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:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
Theory / Essay
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Australian Art
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Fluxus
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Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
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Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
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Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 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.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, 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.
2000, English
Softcover, 500 pages, 21.5 x 15.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$100.00 - Out of stock
Purple 5 Summer '00
fashion, prose, special fiction, interior
A rare early issue of the iconic Purple magazine, edited by Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm, this wonderful early edition features work by: General Idea (feature section), Mark Borthwick, Lewis Baltz, Lars Bang Larsen, Wolfgang Tillmans, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Comme des Garçons, Michelle Grabner, Bless, Yohji Yamamoto, Dike Blair, Bernhard Willhelm, Gilles Deleuze, Karl Holmqvist, David Grubbs, Glenn O'Brian, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Bob Nickas, Terry Richardson, Anders Edstrom, Sergio Guillen, Camille Vivier, Tan Lin, Olivier Zahm, Armin Linke, Amy Yao, Elein Fleiss, Henry Roy, Torbjorn Rodland, Chikashi Suzuki, Michael Smith, Lionel Bovier, Amy Sillman, Cerith Wyn Evans, Rosemarie Trockel, Daniel Pflumm, Raf Simons, Jack Goldstein, Allen Rupperberg, Blake Rayne, Stephen Prina, Sture Johannesson, Franz Ackermann, Adrea Zittel, Jeremy Deller, Miu Miu, Dorothee Perret, Gaspard Yurkievich, Stanley Brouwn, Vija Celmins, Bas Jan Ader, Richard Prince, Tim Griffin, and many many more.
In 1992 Olivier Zahm and his partner Elein Fleiss printed the first issue of Purple Prose, a Parisian literary art zine that over the years has evolved into Purple Fashion Magazine and Purple. Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm and Fleiss created spin-off publications like les cahiers purple, Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction, and of course, Purple Fashion. Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art, in creating Purple.
Very Good, light wear.
1976, English
Softcover, 106 pages, 27.5 x 23.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Morgan & Morgan / New York
$80.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful mid-1970s tribute to the "feminine mystique". First published in 1975, Women and Other Visions is a collaboration between the a San Francisco-based wife and husband team, Judy Dater and Jack Welpott, who have been working together as photographers since the mid‐1960's. A beautiful and provocative collection of portraiture of women of all walks of life. Additional text by Jack Welpott. Essay by photographer Henry Holmes Smith.
Very Good copy.
1982, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 30 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Byakuya Shobo / Tokyo
$650.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this scarce cult photobook by Japanese photographer Keizo Kitajima, published by Byakuya Shobo in 1982. Drawn to the land which had dramatically changed the Japanese way of life since the war, Keizo Kitajima spent a period of six months wandering the streets of New York City. Here he met with the people whom embodied the very decadence which symbolised 80s New York. From the night clubs, parks, beaches and alleyways, Kitajima's New York brilliantly captures a portrait of a city defined through the experiences of the many individuals and events, encountered throughout his journey, full of energy, decadence and moments of quiet desperation. 140 photographs. Text by Kazuo Nishii in Japanese, interview with Kitajima by Akira Suei in English. Design by Kazu Yamazaki.
For this photo book Kitajima received the important Kimura Ihei Award in 1983.
Kitajima Keizo (b .1954, Suzaka, Nagano) is a leading figure in the rise of Japanese photography in the 1970s and 1980s, first coming to be known for his grainy black-and-white shots of people on the streets of Tokyo, at an American military base in Okinawa after the end of the Vietnam War, and in New York. Daido Moriyama, with whom Kitajima first studied photography, praised his talent as a gifted snapshooter by calling him ‘a street killer in broad daylight.’ Kitajima’s image Shop CAMP, set up in the bustling Shinjuku area in 1976 in collaboration with Moriyama, was a pioneering experimental space for photographers before the gallery system was established. In his legendary experimental series Photo Express (1979), Kitajima photographed people at bars and on the streets in Shinjuku at night right outside the CAMP, converted the gallery into a darkroom to make wallsized prints as a public performance event, and even published the images as an instant booklet. Through these processes of delivering images immediately, the artist explored the ways that time affects photography in terms of documentation, record and memory. Kitajima spent six months in New York roaming its gritty streets and hanging out in its clubs, resulting in the book New York (1982) . He presents a vision of the 1980s New York, full of energy, decadence and moments of quiet desperation. Like the city the publication is full of stark juxtapositions, flamboyant displays of outrageous behaviour are shown next to pictures of desolation and dejection. For this photo book Kitajima received the important Kimura Ihei Award in 1983. Kitajima’s work has been shown in many Japanese and international exhibitions and his publications are popular among collectors of photo books and the importance of his work has been recognised by numerous Japanese photographic awards.
