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
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
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.
2014, English
Softcover, 372 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$160.00 - Out of stock
In the 1970s, Christopher Williams emerged as a key figure in the first wave of American West Coast conceptual artists, which included John Baldessari and Douglas Huebler.
Williams' work is a critical investigation of the medium of photography and more broadly the vicissitudes of industrial culture, in particular its structures of representation and classification. Using the process of reproduction as a point of entry, he manipulates the conventions of advertising, the superficiality of surface, and ultimately the history of Modernism.
This unique artist’s book is available in three editions, each with different ISBNs and different colour covers: red, yellow and green. It reproduces a carefully curated selection of the artist’s painstakingly constructed photographs and features striking graphic design in the near-complete absence of language, with no essay, captions, or even a title page. With the exception of differing cover photographs, the content of each edition is identical.
Published to coincide with Williams’ first major survey exhibition, The Production Line of Happiness at The Art Institute of Chicago, and then at The Museum of Modern Art, New York – both in 2014. The exhibition travels to Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2015.
YELLOW edition. All editions are out-of-print.
2019, English
Softcover (cloth-covered), 20 x 17 cm
Published by
MACK / London
$52.00 - Out of stock
Throughout her prolific career, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg has led the way in documenting man-made environments on the cusp of change and transition. The sites she visited were often remote and difficult to access. In 1996 and 1997 she traveled to Armenia and with a small portable camera made visual notes of remnants of Soviet architecture during her walks through the capital city of Yerevan. She developed the films on her return to Germany and in 2001 she edited and compiled the prints into a traditional notebook used in Armenian schools which she had bought back from one of her trips. This hand-made sketchbook was then dedicated to her daughter, Julia, who was studying architecture at the time. This publication is a facsimile of the original sketchbook, an artist’s book work embedded with the history of the cultural artefacts long-since disassembled and the actions of the artist in walking through time and space, documenting and compiling the material.
1979, English
Softcover, 78 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Glad Hag Books / Washington
$120.00 - Out of stock
Audre Lorde states: "As we need to share our words for power, so also do we need to share the contours of our faces, and the visual shapes of our loving and of our lives. The splendid vitality captured within Eye to Eye makes this possible."
First edition of this remarkable and very scarce photobook from 1979. Photographs by JEB (Joan E. Biren) with a foreword by Joan Nestle, and an introduction by Judith Schwarz. A beautiful collection of intimate photographs collected alongside quotes from some of the subjects, poetry and prose. The book is prefaced with a fantastic and valuable overview of the herstory of women, particularly lesbian women, as photographers.
"JEB's photographs form a mosaic of Lesbian strength, of our strivings to remake our outer and inner worlds. Lesbian strength is not a simple subject, it is a mix of gentleness and power, play and combat, self-cherishing and communal commitment. It is a strength based not on the conquering of a weaker adversary, but on the refusal to be less than who we are. lt is a strength nourished by our rejection of one world and the joyous, glorious and difficult dedication to the creation of another. [...] These photographs celebrate both our physical transformations and our emotional wisdom. They give us a visual record of our passages. JEB sees to the heart of us. in her portraits, we can recognize our power, our endurance and our energy. Years ago when we were a more hidden people, we used eye searching to find each other, we dared to look longer than we should and, through this brave journeying of our eyes, we found one another. lt was a secret language that gave permission for a secret act. But always glowing beneath the secrecy was the force of our spirit. Now we are a visually emerging people and we must be so, for we cannot survive visual silence just as we cannot survive the silencing of our voices. Our spirit is secret no longer. Gone are the half-glance and the lowered lid, here we see each other eye to eye." - from foreword by Joan Nestle (Lesbian Herstory Archives)
Joan E. Biren or JEB (b. 1944), is an internationally recognized documentary artist. Her photographic and film work has chronicled the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people for more than 30 years, bringing them a new visibility.
Good copy of the rare first (red cover) edition, with cover wear and some bumping/cracking to spine, very good internally. Small stamp and dedication on title page.
