World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1991—1997, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 70 pages ea. approx x 9 issues, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Musicworks / Toronto
$100.00 - In stock -
Lot of 9 issues (1991—1997) of Musicworks, The Journal of Sound Exploration, published out of Toronto. Launched in January 1978 by Andrew Timar and John Oswald, best known for his plunderphonics, Musicworks was a long-running Canadian avant-garde music magazine devoted to experimental, improvised and Electroacoustic music. These issues together feature an abundance of exclusive interviews, essays, reviews, theoretical texts, scores, colloquies, artworks, features on and by Stan Brakhage, Chris Cutler, John Cage, Tibor Szemző, Pauline Oliveros, Trevor Wishart, Carolee Schneemann, Josef Režný, Jerry Hunt, Kazue Sawai, Glenn Branca, Yūji Takahashi, Tim Hodgkinson, Louis Andriessen, Glenn Gould, Harry Partch, Akio Suzuki, Fergus Kelly, Petr Kotik, Nicholas Gebhardt, Barbara Benary, Andrew Culver, Udo Kasemets, Franz Van Rossum, R.I.P. Hayman, Iva Bittová, Nobuo Kubota, David Rokeby, François Girard, J.S. Bach, Jocelyn Robert, Don Ritter, Glenn Gould, Paul Rapoport, and many more. Scarce and incredible resource for improvised and avant-garde compositional music/performance/video histories from this publisher and cassette label.
Good copy with with general light magazine wear.
1990, English
Softcover, 362 pages, 21.6 x 24 cm
Reprint,
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$45.00 - In stock -
"Apocalypse Culture is compulsory reading for all those concerned with the crisis of our times. An extraordinary collection unlike anything I have ever encountered. These are the terminal documents of the twentieth century."—J.G. Ballard
Two thousand years have passed since the death of Christ and the world is going mad. Nihilist prophets, born-again pornographers, transcendental schizophrenics and just plain folks are united in their belief in an imminent global catastrophe. What are the forces lurking behind this mass delirium?
APOCALYPSE CULTURE is a startling, absorbing and exhaustive tour through the nether regions of today’s psychotic brainscape.
First published in 1987, APOCALYPSE CULTURE immediately touched a nerve. Alternately excoriated and lauded as “epochal”, “the most important book of the decade,” APOCALYPSE CULTURE had begun to articulate what many inwardly sensed — the-fear inspired irrationalism and faith, the clash of irreconcilable forces, and the ever-looming specter of fin de race. In its present incarnation for Feral House, APOCALYPSE CULTURE has significantly increased in size, taking on new perspectives on our current crisis, with pertinent revisions of many articles from the original edition.—burb from this expanded and revised 1990 edition.
As New.
2025, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 23 x 15.24 cm
Published by
Park Street Press / Vermont
$48.00 - In stock -
An unusual collection of writing by and about mystic artist Harry Smith. Explores in depth the occult and mystical side of Smith—his “heaven and earth magic”—focusing on how his varied artistic efforts were part of a comprehensive magical and alchemical practice. Includes unpublished photos of and letters from Smith, rare interviews, one of his unpublished texts, and essays by scholars and friends.
Harry Smith (1923–1991) was a legendary twentieth-century artist, filmmaker, painter, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and archivist. Especially well known for his Anthology of American Folk Music, innovative abstract realms, and extraordinary collection of paper airplanes now housed at the Getty Research Institute, Smith also had a deep esoteric and mystical side, with experimentation in magic, Tarot, Kabbalah, and other occult practices. Like other alchemists, Smith’s life mission was to create a unified work from disparate elements, a synthesis of correspondences between seemingly unrelated topics—from music, string figures, and Seminole patterns to the relationship between sound and film imagery.
Presenting the most diverse collection of writings about Harry Smith, this volume explores the far-ranging esoteric themes that run throughout his art and career. The book includes never-before-seen photos, rare interviews, personal letters, and an unpublished text by Harry Smith, The 96 Apparitions of the 96 Alchemical Formulae (1 to 36), as well as personal reminiscences from Smith’s friends and former students. Smith’s groundbreaking mystical wisdom, "heaven and earth magic," and influence as an artist of the extremes leap from the pages in this book, confirming his contribution to art, music, film, and modern alchemy.