Very Good copy with dust jacket.
1995 & 1999, English / Japanese
Softcover, 100 pages, 21 x 30 cm / Softcover, 112 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$250.00 - Out of stock
The scarce first editions of both volumes of the Special Editions of STREET - here is the first printing of both Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 of this great visual archive, designed, edited and published by Street magazine with Maison Martin Margiela!
In 1995, Tokyo-based Street magazine approached the Paris fashion house of Martin Margiela with an invitation to publish a special edition dedicated to its work. Maison Martin Margiela guest-edited the magazine, and was solely responsible for the selection of images and presentation, which includes many previously unpublished photographs from its archives. The success of the first volume led to the publication of a second instalment in 1999, and together the two special issues cover every Martin Margiela collection from Spring/Summer 1989 through to Spring/Summer 1999, including heavy visual documentation of the presentations, events, studio, ephemera, behind the scenes, garment details, and much more.
In 1999, Maison Martin Margiela himself collected together both long sold out volumes into one now collectable book. After quickly selling out itself, it was made available once more in 2013 by Street Editorial Office, that is now also out of print.
Please note that these are the very first editions of both issues, distributed exclusively in Japan by Street Editorial Office Tokyo, before being re-printed as a single book. Vol. 1 was published in 1995 and Vol. 2 in 1999. Handsomely kept copies, both complete with their "1" and "2" flyleaf inserts, which were printed to possibly adorn the cover when on display.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 48 pages, 26.5 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Comstock / Japan
$70.00 - Out of stock
Scarce Japanese movie program book for Jean-Luc Godard's 1968 film "One Plus One" (Sympathy for the Devil), published exclusively in Japan by Comstock in the mid-1990s. Reproduces many amazing full-bleed stills from the film in colour and black and white, behind the scenes photos, texts by famed Japanese music critic Mike M. Koshitani, spreads of "Mike's Stones' Collection" (Mr. Koshitani's collection of Rolling Stones related newspapers and magazines from the period), cast biographies, Godard filmography, Stones discography, and more.
After May 1968, French film director Jean-Luc Godard moved to London to film the Rolling Stones recording “Sympathy for the Devil.” In Sympathy for the Devil, Godard juxtaposed the Rolling Stones rehearsing with seemingly unrelated scenes with a soundtrack featuring, among others, the Black Panthers. The film showed the Stones at work, deconstructing the myth of the genius creator.
Fine, almost As New copy.
2001, Japanese
Softcover, 66 pages, 29.7 × 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
? / Japan
$60.00 - Out of stock
Very rare Japanese movie program of Jean-Luc Godard's "Bande à part" (Band of Outsiders, 1964), published in 2001 and exclusively distributed in Japan. For a movie program this title feels more like a book, rich with black and white photographs from the film and texts in Japanese.
"Four years after Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard reimagined the gangster film even more radically with Band of Outsiders (Bande à part). In it, two restless young men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) enlist the object of both of their fancies (Anna Karina) to help them commit a robbery—in her own home. This audacious and wildly entertaining French New Wave gem is at once sentimental and insouciant, effervescently romantic and melancholy, and it features some of Godard’s most memorable set pieces, including the headlong race through the Louvre and the unshakably cool Madison dance sequence."
Very Good copy.