2010, English / German
Hardcover, 160 pages, 170 x 240 mm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$79.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Text by Dominic Eichler A conversation with the artist by Giovanni Carmine and Kathleen Rahn “As soon as I see a male nude sculpture made between 1500 and 1700, I can’t help but chop its top off at thigh, calf, or foot-height.” Downscaled and Overthrown is the first monograph on the work of the Swiss artist Shahryar Nashat (*1975). Whether he truncates Renaissance bronze sculptures through photography, or redesigns a section of the Louvre to accommodate the baroque frescoes of Rubens while filming a well-trained athlete performing a one-armed handstand while looking at the paintings, Nashat’s works and exhibitions involve his interest in art collections, art libraries, reproduction of works of art, as well as questions relating to appropriation and artistic reuse, display issues, and apparatus. Lighting, plinths, pedestals, and the mode of projecting and positioning all play pivotal roles in Nashat’s video installations, sculpture, etchings, and photographs. Wherever he draws his source or reference material from, he consistently makes a certain artificiality or constructedness obvious in order to generate the possibility of critical reflection about the medium itself. The monograph appears on the occasion of Shahryar Nashat’s first solo exhibition in Germany at the Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft. Co-published with Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft and Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen Design by Aude Lehmann
2016, English
Hardcover, 128 pages, 18 x 28 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$65.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
The subject of this book is a deceased prop, an object of a particular color, the green of cinematic trickery and special effects. It edged itself into Shahryar Nashat’s work in 2011, first appearing in Factor Green, an installation the artist produced for the Venice Biennale. Taking its final form a year later, the prop became properly known as La Shape and garnered critical acclaim for its sardonic personification of an unscrupulous impresario in Parade and star turn in Nashat’s video Hustle in Hand (both 2014). Earlier this year, its mysterious death at the height of its career became the occasion for Nashat and Los Angeles writer Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer to reflect upon the brief but meaningful life of a most singular figure.
Accompanied by archival images and a series of portraits that Nashat made during La Shape’s most prolific years, Obituary is a gripping read into a most mysterious icon and a timely consideration of the roles played, and agency expressed, by such a highly mediated art object.
Text by Sarah-Lehrer Graiwer
CGI by Andrea Faraguna
Design by Aude Lehmann
1962, French
Hardcover (w. blue paper slip Légendes des photographies), 200 pages, 20 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions Rencontre / Lausanne
$90.00 - Out of stock
First edition published in 1962, J' aime le Strip-Tease explores the different moral, historical, or even technical angles of the Strip-Tease. Frank Horvat’s camera observes the genre photographing movie posters in New York, red-light shop windows, stage performances, and moments backstage at the famous Paris Varieté shows such as the Folies-Bergère, the Crazy Horse or the Moulin-Rouge. This is not only a photobook – the texts of Patrik Lindenmohr compliment Horvat’s photographs perfectly. The book also contains a conversation with Alain Bernadin, founder of the Crazy Horse Varieté in Paris. Printed in wonderful deep gravure in Switzerland (like all the books in the J’aime / Eintritt frei series), and published under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Moulin and Yvan Dalain. Text by Patrik Lindenmohr.
Includes the inserted loose-leaf blue paper slip 'Légendes des photographies', identifying the various strip clubs, locations, etc.
Strip-Tease is Franks Horvat’s third book. Born in Italy in 1928, he has lived and worked in Paris since 1955. In 1957, Horvat shot fashion photographs for Jardin des Modes using a 35-mm camera and available light, which formerly had rarely been used for fashion. This innovation was welcomed by ready-to-wear designers, because it presented their creations in the context of everyday life. In the following years, Horvat was commissioned to do similar work for Elle in Paris, Vogue in London, and Harper’s Bazaar in New York.
Very Good copy. Includes the inserted loose-leaf blue paper slip 'Légendes des photographies', identifying the various strip clubs, locations, etc.
1996, English
Softcover, 400 pages, 2.8 x 2.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Lars Müller / Zürich
$290.00 - Out of stock
First and only 1996 printing of the stunning and very collectible book on the important design history of the incredible ECM record label, "ECM : Sleeves of Desire".
