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
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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.
2011, Japanese / French
Softcover (w. printed plastic jacket over reflective cover), 296 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
National Art Centre / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
First printing of this great exhibition catalogue from the National Art Centre Tokyo via Centre Pompidou Paris, on occasion of the most comprehensive Surrealist exhibition ever staged in Japan, “Le Surrealism: Exposition organisee par Le Pompidou a partir de sa Collection” at The National Art Center, Tokyo in 2011.
Housed in mirrored cover and profusely illustrated in colour with the work of André Breton, Victor Brauner, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, Andre Masson, Francis Picabia, Claude Cahun, Hans Bellmer, Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Toyen, Guilaume Apollinaire, Meret Oppenheim, Luis Buñuel, Jindrich Heisler, Andre Masson, Yves Tanguy, Alberto Giacometti, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, Giorgio de Chirico, Wilhelm Freddie, and many others, alongside comprehensive documentation of major historical Surrealist exhibitions and documents/publications.
Very Good copy.
1974, German
Softcover, 169 page, 20 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Städtisches Museum / Leverkusen
$65.00 $45.00 - In stock -
"Medium Fotografie" was published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name held at Städtisches Museum, Leverkusen, 18 May - 5 August 1973.
Foreword by Rolf Wedewer; Artists featured include Herbert Bayer, Hans Bellmer, Anton Giulio, Marcel Duchamp, Theodor Fraenkel, Hannah Höch, Layos Kalsas, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, George Mucha, Man Ray, Luigi Veronesi, Stuart Wiese, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Hamish Fulton, Christoph Kohlhöfer, Ingrid Kohlhöfer, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Johannes Theodor Baargeld, Tristan Tzara, El Lissitzky, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann, Jörg Immendorff, A.R. Penck, Edward Ruscha, Pablo Picasso,Gilbert & George, Walter de Maria, and many more. Heavily illustrated throughout, texts in German.
1979, English
Softcover, 188 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
St. Martin's Press / New York
$70.00 - Out of stock
Softcover edition of the first (only) printing of cult photobook "High School U.S.A.", Jim Richardson's intimate 1979 portrait of American adolescence at Rossville High in Rossville, Kansas.
For three years in the late 1970's, Richardson photographed and documented the life of these high school teenagers, coming back every year to vicariously live through all of the life-altering events that high school presents to these young adults. Richardson's photographs of students, teachers, and coaches at Rossville High School in Rossville, Kansas, combined with the students' own words, capture the high school experience from football season to graduation and through identity struggles and romantic involvements that files perfectly alongside Joseph Szabo's great "Almost Grown".
Good Copy throughout with decent cover wear (see picture). Light wrinkling to last few pages.
2016, English
Hardcover, 240 pages, 21.6 x 26.7 cm
Published by
University of California Press / Berkley
$110.00 $80.00 - Out of stock
The Uses of Photography examines a network of California artists whose experiments with photography during the turbulent, transitional decade of the 1970s opened the medium to a profusion of new strategies and subjects. Working within the framework of Conceptual art, these artists introduced urgent social issues and themes of everyday life into the seemingly neutral territory of photography, producing works that took on hybrid forms, from books and postcards to video and text-and-image installations.
Tracing a crucial history of photoconceptual practice, The Uses of Photography focuses on an artistic community that formed in and around the young UC San Diego, founded in 1960, and its visual arts department, founded in 1968. Artists such as Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Allan Kaprow, Martha Rosler, and Allan Sekula employed photography and its expanded forms as a means to dismantle modernist autonomy, to contest notions of photographic truth, and to engage in political critique. The work of these artists shaped emergent accounts of postmodernism in the visual arts and their influence is felt throughout the global contemporary art world today. Published in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
Edited by Jill Dawsey
Texts by Judith Rodenbeck, Benjamin Young , David Antin, and Pamela M. Lee
Artists include David Antin, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Helen Mayer Harrison, Newton Harrison, Louis Hock, Allan Kaprow, Fred Lonidier, Babette Mangolte, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Lorna Simpson, Elizabeth Sisco, Phel Steinmetz, Carrie Mae Weems.