1977, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 340 pages, 28.5 X 34 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / good
$160.00 - Out of stock
First English edition of the one and only, monumental Fellini photo book.
Published in Paris in 1977, this beautifully produced, heavy 340-page hardcover volume visually captures the exquisite vision of Italian film director and screenwriter, Federico Fellini, through four hundred memorable photographic stills (colour and black and white) from his fifteen and a half films, including La Dolce Vita (1960), 8½ (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Fellini's Satyricon (1969), Amarcord (1973), Fellini's Casanova (1976), and many more. Every major Fellini film is documented in these pages of lush images, accompanied by full cast listings, production details, and summaries and forwards written by Georges Simenon.
A must for any Fellini fan.
Good copy. Would be VG as it has been preserved like new, but some old storage moisture had fused a few pages together that have left small tears when separated, only very bad on one spread. Majority of book is perfect. Photos on request.
1990, English
Softcover (french-folds and obi), 34 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Terrazzo / Milan
$150.00 - Out of stock
TERRAZZO was a very special biannual publication on architecture and design, edited and published between 1988–1995 by Barbara Radice, a prominent Italian author, design critic and member of the Memphis Milano design group. In conjunction with Ettore Sottsass, Christoph Radl, Anna Wagner and Santi Caleca, Radice created a unique and thoughtful periodical that focused on contemporary works of design and architecture, within Italy and abroad, touching on a vast array of disciplines in each issue, including literature, poetry, history, science, philosophy, art and anthropology. Like no other magazine.
TERRAZZO 5 Fall 1990 features : DOLCE STIL NUOVO by Andrea Branzi, TOYO ITO
Let it breathe by Toyo Ito, JOSH SCHWEITZER interview by Viola Marquez, ITALIAN RADICAL ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN 1966 - 1973 by Emilio Ambasz (ARCHIZOOM - 9999 - GIANNI PETTENA - ETTORE SOTTSASS ― SUPERSTUDIO - UFO - ZZIGGURAT)
Good copy with light moisture waving to the top right corner towards back of publication with marking visible on the final pages. Light tanning, light wear, common partial glue separation from cover, otherwise really nice copy with original obi.
2018, English
Hardcover, 112 pages, 22.5 x 24.5 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts / San Francisco
ICA / Pennsylvania
$76.00 $30.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Anthony Elms, Josephine Pryde, Jamie Stevens
lapses in Thinking By the person i Am presents documentation and texts from Josephine Pyde’s eponymous exhibition shown at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, and Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. In this body of work, Pryde combines a series of color photographs of hands touching objects with a scale-model freight train and track, replete with miniaturized graffiti, that took visitors in a short ride through the exhibition. Through photography and sculpture, Pryde pays close attention to the nature of image making and the conditions display, subtly reworking codes and conventions to alter our cultural perception and understanding of each. In this book, “The Individual,” an essay by Pryde originally published in the journal Texte zur Kunst, is followed by an essay from CCA Wattis exhibition curator Jamie Stevens and a conversation between Pryde and ICA curator Anthony Elms.
Copublished with CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; and Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania
Design by Clemens Jahn
1984, Japanese
Softcover, 224 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Night Vision / Japan
$55.00 - Out of stock
First 1984 edition of cult Japanese underground magazine Night Vision, a special edition dedicated to Surrealism. Packed with content, including many important Surrealist texts translated to Japanese, this heavily illustrated book includes features on Hans Bellmer and Unica Zürn, Yves Tanguy, Remedios Varo, Max Ernst, Belgian Surrealism, female Surrealist artists and poets (Remedios Varo, Mimi Parent, Valentine Penrose, Gisèle Prassinos, Dorothea Tanning, Bona de Mandiargues, Isabelle Walberg, Lise Deharme, Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, Aube Elléouët, Jane Graverol, Nelly Kaplan (Belen), Joyce Mansour, Nora Mitrani, Unica Zürn, Valentine Hugo, Marianne Van Hirtum, Leonora Fini, Marie-Laure de Noailles, Kay Sage, Toyen, Annie Le Brun, Meret Oppenheim), Latin American Surrealism and Frida Kahlo-Diego Rivera, Surrealist literature and activities (Artaud, Picabia, Apollinaire, Bataille, Duchamp, Satie, Breton, etc.) plus much more, text contributions by Georges Bataille, Paul Eluard, Midori Wakakuwa, Kuniharu Akiyama, Takashi Tanyuya, Shigeo Goto, Takahiko Okada, Octavio Paz, André Breton, Kunio Iwaya, Gonzalo Cerorio, Yuichi Konno, Satoshi Takamura, and much more. Illustrated in b/w throughout (with many more artists than mentioned above) in that great Night Vision semi-fanzine/cheap reader quality.