The ECM recording label's contribution to the fields of jazz and contemporary classical music is unparalleled, and its success story has been visually enhanced by the striking covers designed under Manfred Eicher's art direction by Barbara Wojirsch and Dieter Rehm.
A delight for music and design fans alike, the book presents chronologically ordered color reproductions of over 500 covers from the innovative ECM label. Sleeves of Desire also contains a comprehensive picture essay that provides a detailed look at over 100 album covers. Additionally, renowned jazz essayist Peter Ruedi relates the history of the ECM label and designer Lars Muller comments on the evolution of the covers and on ECM's unmistakable aesthetic signature.
Features the cover art of releases by Jan Garbarek, Don Cherry, Nana Vasconcelos, Eberhard Weber, Gary Burton, Meredith Monk, Chick Corea, Wolfgang Dauner, Carla Bley, Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, Evan Parker, Annette Peacock, Gary Peacock, Terje Rypdal, Ralph Towner, and so many more.
Very Good, clean copy throughout. A must.
1960, Czech
Softcover, 126 pages, 17.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
SNKLU / Prague
$120.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful and long out-of-print Jaromír Funke monograph, published in Prague in 1960 as part of the distinctive series of Czech monographs on photographers published by SNKLU, a wing of the great Odeon publishing house. With introductory text by theorist Lubomír Linhart, this beautifully printed book presents a selection of 96 of Funke's photographs printed in gorgeous gravure.
Jaromír Funke (1896–1945) was a Czech photographer. Funke was a leading figure in Czech photography during the 1920s and 1930s. Although his earliest imagery was influenced by Pictorialism, Funke quickly turned to a more sharp-focus, documentary style. Abstract images of shadows and organic forms made in the early twenties evolved into more objective representations of objects by the end of the decade. In 1924 he cofounded the Czech Photographic Society with Josef Sudek and Adolf Schneeberger. Two years later he produced a series of Surrealist images of store windows originally titled Glass and Reflection, based on the photographs of Eugène Atget. Also influential as a teacher, Funke served for several years as editor of the journal Fotograficky obzor (Photographic Horizons).
Very Good copy. Light edge wear and tanning.
1959, Czech
Softcover, 64 pages, 17.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
SNKLU / Prague
$120.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful and long out-of-print Miroslav Hák monograph, published in Prague in 1959 as part of the distinctive series of Czech monographs on photographers published by SNKLU, a wing of the great Odeon publishing house. With introductory text by Czech poet/painter Jiří Kolář, this beautifully printed book presents a selection of 62 of Hák's photographs printed in gravure.
Miroslav Hák (1911 – 1978) was a Czech photographer. He was one of the members of Group 42. Miroslav Hak was one of the most outstanding figures in the history of Czech modern photography, studying under his father, the photographer František Hák. Between 1925 and 1931 Hák worked as a photographer in Prague and Bratislava. In 1937 he joined the avant-garde D34 Theatre of Prague as a photographer and from 1940 he worked in the film industry. Between 1942 and 1948 Miroslav Hák associated with the Prague-based Group 42, which united avant-garde Czech photographers. From 1954 he served as a photographer at the Institute of Art Theory and History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
Good - Very Good copy. General wear, tanning due to age. Edge wear to covers. Creasing to back cover.
1961, Czech
Softcover, 64 pages, 17.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
SNKLU / Prague
$70.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful and long out-of-print Vilém Reichmann monograph, published in Prague in 1961 as part of the distinctive series of Czech monographs on photographers published by SNKLU, a wing of the great Odeon publishing house. Edited by fellow photographer/painter Václav Zykmund, this beautifully printed book presents a selection of 64 of his best lyrical surreal images, printed in gravure.
Vilém Reichmann (1908-1991) was one of the premiere Czech surrealist photographers. Reichmann comes from the German-Jewish community in Brno and began photographing in 1930, whilst working as a graphic artist for numerous left-wing magazines in Czechoslovakia. Influenced by the Depression and war years, he developed a Surrealist style modelled on lyrical interpretations of reality through visual metaphors. After World War II he became a member of ‘Ra’, a Czech Surrealist art group, and his work shows the influence of textural abstraction and absurdist humor. Antonín Dufek, an erudite specialist in the field of the Czech photography, confirms Reichmann’s fundamental position in the history of the Czech photography, especially its surrealist movement.