“Alchemist, magician, filmmaker, artist, mystic, anthropologist, collector, rebel, eternal omnivore, and 20th-century Renaissance man, Harry Smith was many things to many people, and this outstanding collection of lovingly written testimonies pays tribute to Harry with wit, respect, love, and laser-like precision. It is absolutely impossible to forget any interaction you had with Harry—and the beautiful tales in this remarkably readable and heartfelt book will have you awestruck, laughing out loud, and hungry for more. Perhaps the best collection of writings about one of the most enigmatic and fascinating figures the world has ever known.” ― John Zorn, American composer
“The Occult Harry Smith explores so many fascinating aspects of Harry Smith that have yet to be explored! Through a panoply of voices gathered in this volume, we get firsthand accounts and informed explorations that delve deep into the magician and trickster Harry Smith. Essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about this enigmatic and influential figure who lived his life on the edge and for his art.” ― Rani Singh, director of the Harry Smith Archives
“Through his alchemical metaphors and deep appreciation for cultural diversity, Smith’s work continues to influence new generations eager to learn more about his gentle blurring of the boundaries between art and magic. The Occult Harry Smith is a highly inspiring anthology and an invaluable glimpse into the timeless cosmic prism that was the mind of this polymath magus.” ― Carl Abrahamsson, author of Meetings with Remarkable Magicians and Occulture
“The world is blessed unknown when a Harry Smith enters it, and we are fortunate that enough individuals notice, to record his presence among them. One can only gain—and gain much—from reading this prismatic collection of fascinating views on the polymathic shaman of the city. Smith: all profit with no risk, other than the effect of enlightenment, a mere byproduct of gazing at his mighty works.”―Tobias Churton, author of Aleister Crowley in England, Aleister Crowley in Paris, and Aleister Crowley...
“This invaluable collection comes at the right time, as interest in Harry Smith’s life expands and his manifold work reaches new and ever-growing audiences. Offered up by the people who knew him best, this volume provides new and nuanced perspectives on Harry Smith: the man, the polymath, the sage."―John Klacsmann, archivist at Anthology Film Archives
“The Occult Harry Smith is a long overdue deep dive into this particular aspect of a wonderful, remarkable, and insufferable genius and polymath. In addition, by bringing together the memories and observations of an impressive, indeed close-to-definitive, collection of acolytes, scholars, and friends (not to mention photographic treasures and unpublished texts), Peter Valente presents an unexpected delight in this wide-ranging compendium—endlessly illuminating (as was Harry)—a posthumous banquet.”―Simon Pettet, poet and author of Hearth, As A Bee, and More Winnowed Fragments
About the Author
Harry Smith (1923-1991) was a filmmaker, painter, anthropologist, alchemist, and artist of the twentieth century.
Peter Valente is a writer, editor, translator, and filmmaker. He was born in Salerno, Italy, in 1970 and grew up in New Jersey. The author of 12 books and the translator of several influential works, including Gérard de Nerval’s The Illuminated, he lives in North Carolina.
2025, English
Softcover, 640 pages, 24 x 16.99 cm
Published by
Intellect Ltd / US
$110.00 - In stock -
An exploration of the multidisciplinary creative culture encapsulated by the term industrial art, which spans musical, visual, multimedia, and performance arts.
Industrial music appeared in the mid-1970s, and far from being a simple sound experimentation phenomenon, it quickly spawned a coherent visual culture operating at the intersection of a multitude of media (collage, mail art, installation, film, performance, sound, and video), and initiated a close inspection of the legacy of modernity and the growing pervasive influence of technology.
Deriving their sources from the modernist utopias of the first part of the twentieth century, the sound experiments conducted by industrial bands, including designing synthesizers and transforming recorded sounds from audio tapes either recycled or laid down by the artists, were backed up by a rich array of radical visual productions. Such saturated sounds were translated into abrasive images, manipulated through the détournement of reprographic techniques (Xerox art), that investigated polemical themes: mind control, criminality, occultism, pornography, psychiatry, and totalitarianism, among others.
This book aims to introduce the visual and aesthetic elements of industrial culture to a general history of contemporary art by analyzing the different approaches taken and topics addressed by the movement and the artists who perceptively anticipated the current discourse concerning the media and its collective coercive power.
"A history of industrial music needed to be written. Nicolas Ballet has accomplished this. Thoroughly. This is the book's greatest strength. It explores the significance of noise as a reflection of a world in decay and screaming as a need. And doing it so it reveals a significant connection between industrial music and contemporary art. This is also what makes it an essential book: its contribution to dismantling categories and rethinking history from mixed creative territories."—David G. Torres
Nicolas Ballet is an art historian and assistant curator at the Centre Pompidou in the New Media Department. He is the author of books and articles exploring the visual and sonic contributions of countercultures and experimental artistic practices.
2025, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 22.5 x 19.2 cm
Published by
FAB Press / UK
$79.00 - In stock -
In 2012, a book debuted that would go on to canonical status and usher in a new way of writing about film. Kier-La Janisse's HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN is an autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films that examines hundreds of films through a daringly personal lens. In this pioneering work, anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and a consideration of female madness, both onscreen and off.
To mark its 10th anniversary, Kier-La Janisse and FAB Press have reteamed to produce an expanded edition the book, featuring new writing on 100 more films - many of which were inspired in part by the book itself - and hundreds of new images. This hardcover expanded edition is now available in softcover.
Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - 'the eccentric' - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play.
This sharply-designed book, including a 48-page full-colour section, is packed with 680 rare stills, posters, pressbooks and artwork throughout, that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more!
Compendium of Female Neurosis. A cross-section of horror and violent exploitation films that feature disturbed or neurotic women as primary or pivotal characters.
Alice, Sweet Alice; All the Colors of the Dark; Alucarda; Anima persa; Antichrist; Asylum; The Attic; Audition; Autopsy; The Baby; Bad Dreams; Bad Guy; Bas-fonds; Bedevilled; The Beguiled; La Belle Bête; The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; Black Narcissus; Black Swan; The Blood Spattered Bride; The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll; Born Innocent; Boy Meets Girl; The Brave One; The Bride; The Brood; Burnt Offerings; Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker; Can Go Through Skin; A Candle for the Devil; Carrie; La casa muda; Cat People; La cérémonie; Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things; Christiane F.; The Collector; The Corruption of Chris Miller; Les cousines; "Criminally Insane"; The Curse of the Cat People; Cutting Moments; Daddy; Dead Creatures; Defenceless: A Blood Symphony; Dementia; Descent; The Devil's Widow; The Devils; Diabel; Die! Die! My Darling!; The Dinner Party; Dirty Weekend; Dr. Jekyll and His Women; Don't Deliver Us from Evil; Don't Look Now; Don't Torture a Duckling; Doppelganger; Dracula's Daughter; Dream Home; The Entity; The Escapees; Eyes of a Stranger; Fatal Attraction; Feed; Five Across the Eyes; Footprints; Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion; Four Flies on Grey Velvet; Freeze Me; The Frightened Woman; Frightmare; Funeral Home; Gently Before She Dies; The Geography of Fear; The Girl Next Door; The Glass Ceiling; Goodbye Gemini; A Gun for Jennifer; Handgun; Happy Birthday to Me; Hard Candy; The Haunting (1963); The Haunting (2009); The Haunting of Julia; Haute tension; Heavenly Creatures; The Honeymoon Killers; A Horrible Way to Die; I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; Images; In My Skin; The Innocents; Inside; The Isle; Julie Darling; Kichiku; The Killer Nun; Kissed; Knife of Ice; The Ladies Club; The Last Exorcism; The Legend of Lylah Clare; The Legend of the Wolf Woman; Let's Scare Jessica to Death; A Lizard in a Woman's Skin; Love Me Deadly; The Loved Ones; Macabre; The Mad Room; Mademoiselle; Madhouse (1974); Madhouse (1981); Madness; The Mafu Cage; Man, Woman and Beast; Marnie; Martyrs; Masks; May; Misery; Morris County; Morvern Callar; Mother's Day; Ms.45; Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly; Nabi: The Butterfly; Neighbor; Neither the Sea Nor the Sand; Nekromantik; Nekromantik 2; Next of Kin; The Night Porter; A Night to Dismember; Nightbirds; Nightmares; La nuit des traquées; The Other Hell; The Other Side of the Underneath; Out of the Blue; Paranoia; Paranormal Activity; The Perfume of the Lady in Black; Persona; Phenomena; The Piano Teacher; Pigs; Play Misty for Me; Possession; Pretty Poison; Prey; Psycho Girls; The Rapture; The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!; Rebecca; Red Desert; Red Sun; Red White & Blue; The Reincarnation of Peter Proud; Repulsion; Road to Salina; Roman's Bride; Santa Sangre; Schizo; Scissors; Scream 4; Séance on a Wet Afternoon; Secret Ceremony; The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon; Shock; Singapore Sling; Sinner; Sisters (1973); Sisters (2006); Slaughter Hotel; The Snake Pit; Sombre; Spider Baby; The Stendhal Syndrome; Straight On Till Morning; Strait-Jacket; The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver; The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie; Symptoms; Szamanka; That Cold Day in the Park; They Call Her One Eye; 3 Women; To Let; Toys Are Not for Children; Trance; Trilogy of Terror; Trouble Every Day; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me; The Uninvited; Venom; Venus Drowning; The Washing Machine; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; The Whip and the Body; Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?; Windows; The Witch Who Came from the Sea; The Woman; Woman Transformation; Wound PLUS MORE THAN 100 EXTRA FILM REVIEWS EXCLUSIVE TO THIS NEW EDITION
Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, programmer, producer and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. She is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and has been an editor on numerous books including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021), Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She was a producer on David Gregory’s Tales of the Uncanny (2020) and wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021) for Severin Films, where she is a producer and editor of supplemental features. She is currently at work on several books including a monograph about Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter.