Very Good - Fine copy.
2021, English
Hardcover, 424 pages w. 16 page insert, 15.4 x 23 cm
Published by
Perimeter Editions / Melbourne
$59.00 - Out of stock
Installation View offers a significant new account of photography in Australia, told through its most important exhibitions and modes of collection and display. From colonial records to contemporary art, the book presents a chronology of rarely seen installation views from both well-known and forgotten exhibitions, along with a series of essays that tell the story of the individuals and institutions that have proved intrinsic to the public circulation of photographs. At once specific and widely contextual in its scope, this longterm research project from two of Australia’s leading academics and educators in the field enriches our understanding of the diversity of Australian photography by looking at what lies beyond the frame. Installation View speaks not only to pictures, but to the people and the places that nurture them.
2021, English
Hardcover, 416 pages, 25 x 25 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$80.00 - Out of stock
An opulent artist’s book of Tillmans’ photographic abstractions. Though he is best known for his portraiture and observational depictions, German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans (born 1968) has simultaneously created abstract photography over the past 30 years. Dubbed his Silver works, these photographs expand the boundaries of photographic processes, taking what others might call accidents in the photo development process—like stains from trace chemicals and the titular silver nitrate—and using them in a deliberate compositional manner. The result is a series of images that Tillmans describes as “stained, impure, bright, [and] unstable.”
In this artist’s book, Tillmans’ Silver works are brought together for the first time. In addition to high-quality reproductions of the works themselves, Saturated Light includes photographic documentation of the pieces in exhibition settings and as elements of installations.
An essay by art theorist Tom Holert discusses the philosophical, aesthetic, and material questions that Tillmans’s Silver pose on the one hand, while on the other hand the thought-provoking pictorial process itself sets in the room. A conversation between the artist and photo engineer Klaus Pollmeier delves into the innumerable photo-technical details, observations, and intentional as well as unintentional accidents that are at work in the photographs.
1991, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 112 pages, 28.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Brutus / Tokyo
$40.00 - Out of stock
1991 special issue of Tokyo's legendary Brutus magazine (issue no. 256), "The Age of Breasts"! Features a roundtable discussion on "tits" with members of the Japanese Transgender community, photo features of Oniroku Dan ("the most celebrated writer of popular SM novels in Japan"), Japanese actress Miyuki Komatsu, American glamour photographer Ken Marcus (Penthouse, etc.), endless confusing illustrated articles on breasts, breasts in art, in cinema, in literature, in industrial design, in architecture .... naked actresses — Isabella Rossellini, Corinne Cléry, Isabelle Adjani, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Valérie Kaprisky, Carole Bouquet, Jane Birkin, Sophie Marceau, Dominique Sanda, Catherine Deneuve, Jodie Foster, Brigitte Bardot, Nastassja Kinski (who also features on the cover), and all the usual Brutus reports on cultural happenings of the day, Versace, Einstürzende Neubauten, that sort of thing.
Very Good copy.