Good copy with some moisture ripple and general wear. Moisture stain at back but not affecting contents.
1994, Czech / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 276 pages, 23 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Foto Mida / Czech Republic
$120.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this now long-out-of-print and most comprehensive hardcover monograph the work of Czech surrealist photographer Vilém Reichmann. This exceptional volume is profusely with over 200 full-page colour and b/w plates of Reichmann's photographic works, including his incredible experimental photogram works, and a selection of rarely seen drawings and paintings. Texts throughout by accomplished curator and Czech photography specialist Antonín Dufek (b. 1943) in Czech with an inserted booklet of all texts translated to English. Includes biography, bibliography. A scarce resource on this great artist.
Vilém Reichmann (1908-1991) was one of the premiere Czech surrealist photographers. Reichmann comes from the German-Jewish community in Brno and began photographing in 1930, whilst working as a graphic artist for numerous left-wing magazines in Czechoslovakia. Influenced by the Depression and war years, he developed a Surrealist style modelled on lyrical interpretations of reality through visual metaphors. After World War II he became a member of ‘Ra’, a Czech Surrealist art group, and his work shows the influence of textural abstraction and absurdist humor. Antonín Dufek, an erudite specialist in the field of the Czech photography, confirms Reichmann’s fundamental position in the history of the Czech photography, especially its surrealist movement.
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket.
1969, English / Dutch
Softcover, 140 pages, 41 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
Moderna Museet / Stockholm
$450.00 - Out of stock
An extremely rare and well-preserved copy of one of the greatest artist books of our time. "A Document Made By Paul Thek and Edwin Klein" is an immensely important collaborative work created and published in 1969 by the American artist Paul Thek (1933-1988) and the Dutch photographer and designer Edwin Klein (1946-) for the Pauk Thek and the Artist's Co-op installations at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Moderne Museet, Stockholm. Thek’s wish was to turn his diary into artworks: three-dimensional albums, each double page a full-bleed photograph shot from above of a still life of pictures, drawings, books, postcards, magazine clippings, objects (ashtrays, wine bottles, rope, garments, plaster mushrooms, and various other detritus from Thek's studio), the artist's themselves, photographs by friends and colleagues, all printed at 100% scale of the original newspaper sheets that provide the backdrop throughout the entire book. Manipulated by Thek and Klein, the pictures and the objects change from one page spread to the next, all in constant movement, capturing the personal and magical nature of Thek's work and the spontaneous and joyous nature of Thek's collaborations with Klein.
"The document follows my concept of what a book should be like, and Paul’s wish to turn his diary into a kind of catalogue – a three-dimensional album, each double page a photograph of a still life with pictures, drawings, books, cards, and objects…The book has the dimensions of an open newspaper, actual size. Turning the pages of the document, one turns the pages of a diary. The pictures and the objects placed on the newspaper keep changing and seem to be in constant movement. Most of the photographs are from the studio, documenting works in progress created for the Stedelijk Museum exhibition. There are pictures from other exhibitions, porno magazines, whatever was lying around, everything that surrounded us in our daily life." - Edwin Klein
Good over-sized copy of the first edition with general handling wear, creasing and tanning to cover and pages. Overall a wonderful copy of this highly sought after publication.
2019, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 24 x 29 cm
Published by
Lecturis / Eindhoven
$80.00 - Out of stock
This is the first complete overview of Ed van der Elsken’s work in colour. Although the Dutch photographer became world-renowned for his black-and-white images, much of his body of work was actually made in colour. He began with colour photos in the early 1950s in Paris, and by the late ’60s he almost exclusively took pictures in colour, such as for his travel reportages. ‘Lust for Life’ follows Van der Elsken’s evolution as a “colour photographer” and places this work in an art historical context. Besides relatively unknown and previously unpublished images, it also details the massive, two-year project to restore Van der Elsken’s slides by the Nederlands Fotomuseum.