1980, Japanese / French
Softcover (w. dust jacket + lithograph + appendix), unpaginated, 25.5 x 17.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Gakutokan / Japan
$200.00 - Out of stock
Rare 1980 hand-numbered, limited edition of Pierre Molinier's Studio, an exquisite book of Molinier's fetishistic gender-bending paintings, photomontages, and drawings, with texts by André Breton, translated from French to Japanese by Kosaku Ikuta, imagery from "Molinier" (1966) film by Raymond Borde, beautifully designed and printed in Japan where Molinier's artworks had a particular resonance. This hand-numbered edition (of 970 copies) features inlayed plate to dust-jacket, added appendix booklet, and the very rare lithographic insert of Molinier's "Réveil de l'Ange" etching, just as the first copies of André Breton and Raymond Borde's book published in 1964 by Terrain Vague included (dimension: (25.2 x 16.6 cm).
Pierre Molinier (1900—1976) was a French painter, photographer and a forerunner of gender performance art and Body Art (Art corporel). Molinier spent much of his artistic life working in isolation in Bordeaux, exiled from local and national art scenes. Born in Agen, nothing had predestined Molinier to a life as an artist. Self-taught, from a working-class background, he followed in his father’s footsteps and started out as a house painter. He got married and had two children. Tired of his infidelities and provocative behaviour, his wife left their marital home an in 1950 and Molinier begun photographing himself seriously, staging his own death and erecting a fake gravestone proudly declaring himself ‘a man without morals’. He was thrown out of the Bordeaux Salon des Indépendants as early as 1951 amidst controversy over his orgiastic painting of the same year, Le Grand Combat. Stirring up an obsessive correspondence with the anarchic poet-founder of Surrealism, André Breton, Molinier was soon integrated into the Surrealist group with a solo exhibition at Breton’s Paris gallery in 1956. Molinier’s anti-moral project appealed to the group’s interest in repressed desires, fetishism, and the transgression of bourgeois morals. In 1959, he exhibited at the Exposition International du Surrealism in Paris. From the mid-1960s Molinier chronicled the exploration of his subconscious transsexual desires in "Cent Photographies Erotiques": graphically detailed images of pain and pleasure. Cut-up, reassembled, and manipulated, Molinier painstakingly created elaborate and sensual photomontages in which he assumed the roles of dominatrix and succuba previously taken by the women of his paintings. Either alone with doll-like mannequins or with female models such as German sadomasochist Hanel Koeck, Molinier, who considered himself fundamentally androgynous, appears as a transvestite, employing his body and that of his acquaintances to create visions of hybrid identity, where stockinged multi-limbed, multi-sexed beings imitate pagan figures, Hindu gods, and Masonic symbols, in a rejection of a Christian tradition which he argued, had repressed androgyny. Designed to shock, Molinier’s artwork represented a very intimate disclosure about his own sexual ambiguity, inviting the viewer to bring to the images his or her own response of excitement or disgust. The degree of his artistic perversity and blasphemous tendencies was deemed too much for the French cultural elite, and the man Breton dubbed the “magician of erotic art” was shunned from the art world. Molinier did not participate in the 1965 International Surrealist Exhibition. For the last 11 years of his life Molinier played out his own most profound moments in the 'theatre' of his Bordeaux 'boudoir – atelier'. He committed suicide in 1976, shooting himself with a pistol, something he had foreshadowed in his artwork, time and again. Essentially a leg fetishist, but also considering himself as a shaman, facetious and provocative, anti-bourgeois and anti-religious, Molinier enjoyed transgressing gender identification : his outstanding photographs greatly influenced the European and North American Body Art in the 1970s and continue to fascinate artists today.
Very Good—Near Fine copy in VG dust jacket with VG-NF lithograph and appendix.
1984, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 32 pages, 25.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Herald Ace Company / Tokyo
$35.00 - In stock -
Rare 1984 Japanese film programme published to celebrate the release of Another Country (1984), the classic British romantic historical drama film directed by Marek Kanievska, and written by Julian Mitchell, adapted from his 1981 stage play of the same name. The film, starring Rupert Everett as Guy Bennett, with Colin Firth making his feature film debut, had an enormous impact in Japan. Loosely inspired by the life of British spy and double agent Guy Burgess, the narrative follows Bennett, a student at an elite English public school in the 1930s, as he confronts the rigid expectations of the institution while grappling with his homosexuality and growing attraction to Marxist ideology.
Heavily illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with film stills, this film book features original text contributions from artist Kuniyoshi Kaneko about male romance; artist, writer, and translator Kyoko Michishita about male beauty; and many more contributions from essayist Yasuo Kurata, actor Jun Maki, Nagasawa Setsu, Kagami Mizuho Ozawa, Terumi Takano... on homo-eroticism, men's clothing, the history of Traditional Britain represented in film, plus cast and production information, etc.
Very Good copy with some light age/foxing to cover boards.