1987, Japanese
Hardcover (with heavy printed slipcase),
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Nippon Geijutsu Shuppan (NGS) / Japan
$200.00 - In stock -
Deluxe, slipcased hardcover first edition of this stunning, compendium of photographs from Japanese and international photographers, published by Nippon Geijutsu Shuppan in 1987. This lavishly illustrated, heavy book collects the award-winning selection from a call-out to both leading professional photographers and amateurs alike on the subject of "Girl". Heavily orientated toward the nude, from the stylish, the subdued, the abstract, the erotic, one thing this diverse collection of photographs has in common is how wonderfully they capture the sensabilities of the 1980s through the chosen subject. Features the work of Hajime Sawatari, Nobuyoshi Araki, Cynthia Macadams, Jacques Bourboulon, Takeji Iwamiya, Shinpei Asai, Irina Ionesco, Hiromi Tsuchida, Masaaki Nakagawa, Mario Marnoto, Otto R. Weisser, Franco Fontana, Diminik Alterio, Shōji Ōtake, Daiho Yoshida, Daniel Barreau, Shōtarō Akiyama, Jean Yves Gougaud, Nobutsugu Sugiyama, Guido Mangold, Burt Bunger, Francis Giacobetti, Jacques Alexandre, Jean-Jacques Dicker, Ikkō Narahara, Yoji Ishikawa, Akira Satō, Takamasa Inamura, Hogara Iketani, and so many more.
Very Good, beautifully preserved copy.
1998, Japanese
Softcover, 112 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ashiya City Museum of Art and History / Ashiya
$180.00 - Out of stock
Gorgeous rare Japanese book on the The Ashiya Camera Club (ACC), produced in conjunction with a major exhibition held at the Ashiya City Museum of Art in 1998, now long out-of-print. Profusely illustrated throughout with fine examples from all members of the ACC, plus detailed biographies, history and chronology (in Japanese), including rarely seen exhibition installation documentation. A stunning book.
The Ashiya Camera Club (ACC) was founded in 1930 by Iwata Nakayama, Kanbei Hanaya and other local amateur photographers from the Ashiya area near Kobe, Japan. Other members included Seiji Korai, Yoshinosuke Kotani, Kiyoji Goryeo, Kichinosuke Benitani, Kenichiro Yamakawa, Juzo Matsubara, and Shigezo Matsubara. The members of the ACC practised various design concepts that were perceived as being too radical at the time within the Japanese photo community. They experimented with various photographic techniques already occurring in the West such as Dadaist photomontage, photograms and abstract compositions, but did so with a uniquely Japanese form of expression. From 1930 to 1942 the members of the ACC were some of the most influential modernist photographers in Japan practicing radical design concepts they labeled “Shinko Shashin” or new photography movement.
Very Good, perfectly preserved copy.
1981, Japanese
Hardcover (in foil-printed cardboard slipcase) 31 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Asahi Shimbun / Japan
$160.00 - Out of stock
Exquisite and scarce Japanese volume on the (mostly) photographic work of Man Ray, published in 1981 by Asahi Shimbun. Issued only in Japan in hardcover form, wrapped in a foil-stamped/printed black cardboard sleeve, this beautifully designed book features 165 stunningly gravure reproduced images honest to the original photographic works of Man Ray, including his abstract work, portraits, photographs of fellow artists, artworks, studios and living spaces (including many collaborations with Marcel Duchamp). Many of these photographs are rarely documented in other Man Ray publications. Text is entirely in Japanese, although there is very little of it as this is primarily a photo book, and one of the most beautiful on the work of Man Ray.
Very Good in Good slipcase with some wear.
1999, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 108 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Korinsha Press & Co / Kyoto
$180.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce first edition, first printing of this wonderful photo book by Daido Moriyama, published in Kyoto in 1999. Contrary to the title's implication, Visions of Japan actually features Moriyama's photographs of Paris, its streets, shop windows and advertising, all presented through the artist's singular lens. Unquestionably Moriyama, unquestionably Paris. Text (in Japanese) by Toshiharu Ito. Includes a biography, exhibition history and illustrated bibliography (in Japanese). A lovely book from a series of monographs dedicated to Japanese masters of photography.