2017, English
Softcover, 508 pages, 22 x 28.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$100.00 - Out of stock
Between 1999 and 2002, Dutch artist Willem de Rooij (born 1969) collected some 500 images cut from daily newspapers, depicting protest marches and moments of collective mourning. De Rooij’s work is multifaceted and includes in many instances the work of other artists or artefacts from historical and anthropological collections, forming temporary groupings and creating new layers of meaning. This contextual gesture or act of framing draws attention to the relationship between cultural identity and memory, collecting and display. Many of de Rooij’s recent works are reduced, almost abstract, and seemingly devoid of any explicit meaning or reference. In these installations, meaning is not produced by an object or image alone, but in the relationship between the things we see, their context and our own act of reading. Index is an inquiry into the iconography of protest - an impressive selection of global political struggles, which also invites a closer look into the mechanics of representation: how do people present themselves “in protest”? And who is making a picture of them, and for whom? The work is reminiscent of the history of image collections, such as the Mnemosyne Atlas by German art historian Aby Warburg, started in 1927. But in difference to Warburg, Index avoids to suggest historical archetypes and rather to question the classification of images that the work’s title implies. This artist's book compiles and reorganizes his original series, reproduced beautifully across over 500 pages.
Edited by Willem De Rooij, Axel Wieder, Lucy Badrocke
Willem de Rooij (b. 1969) works in a variety of media, including film and installation. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam from 1990-95 and at the Rijksakademie from 1997-98. He has been a tutor at De Ateliers in Amsterdam since 2002 and professor of fine arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main since 2006. The artist lives and works in Berlin. He worked in collaboration with Jeroen de Rijke (1970-2006) from 1994 to 2006, as de Rijke / de Rooij. Art historian Pamela M. Lee states that in their work they trace "the recursive economy of the image: its affective power, its capacity to seduce and organize perception, and its mediation of time and subjectivity." De Rooij received a Robert Fulton Fellowship at Harvard University in 2004 and represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Among other institutions, his works can be found in the collections of the Nationalgalerie in Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, at the MUMOK in Vienna, and the MoMA in New York.
2016, English
Softcover, 28 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Edition of 500
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$14.00 - Out of stock
Special edition zine reproducing a selection of Tom of Finland's reference material, published on the occasion of Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA February 24 — 26, 2017.
Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly masculine homoerotic fetish art, and his influence on late twentieth century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3500 illustrations.
Edition of 500 copies.
2019, English
Softcover (plastic dust jacket), 160 pages, 22 x 29 cm
Ed. of 400,
Published by
Revolver – Archiv für aktuelle Kunst / Frankfurt am Main
Secession / Vienna
$39.00 - In stock -
Artist's photo book by Martine Syms, published in an edition of 400 copies.
Released in conjunction with her exhibition of the same title at the Secession, BOON extends artist Martine Syms’ engagement with visual culture and the life of the image. Referencing the walls at Simpson’s Record Shop in Detroit (the subject of her exhibition at the Secession), which the owner Dorothy Simpson covered in photographs brought in by neighbours and community members, the book is composed of found photographs, many of them taken by the author’s father. The book considers the two lives of the photographs: first with the original photographer, and then with the artist, and how they form not a collection of sediments for the archive, but active, rendered thought.
The artist's book is published for the exhibition in the Secession, Vienna, April 12 - June 16, 2019
2019, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 24 x 30cm
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$96.00 - Out of stock
Hexamiles (Mont-Voisin) has been published on the occasion of Batia Suter's exhibition at the Mauvoisin Dam in Switzerland (built 2,000 meters above sea level, it is the highest dam in Europe). For this artist book, Suter focused on her ever-expanding archive of scanned landscape images, which had already started to play an important role in Parallel Encyclopedia #2 (Roma 284, 2016). Many of those images depict wastelands, alternating between romantic and menacing views which simultaneously create sensations of majesty and disorientation. By layering them over each other, a variety of disparate geological and biological environments merge into composite landscapes we might only recognise from dreams and fairy tales. In the books sequence, a kind of adventurous journey takes shape, pitched between an odyssey, a safari and paradise. The book's title is derived from the term Hexameter, a poetic form of writing used in Homer's Odyssey. Mont-Voisin, which also serves as the title for the exhibition, is inspired by different spellings used by 18th and 19th century travellers to describe Mauvoisin.