2020, English
Hardcover, 224 pages, 24.6 x 28.5 cm
Published by
Skira / Milan
$98.00 - Out of stock
Edited with text by Antonio Sergio Bessa.
Text by Douglas Crimp.
For 11 years in 1970s and '80s Manhattan, the Bronx-born photographer Alvin Baltrop obsessively documented cruisers, sunbathers, fornicators and friends around the city's piers, in that brief moment after the Stonewall riots and before the explosion of the AIDS epidemic. The largest book yet published on the photographer, The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop presents those photographs and others, including many that have never been seen in public, and is published on the occasion of Baltrop's first-ever retrospective at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
"Although initially terrified of the piers, I began to take these photos as a voyeur [and] soon grew determined to preserve the frightening, mad, unbelievable, violent, and beautiful things that were going on at that time," Baltrop wrote in the preface to an unfinished book of these photographs. "To get certain shots, I hung from the ceilings of several warehouses utilizing a makeshift harness, watching and waiting for hours to record the lives that these people led (friends, acquaintances, and strangers), and the unfortunate ends that they sometimes met."
2019, English
Hardcover, 136 pages, 14.5 x 10.9 cm
Published by
Verlag fur moderne Kunst / Nuremberg
$62.00 - Out of stock
Offering the first study of Jamaican-born American photographer Percy Rainford, this book draws from extensive archival research and interviews with the artist's family, showcasing his work and shedding light on his collaborations with Duchamp for View and Le Surréalisme.
Edited by Stefan Banz.
Text by Michael R. Taylor.
2019, Dutch / English
Softcover (foldout cover, cloth tape binding), 112 pages, 21 x 30 cm
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$62.00 - Out of stock
When Willem Sandberg, the newly appointed director of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, held an exhibition in 1946 in honour of Piet Mondrian, he did something quite remarkable. He placed a Swiss cheese plant next to Mondrian’s paintings. For Sandberg, the aesthetic placement of a plant in the museum made a statement. No longer would the Stedelijk be an elite temple for art; rather, he wanted the public to become accustomed to contemporary art in a familiar, domestic environment. Artist Inge Meijer investigated the vanished and subsequently forgotten vegetation in the museum during the 1945–1983 period for this book, rendering its history once again visible.
1970, Japanese
Softcover, 149 pages, 25.8 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shashin Ichigun / Japan
$90.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this rare masterpiece of Japanese photojournalism. Okinawa 69-70 is a collection of photographs published by television presenter/photographer Osamu Yoshioka with volunteers in 1970 depicting the life and struggles on the Okinawa Island of Japan. A critical strategic location for the United States Armed Forces since the end of World War II, the presence of the US military in Okinawa has caused great social tension and political controversy in Japan and this book captures the anger, suffering and resistance to both the US and Japanese government.
Very Good copy with tanning to pages.
1969, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages, 20.5 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Büchergilde Gutenberg / Frankfurt
$200.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first hardcover edition of the cult "London Scene" photo-book from 1969. Beautifully documented through hundreds of black and white photographs, this German book captured the atmosphere, fashion, politics and day-to-day life of London's counterculture (from OZ to Yoko Ono to The UFO Club) in the radically changing climate of 1960s Britain. "The adventure of a new generation: long hair, short skirts, pearl necklaces and large-flowered shirts are not everything. The phenomenon of hippie subculture eludes scholarly generalizations" - from publisher's blurb. Includes quotes throughout from British alternative press, politicians, literary figures and pop stars alike (Lennon, John Peel, Churchill, Oscar Wilde, etc.), plus German introductory texts by the authors, and a glossary of terms, hippie slang, and clubs in London.
Very Good copy in Very Good dust jacket.
1994, English / Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
File Inc. / Kyoto
$190.00 - Out of stock
A very scarce publication of Director/Actor Dennis Hopper's photographs from a 1991 visit to Tokyo and a 1994 visit to Kyoto, published in Kyoto in 1994 by Takao Nakamura and File, Inc.