1985, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 96 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
S.C.A.S.A. / Glebe
$100.00 - In stock -
Seldom seen copy of Sydney's "Fade To Black: A Collection", published by Sydney College of the Arts Film Group, edited by Stephen Cummins, Toula Anastas, Peter Handsaker, Gretta Kool and Mary Temelovski, with cover featuring stills from editor Steve Cummins' 1984 student film "Breathbeat". Stephen Cummins (1960-1994) was an Australian filmmaker, photographer and curator who left an indelible mark on the independent queer film scene.
With bold, high-contrast b/w art direction by Gretta Kool and Mary Temelovski throughout, the magazine opens with imagery from Catherine Lowing's 1985 film about the Sydney Lesbian S&M scene, "Knife in the Head, Spooky", followed by notes and quotes on film from Straub, Landow, Eisenstein, Barthes, Hitchcock, Godard, Fellini, Lesley Stern, Adrian Martin, and many more, before the feature contents (interviews, essays, reviews, artist pages, etc), as follows: "Framing the Film Still" Ross Gibson, "All the Glitters" Robyn Outram, "Transported" - Virginia Hillyard, "Mojave Moon" - Renee Romeril, "Roadscript" - Andrew Martin, "To Render the Body Ecstatic" - Anna Rodrigo interviews Laleen Jayamanne, "Doppelganger in Blue" - Steve Cummins, "Carmen" Louise Burchill, "Where None" - Toula Anastas, "Between Kitsch and Fascism" - Interview with Dieter Schidor, "Kanahooka Day Trip" - Kate Richards, "On Movement" - an essay in screenstudy - Chris Tuckfield, "Vluku Vlk" - Ken Heyes, "Hot Minutes" - Andrew Donaldson, "Lost in Space" - Ross Harley, "The Super 8 Film Group - More than Informative" - Michael Hutak, "And the Winner is ..." Anne Zahalka, "Psychotherapy and the Cinema" - Ben Crawford, "Little Hans Rides Again (a film still)" - Kurt Brereton, "Broken Mirrors Feminist Horror" - Ruby Davies, "Why have there been no great women ventriloquists - or what are they talking about" - Shan Short, "Imitation of Life" - Mark Titmarsh, "Sorry Wong Number" - Claudia Shaw, "Two Scenes from an untitled film" Ken Orchard, "Pieces of Freedom" - Melissa Smith, "Frameup" - Karen Borger, "Android" - Rosemary Johnson, "Staring at Helene and Pete" - Debra Thorsen, "What Price Culture" - Paola Talbert. A wonderful time-capsule of the film arts and film criticism in mid-80's Oz.
Good-Very Good copy with minor spine pinches and rubbing to black card covers.
2008, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket/poster), 72 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ammo Books / New York
$80.00 - In stock -
First 2008 out-of-print edition of John Waters: Place Space, the photo book that showcases the interior world of America’s self-proclaimed “Pope of Trash”, cult film-maker John Waters and his Baltimore home.
"In John Waters: Place Space visionary designer Todd Oldham turns his incredible eye toward the beauty and wit of John Waters' quirky abode. Oldham’s exquisite photography captures elegant and humorous still lifes and portraits of America’s beloved King of Sleaze in his disarmingly sweet and kindly home in Baltimore, Maryland. As a director, John Waters has achieved legendary status with films such as the art-house sensation Pink Flamingos and the family-friendly Hairspray. His unique sensibility is evident in every corner of his home, which, as Todd says, “looks like the offspring of a warped public library and the Museum of Modern Art.”
This beautifully designed John Waters book is wrapped in a custom-designed poster for your home, and includes tear-out postcards featuring books from Waters’ shelves, like Sex on Horseback and Gay John. With inspired essays by Todd Oldham and renowned photographer Cindy Sherman, this Place Space issue is sure to delight hardcore Waters fans and newcomers alike. Like a sophisticated game of "I Spy," roaming through John Waters' overflowing bookshelves for clues to his inspiration is a true delight.
Very Good copy preserved in original poster dust jacket.