2019, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 20 x 27 cm
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$32.00 - Out of stock
As with Batia Suter’s previous projects, ‘Cloud Service’ is primarily interested in the visual dialogue that emerges with the simple act of placing images in new relations to one another. Drawing from her vast personal library of natural history reference books, encyclopaedias, and other flea market finds, Suter assembles a mix of “non-art” images, adapted and reoriented in intuitive and often profound ways. The set of appropriated images comprising this book is a monographic index of clouds and cloud-suggestive forms. Placed in the right sequence, these images resonate in new and complex ways, manipulate each other, and take on new depths of meaning with a sort of synaptic leap.
2019, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 296 pages, 17.8 x 22.9 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$85.00 $70.00 - Out of stock
The Bauhaus (1919–1933) is widely regarded as the twentieth century's most influential art, architecture, and design school, celebrated as the archetypal movement of rational modernism and famous for bringing functional and elegant design to the masses. In Haunted Bauhaus, art historian Elizabeth Otto liberates Bauhaus history, uncovering a movement that is vastly more diverse and paradoxical than previously assumed. Otto traces the surprising trajectories of the school's engagement with occult spirituality, gender fluidity, queer identities, and radical politics. The Bauhaus, she shows us, is haunted by these untold stories.
The Bauhaus is most often associated with a handful of famous artists, architects, and designers—notably Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. Otto enlarges this narrow focus by reclaiming the historically marginalized lives and accomplishments of many of the more than 1,200 Bauhaus teachers and students (the so-called Bauhäusler), arguing that they are central to our understanding of this movement. Otto reveals Bauhaus members' spiritual experimentation, expressed in double-exposed “spirit photographs” and enacted in breathing exercises and nude gymnastics; their explorations of the dark sides of masculinity and emerging female identities; the “queer hauntology” of certain Bauhaus works; and the role of radical politics on both the left and the right—during the school's Communist period, when some of the Bauhäusler put their skills to work for the revolution, and, later, into the service of the Nazis.
With Haunted Bauhaus, Otto not only expands our knowledge of a foundational movement of modern art, architecture, and design, she also provides the first sustained investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures. This is a fresh, wild ride through the Bauhaus you thought you knew.
1970, English
Hardcover (w.dust jacket), 120 pages, 17 x 11.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sperone Editore / Torino
$450.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce, wonderful early artist's book by Douglas Huebler, edited by Germano Celant and Pierluigi Pero and published in Turin by Sperone Editore, 1970.
"A fountain located in the Giardino of Sambuy, Italy, was documented by 61 photographs made according to 8 different systems in 'time'."- January 1970, Douglas Huebler
Considered a founder of Conceptual Art, Douglas Huebler's interests and influences ranged from language and mathematics to avant-garde literature and Existentialism. Having abandoned painting and sculpture by the late 1960s, he is primarily known for his work that combined short written statements (usually containing a description of a structure or system) with other materials, such as photography, drawings, and maps. Durata/Duration demonstrates Huebler's early interest in aspects of time and location.
Good-Very Good copy with light tanning/wear, fragile binding.
1987, French
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 84 pages, 26.7 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Contrejour / Paris
$380.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the very scarce and beautiful Vacances à l'Italienne by French photographer Claude Nori, published in 1987 by Contrejour, Paris.
Inspired by his travels and short trips along the Italian coastline with fellow photographer Luigi Ghirri in the late 1970's, French photographer Claude Nori decided in 1982 to record images around Italian beaches. He was interested in capturing the annual rituals of this uniquely Mediterranean passage of time, the joyful exuberance of youthful cliques seeking to experience everything life has to offer in those short few weeks during summer.