This is the first and only edition and to our knowledge these photographs have never appeared in book form since. A fine copy. Includes invitation card to Dennis Hopper "Photo Works II" exhibition in Japan, 1994.
"From 1961 on I carried my camera everywhere. All My friends teased me about being a tourist. I put my Nikon away in 1967 when I started writing and directing “Easy Rider.” Only on occasion did I use it, when friends who were camera shy asked me to photograph them—Sean Penn, Gary Oldman, Maria Mckee, Quentin Tarantino. Three years ago on my second trip to Japan, I took my Nikon with me for the first time since the 60’s and shot 30 rolls of film. In the states I had them developed, looked at the proof sheets vaguely and put them away. Six months ago I blew up 12 pictures to give to friends in Japan because they always give me presents. I was surprised how much I liked the pictures. Chihiro Narumi asked me to do a show in Kyoto and Tokyo. I bought a new Nikon 35Ti in Kyoto, and I am now carrying it everywhere. I feels good being a tourist again. My life seems very full suddenly. Thank you. - Dennis Hopper"
Very Good-Fine copy.
2008, English
Softcover, 110 pages, 21 x 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
Association Belle Haleine / Paris
$50.00 - Out of stock
THE PURPLE JOURNAL ("Stories, Essays, Reports, Portraits, Chronicles, Photographs") Number 12, Fall-Winter 2007-2008.
A scarce copy of this early edition of The Purple Journal, featuring Daidō Moriyama, Bless, Henry Roy, Antek Walczak, Jean-Michel Wicker, Nakako Hayashi, Elein Fleiss, Manon de Boer, Laetitia Benat, Jason Orton, Cosmic Wonder, Yannick Haenel, Sonia Rykiel, Nick Tosches, Frederico Nicolao, Amit Berlowitz, Muriel Vega, Maison Martin Margiela, Jil Sander, Marc Giannesini, Daniel Franco, Raphael Nadjari, Yuriika Suzuki, Stephen Sprott, Raf Simons, Chikashi Suzuki, Arnold Barkus, Alex Antitch, Katarina Radovic, Beth Yahp, and much 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. 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 Fashion.
Condition: Very Good (light wear, otherwise clean and tightly
1983, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 20.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Currey O'Neil / Melbourne
$140.00 - Out of stock
First 1983 edition of award winning Australian photographer Rennie Ellis' cult classic photo-book, "Life's A Beach", published in Melbourne in 1983. Steeped in beach lore since his early days as a lifesaver and surfer, Ellis put together this vivid collection of quintessential images of Australian beach life with great affection and insight. These early 1980's photographs shimmer with summer light and a graceful, infectious sensuality - the greatest photographic collection of Australian beach culture put to paper.
"On the beach we chuck away our clothes, our status and our inhibitions and engage in rituals of sun-worship and baptism. It's a retreat to our primal needs." Rennie Ellis
No other photographer has documented Australian society in such depth and with such insight into the human condition as Rennie Ellis. Active from the 1970s until his death in 2003, Rennie Ellis' non-judgmental approach was his 'access-to-all-areas' pass. Ellis used his camera as a key to open the doors to the social arenas of the rich and famous and to enter the underbelly of the nightclubs, bearing witness to the indulgences and excesses. In today's post-Henson era, these captured moments offer an intimate access to an Australia tantalisingly, but sadly, now almost out of reach.
Good-Very Good copy.
Some spotting and light crease to back cover and pages.
2019, English
Hardcover (silkscreened), 64 pages, 24 x 30 cm
Published by
MACK / London
$79.00 - Out of stock
Guido Guidi’s new book, In Veneto 1984-89, opens with a big eye framed in the blind of a shop window in Mestre, an eye which, by opening like a sort of warning, announces the origin of photography itself. This book contains a selection of hitherto unpublished photographs that Guidi took between 1984 and 1989, using a Deardorff 8X10. This was the first time he had used a large format camera for a whole project, which concentrated on an area in the central Veneto, an area known for having rapidly turned into a deeply uncertain, marginal landscape, one intimately hierarchy-free. The places he visited, in the provinces of Treviso, Vicenza, Padua and Venice, seem to be almost part of the same drawing, of the same place, bearing stark testimony to the process of change that has led to the transformation of a huge rural area, driving it into a form of fragmentation known as urban spread. The photographs in these much-loved places seem to re-evoke the three truths described by Robert Adams in “Beauty in Photography”: geography, biography, and metaphor.