1997, English / German
Softcover, 136 pages, 25 x 19.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Verlag der Kunst / Berlin
$30.00 - In stock -
First, scarce 1997 edition of "In Media Res: Photography and Other Media Art from Berlin" a book published on the occasion of the exhibition curated by René Block and Angelika Stepken for the Istanbul Biennial in 1997. Edited by Angelika Stepken, Heinz Emigholz, and Golo Follmer, heavily illustrated in colour and b/w with accompanying texts in lingual English and German, featuring the work of: Bettina Allamoda, Dieter Appelt, Sam Auinger, Rupert Huber, Fritz Balthaus, Lothar Baumgarten, Arnold Dreyblatt, Ulrich Eller, Heinz Emigholz, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Thomas Florschuetz, Adib Fricke, Elfi Fröhlich, (e.) Twin Gabriel, Nan Goldin, Asta Gröting, Gün, BKH Gutmann, Gusztáv Hámos, Jörg Herold, Rolf Julius, Werner Klotz, Igor & Svetlana Kopistiansky, Christina Kubisch, Susanne Lauterbach, Jozef Legrand, Florian Merkel, Dörte Meyer, Robin Minard, Piotr Nathan, Olaf Nicolai, Yufen Qin, Fritz Rahmann, Martin Riches, Rivka Rinn, Eva-Maria Schön, John Schuetz, Gundula Schulze El Dowy, Katharina Sieverding, Andrea Sunder-Plassmann, Frank Thiel, Wolf Vostell, Ute Weiss-Leder, Matthias Zeininger...
Very Good copy.
1987, English / French
Softcover, 208 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Centre International D'Art Contemporain De Montréal / Montréal
$20.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition STATIONS, Les cent jours d'art contemporain de Montréal, an ambitious series of exhibitions that ran from August 1 to November 2, 1987, around the eternal inspiration of The Fourteen Stations of the Cross, the series of 14 devotions or images depicting events in Jesus Christ's last day on Earth, specifically his passion and death. Heavily illustrated with the works, texts and installations of the broad array of contemporary artists featured, including Ulay and Marina Abramovic, John Baldessari, Georg Baselitz, Louise Bourgeois, Eric Fischl, Leon Golub, Betty Goodwin, John Heward, Marcel Lemyre, Duane Michals, Joseph Felix Müller, Bruce Nauman, Arnulf Rainer, Nancy Spero, Duane Michals, Joseph Felix Müller, Bruce Nauman, Arnulf Rainer, Nancy Spero, Robert Adrian, Jocelyne Alloucherie, Daniel Buren, Michel Goulet, Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, Ron Huebner, Peter Krausz, Raimund Kummer, Serge Lemoyne, Sol Lewitt, Gerhard Merz, Guido Molinari, Hermann Pitz, Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Susan Schelle, Françoise Sullivan, Ian Wallace, Francesco Clemente, and more. Accompanying essays are in both French and English.
Good-Very Good copy.
1982, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Biennale of Sydney / Sydney
$70.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the Fourth Biennale of Sydney 1982, 7 April – 23 May 1982. Under the artistic direction of William Wright the 1982 Biennale was titled "Vision in Disbelief" and featured the work of Jörg Immendorff, Dan Graham, Brian Eno, Sue Ford, Joan Jonas, Lyndal Jones, John Baldessari, Robert Ashley, Billy Apple, Gary Hill, Fiona Hall, Philip Guston, General Idea, Bill Henson, Slave Guitars, Michael Snow, Severed Heads, Martha Rosler, Nam June Paik, Mike Parr, Tony Oursler, Davida Allen, Dale Frank, Rebecca Horn, Gareth Sansom, Lucas Samaras, Pe Kirkeby, Maria Kozik, Laughing Hands, Bertrand Lavier, Liz Magor, Anne Marsh, Markus Lupertz, William Wegman, Bill viola, Niele Toroni, Ken Unsworth, Marina Abramovic, John Ahearn, Vivienne Binns, Ian Breakwell, Georg Baselitz, Frank Auerbach, Claus Bohmler, Sydney Ball, Anti-Music, Laurie Anderson, Terry Allen, →↑→ and many more.
This catalogue includes colour and black and white examples of the work of all participating artists alongside texts and biographies.
Good copy, no spine creases, general light age, wear, tanning.
1998, Japanese
Softcover, 176 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$25.00 - Out of stock
"Puppet Animation" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, published in 1998, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Illustrated with texts in Japanese that look at the theme of animation, featuring Jiří Barta, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jan Švankmajer, Ray Harryhausen, Brothers Quay, Pingu, Kihachirō Kawamoto, The Neverhood (Klaymen Klaymen), Wallace & Gromit / Aardman Animations and many more.
Very Good copy.
1999, Japanese
Softcover, 176 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$25.00 - In stock -
"České Magické umění" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, published in 1999, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Illustrated with texts in Japanese that look at the theme of Czech Magical Art with a heavy emphasis on animation, but also puppetry, children's literature, theatre, surrealism, film, tracing the region's rich history of alchemy, mythology and fairy tales. Featuring Jiří Trnka, Karel Zeman, Břetislav Pojar, Vladimír Jiránek, Lubomír Beneš, Jiří Barta, Václav Mergl, Jan Švankmajer, Kihachirō Kawamoto, Oldřich Lipský, Petr Matásek, Jindřich Štyrský, Toyen, Noriyuki Sawa, Jiří Kolář, and many more.
Very Good copy.