"Mothers begged me to take photos of their daughters, who asked me in turn to shoot a portrait of their boyfriends to whom they dedicated their beauty to. I imagined love stories between boys and girls who just wanted to be filmed and photographed together, between fiction and reality, lovers for a day or a summer."
This timeless collection of atmospheric photos bear the imprint of a fascinated, passionate observer and storyteller. Claude Nori succeeds masterfully in capturing that mixture of Mediterranean lifestyle and carefree holiday spirit that awakens memories and longings in us all.
B. 1949 in Toulouse to parents who emigrated from Italy, Claude Nori discovered photography during the May ’68 events at a time when he thought he would become a director. In 1974, he left Toulouse for Paris and there established Contrejour: a newspaper, an editing house, and a gallery in Montparnasse. It quickly became the spot for meetings and promotion of new forms of photography. Contrejour has been publishing artist’s books by photographers such as: Luigi Ghirri, Guy le Querrec, Bernard Plossu, Sebastiao Salgado, Pierre and Gilles, Edouard Boubat, Robert Doisneau, and Willy Ronis. In 1984, he co-founded the magazine Camera International. He is a Mediterranean photographer, par excellence. He’s given us many books, among them Vacances a l’Italienne (“Italian Holidays”) and Stromboli.
Very Good-Fine copy in original VG-Fine dust jacket.
1970, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 20 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Squarebooks / Mill Valley
$70.00 - Out of stock
First Edition of this lovely and scarce first photo book by pioneering photographer and editor Baron Wolman. Self-published in 1970 by Wolman's own Squarebooks imprint in California, Profiles comprises entirely of Wolman's elemental study in black and white of women's breasts in profile.
Baron Wolman (b. 1937) is an American photographer best known for his work in the late 1960s for the music magazine Rolling Stone, becoming the magazine's first Chief Photographer from 1967 until late 1970. After leaving Rolling Stone in 1970, Wolman started his own irreverent counterculture fashion magazine, Rags, focusing on street-style instead of big name fashion brands or trends, and emphasizing photography and art in relation to fashion. With writing that was often politically radical, the publication captured the countercultural spirit of the early 1970s underground. Despite only running for one year, it remains an influential magazine whose innovative form and content were ahead of their time.
Very Good copy, general tanning.
1980, French
Softcover, 72 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Contrejour / Paris
$120.00 - In stock -
Beautiful first French edition of Édouard Boubat's "Préférées" photo-book, published by Contrejour Paris in 1980. Entirely comprised of black and white photography of women from all over the world, taken by Boubat in his travels as a photojournalist through France, Mexico, Africa, Portugal, the USA, India, and more. A gorgeous collection, with introductory texts by photographer/publisher Claude Nori and Boubat himself.
Édouard Boubat (b. Paris, 1923–1999) was a French photojournalist and art photographer. Born in Montmartre, Paris, Boubat studied typography and graphic arts at the École Estienne and worked for a printing company before becoming a photographer. In 1943 he was subjected to service du travail obligatoire, forced labour of French people in Nazi Germany, and witnessed the horrors of World War II. He took his first photograph after the war in 1946 and was awarded the Kodak Prize the following year. He travelled the world for the French magazine Réalités, where his colleague was Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, and later worked as a freelance photographer. French poet Jacques Prévert called him a "peace correspondent" as he was humanist, apolitical and photographed uplifting subjects.
Very Good copy.
1973, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 32 x 24cm
1st US Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
George Braziller / New York
$80.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of Édouard Boubat's "Woman" photo-book, published by George Braziller, New York in 1973. Entirely comprised of black and white photography of women from all over the world, taken by Boubat in his travels as a photojournalist through France, Mexico, Africa, Portugal, the USA, India, and more. A gorgeous collection.