Daidō Moriyama (b. 1938) is an award winning, internationally acclaimed Japanese photographer. Born in Ikeda, Osaka, Moriyama studied photography under Takeji Iwamiya, before moving to Tokyo in 1961 to work as an assistant to the photographer Eikoh Hosoe. He produced a collection of photographs, Nippon gekijō shashinchō, which showed the darker sides of urban life and the less-seen parts of cities. In them, he attempted to show how life in certain areas was being left behind in the wake of industrialised Japan. Moriyama's style is synonymous with that of Provoke magazine, which he was involved with in 1969, namely 'are, bure, bokeh', translated as 'grainy / rough, blurry, and out-of-focus'. Known mostly for his work in black and white, his images often use high contrast and tilted horizons to convey the fragmentary nature of modern life. Since 1968, he has published more than 150 photo books. He received the Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement from the International Center of Photography in New York in 2004 and the Hasselblad Award in 2019.
Long out of print. Very Good copy with original dust jacket and obi strip.
1973, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 18 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Books / Melbourne
$80.00 - Out of stock
First printing from 1973 of this photo-book dedicated entirely to the streets of the suburb of Carlton, Melbourne, by Australian photographer Les Gray (1920 - 2013). With an introduction by poet Garrie Hutchison (b. 1949) titled "Canning Street, Carlton, August 1973", this handsome little landscape album of snapshots captures the people, terraces, and shopfronts of early 1970s Drummond, Rathdowne, Cardigan, Faraday, Lygon, Gratton, Station, Canning, and Elgin streets. Published by Sun Books.
Very Good copy.
2000, English
Softcover, 228 pages, 178 x 229 cm
Published by
October Books / New York
$60.00 - Out of stock
Since the 1970s Rosalind Krauss has been exploring the art of painters, sculptors, and photographers, examining the intersection of these artists' concerns with the major currents of postwar visual culture. These essays on nine women artists are framed by the question, born of feminism, "What evaluative criteria can be applied to women's art?" In the case of surrealism, in particular, some have claimed that surrealist women artists must either redraw the lines of their practice or participate in the movement's misogyny. Krauss resists that claim, for these "bachelors" are artists whose expressive strategies challenge the very ideals of unity and mastery identified with masculinist aesthetics. Some of this work (such as that of Louise Bourgeois or Cindy Sherman) could be said to find its power in strategies associated with such concepts as écriture feminine. Bachelors attempts to do justice to these and other artists (Claude Cahun, Dora Maar, Louise Lawler, Francesca Woodman) in the terms their works demand.
Rosalind E. Krauss, University Professor at Columbia University and an editor and cofounder of October magazine, is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985), The Optical Unconscious (1993), The Picasso Papers (1999), and Bachelors (1999), all published by the MIT Press, and coauthor (with Yve-Alain Bois) of Formless: A User's Guide (Zone Books, 1997).
"[S]timulating, difficult, and often dazzling...Bachelors is a smart and often profound book that makes avaluable contribution to the gendered field it abhors." Carol Zemel, Women's Review of Books.
Contents: By way of introduction, Claude Cahun and Dora Maar; portrait of the artist as "fillette", Louise Bourgeois; the "cloud", Agnes Martin; contingent, Eva Hesse; untitled, Cindy Sherman; problem sets, Francesca Woodman; bachelors, Sherrie Levine; souvenir memories, Louise Lawler.
1987, Japanese
Softcover, 36 pages, 22 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$55.00 - Out of stock
Very early 1987 issue of the iconic STREET magazine from Japan. No. 9 April 1987 shot in London.
Every issue of STREET is entirely comprised of photographs by legendary Japanese street style photographer Shoichi Aoki. Aoki, a wallflower of the most fashionable events, districts and gatherings, is celebrated for turning his camera away from the stage and into the crowd, documenting the incredible, fleeting outfits of the people in the markets, the streets, the catwalk audience, the after parties, amongst which are many familiar designers, models, editors, musicians, artists, and who knows who?... Aoki's Street (and later also Fruits) are essential style goldmines, creating valuable photographic documents of the times like no other magazine. A timeless reference.