1994, Japanese
Softcover, 210 pages, 15 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom Shobo / Japan
$120.00 - Out of stock
The rare inaugural issue of Too Negative (No. 1 October 1994). Now rare and highly collectible, Too Negative, the "Forbidden Picture Book", was a visceral and visually explosive glossy cult arts magazine that reflected the gory-depraved-beyond salvation-bad taste expressions visible in international subculture at the height of 1990s underground publishing, a time when art was pushing the limits of taste and morality. Edited solely by legendary Japanese publisher and gallery owner Kotaro Kobayashi and published by Tom Publication Inc. between 1994—2000, each thick, glossy volume takes on the aesthetics of a vibrant fashion magazine in the great Japanese "mook" format (the magazine book) packed cover to cover with themes of Eros and Thanatos, such as fetishism, erotica, medical/autopsy photography, death journalism, Japanese bondage, grotesque and neo-surrealist art, crime scene photography, tattooing/irezumi, piercing, and all things of the mondo, macabre, bizarro realm. Frequent collaborators and featured artists were Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Trevor Brown, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, to name a few. With a Japanese publishing lineage that may be found in earlier bounding-pushing periodicals such as the 1920s erotic grotesque magazine Hentai Shiriou (Pervert Documents), Tasuhiko Shibusawa’s incredible 1960s avant-garde journal Le Sang Et La Rose, or Fiction Inc’s SALE2 journal published from 1980—mid 1990s, Too Negative, and affiliated periodicals such as ORG, Spiral, Schizo, etc. took their subjects to another level of extremism, even by Japanese standards.
Not for the faint hearted.
This issue, Too Negative No. 1 October 1994, features the corpse/death photography of Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, fetish photography of Kiyoshi Ikejiri, Trevor Brown artwork, AIDS body theory by Keiji Nakayama, SM photography by David Pearson, Japanese big girl nude portraits by photographer Yurie Nagashima, Yasumasa Yonehara photography, hermaphrodite masterbation, antique Japanese hermaphrodite genital studies and various early medical drawings, erotic assemblage, medical/anatomy photography, you name it.
Very Good copy.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 100 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rockin' On / Tokyo
$45.00 - In stock -
H Magazine November 1996, the culture magazine published by Tokyo publishing house Rockin' On. Each issue packed to the brim with 1990's fashion, photography, film, music, and more, this issue "Border Ground" features Rita Ackerman interview, art gallery and photographs shot by Richard Kern, fashion shoots for Undercover and Hysteric Glamour, Frank Kozik gallery and interview, Pizzicato Five, Ranran Suzuki, fashion shoots by Takashi Homma, Yoshiko Seino, Kenshu Shintsubo, Kyoji Takahashi, and much more.
Good-Very Good copy with some light wear.
1994, Japanese
Softcover, 100 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Rockin' On / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
H Magazine August 1994, the culture magazine published by Tokyo publishing house Rockin' On. Each issue packed to the brim with 1990's fashion, photography, film, music, and more, this issue "Lolita 94" features "Lolita photos, Lolita idols, Lolita movies, Lolita underwear, Lolita art and more! The latest Lolita image of 1994 as determined by H" including Christina Ricci, CoCo, Megumi Okina, Shampoo, a genealogy of iconic girls in film from Lillian Gish to Winona Ryder, exclusive interview and ("Good Girls") photographic gallery of artist and Warhol friend Gerard Malanga, Echobelly, Mazzy Star, painter Marlene Dumas, Lolita shopping guide, director Russ Meyer, Undercover, photos by Hirama Itaru, Nina Schultz, Nick Fry, artist Sakuragi Sayumi, lots of manga, and much more.
Average-Good copy with some folds/light wear.
1995, Japanese
Softcover, 100 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Rockin' On / Tokyo
$45.00 - In stock -
H Magazine September 1995, the culture magazine published by Tokyo publishing house Rockin' On. Each issue packed to the brim with 1990's fashion, photography, film, music, and more, this issue "X-GIRL" with a 54-page photo feature that covers the fashion of pop idols since the breakthrough of X-GIRL, all with interviews - Kahimi Karie, Ranran Suzuki, Yoshimi (Boredoms), Liv Tyler, Maiko Yamada, all the latest from X-GIRL, "GUNS & GIRLS" photo gallery and interview with Richard Kern, WORLD TECHNO NOW! with Takkyu Ishino and Ken Ishii featuring Love Parade '95, and much more.
Good copy with some light wear to extremities.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 100 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rockin' On / Tokyo
$25.00 - In stock -
H Magazine March 1996, the culture magazine published by Tokyo publishing house Rockin' On. Each issue packed to the brim with 1990's fashion, photography, film, music, and more, this issue "Japan Import" the explosion of Japanese subcultures into the world from Hello Kitty to Hysteric Glamour to anime into London and Paris, with photo tour diaries, interviews and feature fashion shoots featuring Japanese X-GIRL Kahimi Karie photographed by Sofia Coppola, X-GIRL founder Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) and Yoshimi (Boredoms), London girls photographed in anime fashions, Araki, Romain Slocombe, manga from Junko Mizuno, Cibo Matto, Ben Lee in Tokyo, and much more.