Édouard Boubat (b. Paris, 1923–1999) was a French photojournalist and art photographer. Born in Montmartre, Paris, Boubat studied typography and graphic arts at the École Estienne and worked for a printing company before becoming a photographer. In 1943 he was subjected to service du travail obligatoire, forced labour of French people in Nazi Germany, and witnessed the horrors of World War II. He took his first photograph after the war in 1946 and was awarded the Kodak Prize the following year. He travelled the world for the French magazine Réalités, where his colleague was Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, and later worked as a freelance photographer. French poet Jacques Prévert called him a "peace correspondent" as he was humanist, apolitical and photographed uplifting subjects.
Good copy with good dust jacket, preserved under mylar wrap. Light ex-library markings and one loose page. General light wear, bumping.
1992, Japanese
Hardcover printed box, portfolio of 24 prints, 25.5 x 36.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Nippon Geijutsu Shuppan (NGS) / Japan
$400.00 - Out of stock
Stunning and very collectible Japanese boxed-edition photographic portfolio of work by French photographer Jacques Bourboulon, published in the early 1990s by Nippon Geijutsu Shuppan (NGS) as part of their HQ Series. A collection of 24 large prints of Bourboulon's photographs capturing the beauty of his young amateur models in nature. Photographed on Bourboulon's island home of Ibiza in the 1970s-80s, a refuge for hippies, artists and other free spirits from all over the world, his photographs are a testament to the freedom and experimentation of this time, and to the beauty, and natural simplicity of the island environment itself.
Jacques Bourboulon (born 8 December 1946) is a French photographer, specializing in nude photography. In 1967 he started as a fashion photographer, publishing in Vogue and working for the fashion designers Dior, Féraud, and Carven. In the mid-1970s he sought the freedom and innocence of a natural landscape and switched to nude photography, never again to work with professional models or studios. His most famed pictures portray girls and women on the Spanish island of Ibiza, where he lived from 1976-1986, playing on the juxtaposition of blue sky, white walls, and sun-tanned skin. Bourboulon's pictures were shot with a Pentax camera and focus on bright light and sharp contrasts. His images become iconic through the pages of PHOTO magazine, Club, High Society, and calendars for Pentax and BASF. Bourboulon's photography books sold over 400,000 copies.
Very Good copy, beautifully preserved.
1969, Dutch
Hardcover, 118 pages, 17 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
De Bezige Bij / Amsterdam
$460.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first hardcover edition of Sanne Sannes' wild Sex A GoGo published in 1969 by De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam. When Sex a Gogo was published in 1969 Sanne Sannes, an legendary photographer who has been active in the 1960s, had recently been killed in a car accident at the age of 30. His wonderful Sex a Gogo book featured his signature heavy grain erotica in a unique kind of erotic-pop-sex-manual form, complete with fantastic psychedelic collaging and graphic cartoon elements. The book's montages were devised by designer Walter Steevensz who took over the project when Sannes died and it is his vision as much as the photographer's that is evidenced in this typically 1960s comedy of sexual mores. Yet however comical Sex a Gogo never allows us to forget about its erotic intentions.
The Dutch photographer Sanne Sannes (Groningen, 1937-1967) is known for his experimental black and white photographs with large film grains and fast shutter speeds. His work is full of erotic and mysterious portraits of women. Sannes was an elusive personality, just like his works, and died at the young age of 30.
Very Good copy of this very collectible book.
1998, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 72 pages, 22. 5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Iwanami Shoten / Japan
$80.00 - In stock -
#7 in the Photographers of Japan series, dedicated to Iwata Nakayama (1895–1949).
Iwata Nakayama (1895–1949) was a pioneer of Japanese avant-garde photography. For a period he set up his own studio in New York before moving to Paris where he came to know Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy. He returned to Japan in 1927 and began to work as a professional photographer in Kobe. He founded Ashiya Camera Club in 1930 with Hanaya Kanbei and other photographers in the Kobe area. In 1932, he, Yasuzō Nojima and Nobuo Ina published their monthly magazine Kōga (光画). This magazine was a critical turning point of Japanese artistic photography. 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 with light tanning to spine to original dust jacket.