Very Good copy, lightest of wear.
1990, Japanese
Softcover, 36 pages, 22 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$55.00 - Out of stock
1990 issue of the iconic STREET magazine from Japan. No. 26 February 1990, shot in London.
Every issue of STREET is entirely comprised of photographs by legendary Japanese street style photographer Shoichi Aoki. Aoki, a wallflower of the most fashionable events, districts and gatherings, is celebrated for turning his camera away from the stage and into the crowd, documenting the incredible, fleeting outfits of the people in the markets, the streets, the catwalk audience, the after parties, amongst which are many familiar designers, models, editors, musicians, artists, and who knows who?... Aoki's Street (and later also Fruits) are essential style goldmines, creating valuable photographic documents of the times like no other magazine. A timeless reference.
Very Good copy, lightest of wear.
2020, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 14.8 × 21 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
K.M Kunstverein / Munich
$25.00 - Out of stock
This is a reprint of Pati Hill’s 1979 book published on occasion of her first posthumous solo exhibition, Something other than either, at Kunstverein München on view from March through August 2020. The book is composed of images and texts by Hill through which she intended to contextualize and explain her working methodology to Jill Kornblee, her New York gallerist. Untrained as an artist, Pati Hill began to use the photocopier as an artistic tool in the early 1970s, leaving behind an extensive oeuvre that oscillates between image and text. Besides this comprehensive body of xerographic work, she published four novels, a memoir, several short stories, wrote poetry, and made drawings. Instead of an exhibition catalog that would offer an interpretation of her work, this publication provides space for Hill’s own writing that interrogates and accompanies her visual work.
2020, English
Hardcover box (2 vols), 224 pages, 27.9 x 20.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Atelier Editions / Los Angeles
$200.00 - Out of stock
Sealed copy of this incredible, now out-of-print book, foraging for mushrooms with John Cage: writing, art, photography and ephemera from an idiosyncratic chapter in the composer's life.
Imagined as an extended mushroom-foraging expedition, John Cage: A Mycological Foray gathers together Cage’s mushroom-themed compositions, photographs, illustrations and ephemera. Indeterminacy Stories and other writings by Cage are interwoven throughout the first volume within a central essay examining Cage’s enduring relationship with mycology. Also included is a transcript of Cage’s 1983 performance, MUSHROOMS et Variationes. The second volume is the inaugural reproduction of Cage’s 1972 portfolio, Mushroom Book, authored in collaboration with illustrator Lois Long and botanist Alexander H. Smith. Readers are thus drawn through the landscape of Cage’s mycologically centred oeuvre and interests, discovering assorted works, images, compositions, philosophies and ephemera, as one might encounter assorted fungi and flora while foraging.
2017, English
Softcover, 392 pages, 21 x 28 cm
Published by
Onomatopee / Eindhoven
$60.00 - Out of stock
Dictionary Dressings is an ongoing research project by Femke de Vries that uses the nature of the dictionary definition as a "zero condition" for a piece of clothing to decode clothes and explore an alternative fashion vocabulary. Dictionary definitions are constructed to be factual and rational and as a consequence the entries for items of clothing show no reference to the ephemeral or immaterial character of fashion. They describe the characteristics of the items, their use and their relation to the body but never mention fashion or style. Take the Dutch definition of a glove for example: “Handschoen: bekleding van de hand” (literally translated into English as "Glove: covering of the hand"). Since a hand can be covered by putting it in a pocket, by bandaging it or by sitting on it, the definition allows a pair of trousers or a bandage to be interpreted as a glove – they cover the hand and so adhere to the definition. It is exactly this particular nature of the definitions of clothing that forms the foundation and very structure of Dictionary Dressings as a research project and an emerging design approach.
Designed by Hans Gremmen (of Fw:Books) and featuring Barbara Brownie, BLESS, Conny Groenewegen, Elisa van Joolen, Joke Robaard, Ruby Hoette and Students from the HKU (University of the Arts Utrecht) 2015–16.