Good-Very Good copy with some light wear.
1997, Japanese
Softcover, 100 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rockin' On / Tokyo
$20.00 - In stock -
H Magazine March 1997, the culture magazine published by Tokyo publishing house Rockin' On. Each issue packed to the brim with 1990's fashion, photography, film, music, and more, this issue "Fashion" featuring Undercover, Kosuke Tsumura, photography by Takashi Homma, Hiromix, director Hal Hartley, manga from Junko Mizuno, and much more.
Good-Very Good copy with some light wear.
2012, English
Hardcover, 128 pages, 28 x 32.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Reel Art Press / London
$90.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition, out-of-print. Hollywood was a city of extremes: not for Tinseltown the carefully judged subtleties of shot and tone that were the hallmark of the art-house auteurs. It demanded passion, thrills, suspense, violent outbursts of emotion and movement--and so for every protagonist sweeping his way across the screen with a silvery rapier or a sensuous leer, there had to be a victim, waiting to be tossed aside with contemptuous ease or devoured whole in a paroxysm of lust. And so it was that innocent maidens were pinned down by rapacious seducers; monstrous villains chained to receive their just desserts; valiant heroes manacled or trussed or viciously tied, awaiting the cruelest of tortures, physical or psychological--only to free themselves in the final reel, and carry off the equally endangered heroines to safety and starry-eyed romance. Researched and collated with typical stylish flair by editor Tony Nourmand and featuring insightful text by author Peter Doggett, Hollywood Bound is a photographic guide to the history of movie bondage.
As New copy.
1999, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 256 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$55.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1999 and now out-of-print, Joseph Cornell - Stargazing in the Cinema is the first study devoted exclusively to Cornell's relationship with the cinema, examining his "portrait-hommages" to female movies stars, including Greta Garbo, Lauren Bacall, Hedy Lamarr, and Jennifer Jones. The elusive Cornell (1903-1972) was an American visual artist and filmmaker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker. Romantic, obsessive and shy, Cornell never moved out of his mother’s house, yet his strange, exquisite art brought him fame and friendships with Duchamp, Dalí and Warhol. Jodi Hauptman here discusses the artist's "cinematic imagination" and the ways he adapted techniques of accumulation and juxtaposition to the art of portrayal, arguing that Cornell's movie star portraits are his most emblematic works. Hauptman explores the links between collection and desire, contending that Cornell is both surrealist and historian.
VG in VG dust jacket.
1995, English
Softcover, 276 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$60.00 - In stock -
From Peeping Tom to Videodrome, Mondo Cane to "shockumentaries", Faces of Death to live TV suicides.
The 1994 cult classic, in the updated and revised 1995 edition, Killing for Culture: Death Film from Mondo to Snuff by David Kerekes & David Slater, the definitive investigation into that controversial and inflammatory of all urban myths: the "snuff" movie. Including: Feature film, Mondo film, Death film, and a comprehensive filmography and index. Illustrated by rare and stunning photographs from cinema, documentary and real life, Killing for Culture is a vital book which examines and questions the human obsession with images of violence, dismemberment and death, and the way our society is coping with an increased profusion of these disturbing yet compelling images from all quarters.
Very Good copy, light wear to covers.
2025, English
Hardcover (w. dust cover), 224 pages, 28 x 20 cm
Published by
Timeless Editions / Paris
$75.00 - Out of stock
A striking new photobook by Eric Kroll, featuring rare and intimate photographs taken during the shooting of Paul Schrader's cult 1979 film—and much more beyond.
This book takes you deep into the world behind the camera: the set, the atmosphere, and the many individuals—technicians, casting director, actors and non-actors alike—who accompanied or inspired Kroll throughout the shoot.
More than a simple behind-the-scenes document, Hardcore also includes the photographer's own reflections, commentary and a recent interview he conducted with adult film actress Serena.
The book is also accompanied by a foreword from Paul Schrader and a rare text he penned in 1978 for a publishing project about the film that was never completed.
Together, these elements reveal a deeply personal and unexpectedly intimate perspective on the film and on the porn film industry at the end of the 1970s.
Eric Kroll (born 1946) is an American photojournalist, photographer famous for his fetish work, erotica historian, and book editor.
Paul Schrader (born 1946 in Grand Rapids, Michigan) is an American screenwriter (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull...) and director (American Gigolo, Mishima, First Reformed...). He has collaborated with Sydney Pollack, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg and others.
Photographs by Eric Kroll.
Texts by Paul Schrader.