This weekend marks Printed Matter's annual New York Art Book Fair: a glorious, highly curated, jam packed, sweaty gathering of some of best mainstream and independent art book publishers. Hosted at New York City's MoMa PS1 in Long Island City, it's filled with frequent book signings, people watching and an opportunity to spend a downpayment on way too many photobooks (which you should.) We hope the renegade book appropriating bootleggers Flat Fix are back for an attack. Oh, and there's also the Independent Art Book Fair happening close by in Greenpoint, which is worth a walk over the Pulaski Bridge. Below are some of our anticipated favorites, in no particular order.
A Spectacle and Nothing Strange by Ahndraya Parlato
A Spectacle and Nothing Strange by Ahndraya Parlato. Published by Kehrer Verlag.
From the Publisher: Irrational images flash through our minds all the time, in dreams and daydreams. Ahndraya Parlato’s work imagines an oscillation between these »internal« and »external« images, revealing the possibilities of different realities. Combining ten years’ worth of images, A Spectacle and Nothing Strange draws on Parlato’s experience being raised by a single mother who was mentally ill. From an early age, Parlato was put in the unique position of having to decide whether her mother’s observations and fears were real or imagined. These photographs allow her to move between various realities, acknowledging the validity of her mother’s world, while also questioning the boundaries of normal, abnormal, sane, and insane.
Book Signing 9/17 @ 2pm @ Spaces Corners' booth # O42
Lost Coast by Curran Hatleberg
Lost Coast by Curran Hatleberg. Published by TBW Books
From the Publisher: In Lost Coast, Curran Hatleberg presents an episodic narrative about Eureka, California. Intimate portraits of town and people function like a collection of short stories, building to an understanding of place. The pictures live between extremes, between the grand and the granular, between the breathtaking natural landscape and the grim realities of industrial decline. The resulting portraits of everyday life contain stirring moments of intimacy, each frame its own micro narrative about life in the town. The pictures could be documents or dreams, but they all center on the strange beauty of an overlooked American life.
Book signing at the NYABF on 9/17/2016
The Testament Project by Kris Graves
The Testament Project by Kris Graves. Published by +KG Projects
From the Publisher: The Testament Project is an exploration and re-conception of the contemporary black experience in America. More often than not, black people are portrayed in the extreme—either as very rich or very poor, they are demonized, infantilized, ridiculed, idolized or hyper-sexualized; and within the art canon there is a noticeable scarcity of black representation. In these glowing portraits, control of the colored lighting is given to my subjects, in order to create a space that is participatory and empowered. By including subjects in the creation of the scene and the altering of color, I seek to create photographs that portray individuality in addition to their blackness.
Book signing Sat 9/17 @5pm @ Booth 012
A New Nothing. edited by Ben Alper and Nat Ward
A New Nothing' Edited by Ben Alper and Nat Ward. Published by Travis Shaefer's Independent Publishing Platform: There There Now
From the Publisher: This book is the first material publication related to A New Nothing, an online project space that facilitates image-based conversations between artists. For this particular project, Alper and Ward engaged in a brand new visual exchange by sending prints back and forth to one another in the mail. The resulting publication unfolds to reveal the entire 12 image sequnce, which is accordion-folded and is made up of tipped in risograph prints.
Book signing Saturday 9/17 @2pm at the Independent Art Book Fair /Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse. 67 West Street/ Brooklyn NY 11222
Good Boy 0372 Giovanna Silva
Good Boy 0372 by Giovanna Silva. Published by Motto Books.
This is sad and mysterious and we love it.
From the publisher: Sudan, the only remaining male northern white rhinoceros.
Book signing: Sat September 17th @ 2pm. Booth O15