate inspiratory vibe. They art-directed a new surf culture related book project coming out called The September Project:
During the month of September in 2006 two dozen creatively driven surfers took residence in a house on the west coast of Ireland. The September Project documents the collective experiences of this place and time by means of photography, illustration and words.
plus lots of good goofy skate/surf/design snaps at their blog.
[via It's Nice That]
1926
2006
The promotional site for photography heavy book Fragile Earth has an impressive before and after slideshow of several bodies of water around the world. The two shots above are from the Ursala Glacier in Argentina. Astounding. I really dug the following quote:
The magnitude of the changes depends on us.
Humans aren’t the first species to alter the planet… but we are the first species to be in a position to understand what we are doing.
- Elizabeth Kolbert
Relatedly: that quote basically sums up a reoccurring thought I’ve been having as I slip towards the inevitability of becoming a full vegetarian.
[via treehugger]
Marcia and I have been on a circus vibe lately, that’s kinda how our minds work. Get on a theme and learn/discover/investigate. A few weeks ago, we got into the circus thing starting with Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen which marks a perfect jumping off point for historically accurate circus mythology dripping with Great Depression era magic and tragedy. If this book were ever made in to a movie, I’m sure the Coen Brothers would be directing.
Next, at the urging of everyone in my family, we read Geek Love. This book has been floating around my parents’ extensive book collection since it was published in ‘89. Geek Love’s emergency orange cover is burned into my memory. Never knowing quite what it was about, I was delighted to find a heart-breaking story about a traveling family of circus freaks and their eventual demise. I’d love to see Geek Love as a movie, although to be honest I spent most of the book wanted to choke the shit of the narrator, an albino hunchback dwarf with an obsessive, psychotically misplaced loyalty. In short, I loved it. A quick check at Wikipedia tells me that Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and Johnny Depp have all expressed interest in making Geek Love into a film. good crowd.
Making it a triumvirate of circus/freak culture, I introduced Marcia to Tod Browning’s Freaks. This movie is practically in my family canon, first showed to me when I was a kid by my uncle Tim, who managed to get a pirate copy on VHS. It was never officially released on VHS and didn’t make it to DVD until 2005 so for years Freaks enjoyed a cult-classic mythology surrounding it’s bombed release and subsequent burial by MGM. If you saw Freaks, you were privileged or at the very least, had a family member obsessed enough to seek out an elicit copy, long before the holy trinity of ebay, youtube and bit torrent. Unfortunately the versions floating around bt don’t have spanish subtitles and there are some spoken parts, not even I can understand. So my advice is get the DVD. It’s worth it. The signature line from the family of circus freaks shown in the film is “gooble gobble, one of us, one of us”, usually done in chanting style. This is sort of like an unconscious running line in our family that silently unifies us and always gets a smile from all, around the dinner table. I could be wrong, but I think that my entire family were circus freaks, in our last lives.
Indo Surf and Lingo is the best surfing info source I have encountered for Bali and Indonesia. They say it’s the #1 guidebook for surfers. I say it’s the #1 source of surfing info for Bali and Indonesia, period. It’s like a Rough Guide but written by surfers specifically for visiting surfers who need the insider info.
I’ve scoured the web for info on wet-season surfing in Bali and there’s precious little. It has everything you’ll need to know: write-ups on each surf break, info for all surfing-ability levels, dry and wet season specific info (bali’s swells switch coasts each season), how to use wind speed, swell height and tides to figure out where the best waves will be, hotel information for each break and tips on how to reach less accessible breaks, charter boat info for smaller indonesian islands like Nias and Mentawais. Indo surf is very cultural sensitive and goes out of its way to respect local surfers and the lesser known breaks. It’s a very practical guide to learning the indonesian language as well as.
Basically, if it ain’t in this book, it’s probably because it’s so new they haven’t had a chance to update the book yet. IMHO it rocks, big time. So If you’re going to Bali, Indo Surf and Lingo is the indispensable, definitive guidebook on surfing in Bali and Indonesia. pick it up, yo.
Hybrids Project is a new photography book by Klaus Thymann. The book is filled with interesting images covering “…micro-pockets of hybrid cultures…” including snow polo, gay rodeo, underwater striptease, hip hop in china, an indoor beach, rave as religion and many more. The website for the book is equally interesting, with a unique thumbnail and preview system. thumbs up. oh and book design by Love Creative. [via Avisualsociety]
Bernie’s Better Beginner’s Guide to Photography is a wickedly simple, clear and concise one-page guide that does exactly what is says and does it well. If you don’t quite know the mechanics of a camera and the how photography works, check this out. and then go get two books: John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Michael Langford’s Beginning Photography.
Stevey has been digging up some interesting stuff, here’s one, a wonderful illustrated book: The Space Alphabet.