1998, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 72 pages, 22. 5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Iwanami Shoten / Japan
$80.00 - In stock -
#4 in the Photographers of Japan series, dedicated to Yasuzō Nojima.
Yasuzō Nojima (1889 – 1964) is well known for his contributions to both Japanese and world photography as an artist and publisher. He was instrumental in raising photography’s status as a fine art in Japan in the 1930s, his work ranging from kaiga shugi shashin (pictorial photography) to shinkō shashin (new photography) of the early twentieth century. Nojima’s earliest works were gum-dichromate prints characterized by a density and heaviness echoing that of pictorialism, based in his subtle sensitivity. In the 1930s, his style takes a drastic turn under the influence of new trends in German photography, shifting toward daringly cropped gelatin silver prints in pursuit of a form of expression that is unique to the medium. The photography magazine Kōga (Light Pictures; 1932–33), which he co-founded with fellow photographers Nakayama Iwata (1895–1949) and Kimura Ihei (1901–1974), was principally funded by Nojima and played an extremely important role in the subsequent development of shinkō shashin by introducing theories and a new photographic aesthetic to Japan, one that concentrated on the technical and aesthetic qualities of photography in its own right rather than as an imitation of paintings, providing a much-needed outlet for a younger generation of photographers. Nojima’s later still lifes and nudes, though still soft, were striking in their simple and direct forms. He is particularly well known for his unidealized nudes of "ordinary" Japanese women executed in both pictorialist and modernist styles.
Very Good in original dust jacket.
1997, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi strip), 72 pages, 22. 5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Iwanami Shoten / Japan
$80.00 - Out of stock
#3 in the Photographers of Japan series, dedicated to Shinzō Fukuhara (1883–1948) and Rosō Fukuhara (1892–1946).
Often called the father of Japanese modern photography, Shinzo Fukuhara – a traveler, a businessman, an aesthete, a theorist, is an author of nostalgic, melancholy pictures and considered a pioneer of Japanese art photography and a true renaissance man. Trained as a scientist and pharmacologist in Japan and the U.S. (Columbia University), he was the first CEO of Shiseido Company, Ltd and a pioneer in modern cosmetic marketing and design. In 1912 he traveled to Europe visiting England, Italy, Germany and France, where he settled in Paris. There he joined a group of young Japanese artists and while there took over 2000 photographs of the city (later published as “Paris et la Seine” in 1922). In 1923 Shinzo Fukuhara published his groundbreaking book “Hikari to Sono Kaicho” (Light with its Harmony) which proposed applying the Japanese aesthetic of haiku poetry to photography. Shizo's contributions to creating and promoting photography as an art form cannot be overstated. In 1921 he and his brother Roso Fukuhara established the Shashin Geijutsu-sha, a group of art photographers dedicated to pictorialism. This group mounted exhibitions at the prestigious Shiseido Gallery and published the journal Shashin Geijutsu. His brother Roso Fukuhara was also an accomplished photographer. Despite never having his photography published, he is considered a major contributor to the Japanese pictorialist photographic tradition with his strikingly modern approach, breaking from the past to create experimental photographic juxtapositions and printing methods. In 1924 Shinzo and Roso founded the Nihon Shashin-kai (Japan Photographic Society). In his essay, “The History and Theory of Photography”, Kotaro Iizawa writing about the Fukuhara brothers wrote, “Even amid such exquisite settings as a vast field, tall mountains, or a city street, one must be in a place where the light is just right, or one does not have the material for a photograph.” These words, stated by Shinzo Fukuhara, keep alive the photos and the memories of the Fukuhara brothers even today.”
Very Good-Fine copy in original dust jacket and obi strip.
1998, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 72 pages, 22. 5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Iwanami Shoten / Japan
$80.00 - In stock -
#5 in the Photographers of Japan series, dedicated to Masataka Takayama and the Pictorialists of the Taisho Era.