"Guidi’s eye is rigorous and subtle" – The New York Times
"[In Veneto] mostra un paesaggio in mutamento verso l’urbanizzazione, quello del Veneto centrale, con fotografie quasi immobili" / "[In Veneto] reveals a landscape undergoing a transformation toward urbanisation – that of central Veneto – with photographs almost devoid of motion" – Il Post
"Guidi esplora il Veneto centrale, lontano dalle bellezze veneziane o palladiane ... come crepe disordinate, o muschi o funghi, allargandosi fuori dai corpi di Padova, Vicenza, Treviso" / "Guidi explores central Veneto, far from the Palladian glamour of Venice: […] the irregular cracks, mosses and fungi that sprout from the built environments of Padova, Vicenza and Treviso." / –Rivista Studio
1971, English
Softcover (newsprint, staple-bound), 80 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Rosy Cheeks Publishers
Inc. / San Francisco
Rosy Cheeks Publishers Inc. / San Francisco
$35.00 - Out of stock
Rags Magazine was a counter-culture fashion magazine founded by Rolling Stone photographer Baron Wolman, based out of San Francisco, and associated with the underground press movement. A rotating staff included Mary Peacock and Daphne Davis as editors, and Barbara Kruger as an art director. Printed on newsprint, Rags covered counter-culture fashion in a way no other fashion magazine was doing at the time, 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.
The February 1971 issue includes "A Special Report: Boutiques & Hip Capitalism" by Jon Carroll profiling a huge array of independent American fashion boutiques around America, an article on Miss Penny Arcade with photographs by Peter Hujar, a photographic section by Jim Marshall, a Rags "Valentine's Day Portfolio" (including artwork by Ron Nagle!), an article on Frederick Mellinger (inventor of the push-up bra and well-known retailer of women's lingerie in America), a report on MacFadden-Bartell Publishing (home of True Story, the first of the confessions magazines genre), the fantastic regular Rags street fashion report, letters, columns on drugs, records, media, and all matter of things around fashion.
Good copy with wear/small chipping/marks to cover, clean throughout. Light edge tanning.
1981, Japanese
Hardcover (w. slipcase and dust jacket), 80 pages, 25 x 27 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kawade Shobo Shinsha / Tokyo
$350.00 - Out of stock
Rare 1981 edition of acclaimed Japanese photographer Hajime Sawatari's cult photo book "Alice", first published in 1973. Sawatari began working as a freelancer in 1966, photographing for many leading fashion magazines in Japan. This, his most famous work, reprinted countless times, is Sawatari's psychedelic, photographic interpretations of Lewis Carroll's literary classic Alice in Wonderland. Here Sawatari brilliantly engages and re-creates the themes, forms and symbolisms within the original narrative, focusing on the inevitable loss of the childhood innocence of a young girl confronted by the realities of adulthood. Sawatari’s ‘Wonderland’ is a world where phenomenas of the real intertwine with the unconscious, exploring a world that confronts viewers with the surreal, bending the roles between child and adult. Outside of Jan Švankmajer, this is truly one of the strangest, most risqué interpretations of the well-known story. Sawatari's photographs are complimented by the design of Seiichi Horiuchi (1932-1987) and accompanying translations and poems by Shuzo Higuchi (1903-1979) and Shuntaro Tanikawa.
Hajime Sawatari is a celebrated fashion and advertising photographer. His photobooks are part of the important cultural renaissance that took place in Japan in the 1960s and '70s and saw the promotion of provocative, avant-garde book publishing.
With some light wear to edges, otherwise Good-Very Good book and DJ, slipcase.