Masataka Takayama (1895 - 1981) was one of the most prominent Japanese photographers in the first half of the twentieth century. As an amateur photographer in Tokyo, he published many of his works in the magazine Geijutsu Shashin Kenkyū (芸術写真研究), beginning in the 1920s. He remained an active photographer even after World War II. He was talented at pictorialist (art) photography and took many photographs using a soft focus lens and deformation and "wipe-out" techniques. Takayama usually used a "vest-pocket" Kodak camera (a very compact folding model taking 127 film) with a single-element lens (a tangyoku lens in Japanese). These cameras (and Japanese derivatives such as the Rokuoh-sha Pearlette and Minolta Vest) were popular in Japan at the time for snapshot use, and called ves-tan (ベス単, in Japanese pronunciation besutan) cameras; "ves" coming from "vest" and "tan" from tangyoku. Takayama's works are thus said to belong to the "ves-tan" (besutan) school.
Extremely active during an important and often largely ignored period of Japanese photography - that of the Taisho Era, during the reign of Emperor Taisho (1912-26). The era is considered the time of the liberal movement known as the "Taisho democracy" in Japan; it is usually distinguished from the preceding chaotic Meiji period, which gave birth to Modern Japan, and the following militarism-driven first part of the Shōwa period. The Taisho era was considered Japan's "Jazz Age" and saw the peak of the pictorialists movement and art photography.
This book in the great Photographers of Japan series looks at not only the work of Masataka Takayama, but of the leading Pictorialists of the Taisho Era.
Very Good in original dust jacket and publisher's obi-strip.
2005, English
Hardcover, 224 pages, 28.5 x 19.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Gladstone Gallery / New York
$70.00 - Out of stock
First, only hardcover edition of this now out-of-print artist's book by Prince.
"Second House is the second house that I've done over. Second House I bought. Two years ago. Its on eighty acres in Upstate New York, up behind the Catskills, in the town where I live. (...) it kind of floated in the grass. All the pictures in Second House are right around the house, in the yard, out back, across the street, next door, up the road, in the woods, on the property, not far from the house, within a mile of the house, as the crow flies. All the people in the book are neighbors, or friends from NYC who came up for a visit. All the artworks in the book are in the house now or were in the house not too long ago." (Richard Prince)
Prince's upstate New York Second House makes a home, literally, for the increasingly physical work of an artist once best known for his studio photographs of magazines. The Second House documents his ranch-style gallery, the long grass around it, and the 1973 Plymouth Barracuda parked in the yard, and commemorates the Guggenheim's purchase of the site, which they pledge to open to the public for ten years. This artist's book was published for an exhibition at Gladstone Gallery, New York (April 30 - June 18, 2005).
Fine copy.
1958, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 174 pages, 28 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The Ridge Press / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
Hardcover first edition of "The Private World of Pablo Picasso", published by The Ridge Press, New York, in 1958. The greatest photo book on the intimate life of Picasso, by David Douglas Duncan. "From the moment they met—Picasso was in the bathtub—David Douglas Duncan began recording the story. Picasso clowning with children, working late into the night, bringing out of his closets forgotten works painted 60 years before. Duncan, the great photographer, author of This Is War, master of adventure, watched—and recorded more than 10,000 photographs, taken every waking moment of the day and night. Over 300 of the best are here. A human document, a living art show—with the viewer as the privileged private audience."
Good copy in Good dust jacket. Scarcer in the hardcover format. Some wear, edge tanning and age spotting to hard cover.
1995, Japanese
Softcover, 66 pages, 18 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Dela Corporation Inc. / Tokyo
$50.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce Japanese photo book for the film "Je t'aime moi non plus", a feature film written, directed, and musically scored in 1976 by Serge Gainsbourg, starring Jane Birkin, Hugues Quester and Joe Dallesandro, and featuring a cameo by Gérard Depardieu. Published in 1995 to accompany a small travelling Japanese exhibition of photographs from the film, this booklet reproduces many iconic images from the film in black and white and colour, alongside cast biographies, filmography, chronology, behind the scenes photographs, and much more.
Fine, almost As New copy, only some tanning to gloss edges.