What We’ve Read! – September Edition

Here we are again with more books that will enrich your lives and make them better! As our lives become digitized, it seems that photography is running at a faster pace than ever before – an endless cycle of taking images that consume us. In a book, it is our way to slow down, appreciate the images [not on a screen] and to once again enjoy their physical nature. Take a moment, look at these books and consider supporting not only the artists but also their craft by getting a copy for yourself.

Do you have a book/zine/publication that you would like to share with us? Follow our guidelines here to submit! We are accepting submission all day every day with no deadline!

Have Questions? Feel free to contact me at dana@aint-bad.com

Charles Traub, Taradiddle, 2018
Twenty years ago Traub abandoned all pretense of trying to find specific themes and subjects in his photographic wanderings other than to make ‘Taradiddles’, embracing fully the digital image which is always questioned for it’s further and inherent potential for distortion. Ironically, the witty and sardonic juxtaposition of Traub’s images, is only a matter of framing his discoveries – here, there and everywhere.

This volume is a collection of trifles that become matters of remarkable social commentary when Traub photographs them – “For me, serendipity, coincidence, and chance are more interesting than any preconceived construct of our human encounters.” (Charles H. Traub) – in a hundred plus images Traub seems to have captured the common incongruities of a global society.

Traub took these pictures in more than 60 cities around the world: Dubai, Shanghai, Beijing, Rome, Tunis, Buenos Aires, Budapest, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Santo Domingo, New York, just to name a few.

Price: $50
Publisher: Damiani
Artist Website: www.charlestraub.com
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Barbara Diener, Phantom Power, 2018
The sudden loss of her father when she was 25 was a pivotal moment in Barbara Diener’s life. She never had the opportunity to say goodbye or to tell him how much he meant to her. In the 10 years since his death, she has carried his memory with her, and his absence infuses her reality. The loss of her father and her desire to reconnect with him is the underlying theme in Diener’s new monograph, Phantom Power.

Diener was raised in a small town in Germany without any sense of formal religion or spirituality. She recognizes there is still a great deal we don’t know about human consciousness and what happens to us once our bodies expire. In Phantom Power, she explores and interprets the possibilities through her photography using various techniques such as suggestive aberrations and double exposures which draw on an expansive history of photographers who have experimented with the medium’s unique relationship with the concept of truth. The idea for Phantom Power was hatched while Diener was working on a previous photo project titled Sehnsucht, which is a German compound word derived from yearning (das Sehnen) and addiction (die Sucht). Roughly translated it means a longing for someone or something that cannot be fully defined and will not be found. Diener was photographing in small, rural towns in Illinois that she was drawn to as they reminded her of Mechernich, the German town where she grew up. The concept of home and family (or lack thereof) is another recurring theme in Diener’s work.

During her travels, she met a woman named Kathy who owned a local diner that she frequented. They bonded over their common connection to the nostalgia of place – Diener recalling Mechernich, her childhood home which is intertwined with memories of her father, and Kathy who is living on the ancestral land of her husband John’s farm which she believes is haunted by his ancestors.

Kathy’s fervent belief in the spectral sparked Diener’s own interest in the unexplained and tied back to her ongoing curiosity about religion, spirituality and the human desire to believe that something else happens after we die and that a part of us – the spirit or soul – continues on. She began her project by photographing her new friend’s ghost-hunting rituals which led to conducting her own search for visible clues of the supernatural.

Diener writes: “Since its invention, photography has lent a sense of immortality to its subjects. In recent years the paranormal has received amplified media attention through numerous ‘reality’ television programs that sensationalize any phenomena for the camera. On the contrary, my approach is self-reflective and curious. To make the resulting images I have adopted both traditional and contemporary methods of capturing the invisible, as well as employed my own interpretation of the magical and mystical.”

Price: $45
Publisher: Daylight Books
Artist Website: www.barbaradienerphotography.com
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Finn Jubak, 07, 2018
Alternating back and forth, the images seem to contradict each other, to interrupt. Having gone for a swim, he emerges from the water, droplets spraying, all movement forward. Compare this with the cold serenity of the rock, which doesn’t change. Or does it? Don’t these marks, these growths, have a kind of kineticism themselves? Perhaps even more than him, who seems to be stuck, in each frame still halfway between in and out, still that first step onto land.

Driven by this juxtaposition, this back and forth, the series of photographs seek to probe the visual possibilities of the connection between these little narratives. The back and forth becomes a way forward, and also a key to interpreting the curve of a back, its hairs, and bumps. Aren’t these bumps a bit like those of rock face, its history there to be read like an open book? Printed in a relatively large 8×10 inch size, full bleed and with thick paper, the book is intended to feel almost like a group of photographs bound together, a portfolio from a single moment of time, at once calling out cacophonously but also speaking in unison.

Price: $10
Publisher: Self Published
Artist Website: www.finnjubak.com

John Hinde Collection, 2018
This book of previously unpublished photographs shows how the original postcard photographs image stand out in their own right as exquisite examples of photography of their time. They demonstrate the consummate skill of these pioneers of color photography and help cement John Hinde’s reputation as an important figure in the history of color photography.

The postcards are known for the innovative post-production techniques, which were used to create these images in heightened Technicolor. However, whilst restoring them John Hinde Collection wanted to solely restore the photographs, showing them in all its true reality before edits, additions, and exaggerations, not to recreate the postcard.

The photographs rediscover some of the extraordinary detail that is lost in translation to the comparatively small postcards, for which the extensive planning was meant – it’s almost as though John Hinde meant these images to be seen in a large format. Whilst restoring these images at high resolution, small groups of people became visible. The scene depicted on the postcards that originally seemed devoid of humanity come alive, with the reveal of many people queuing for a takeaway or entrance to the theatre.

These images now provide a valuable document of the leisure industry boom in post-war Britain as well as the rise in modernism, hope, and positivity. If it wasn’t for John Hinde and his photographers, there wouldn’t be color photographic records of many of these cities, monuments, and seaside towns. The images have been used by lawyers and surveyors as the only existing reference, for example, for rebuilding a clock tower or getting planning permission to rebuild a crofter’s cottage.

Price: £16
Publisher: John Hinde Collection (Self Published)
Artist Website: www.johnhindecollection.com
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Thomas Wilson, Northern Tier, 2018
Northern Tier is a contemporary document of rural America, captured through the photography of artist and scientist Thomas Wilson. In the summer of 2017, utilizing the Northern Tier bicycle route, Wilson rode his bike from New York City to Oregon along with his riding partner, Michael Patten. The pair’s days were spent swiftly traversing miles of empty landscape, while at night they slept in strangers’ bedrooms and sleeping bags on the side of the road. Wilson punctuates his landscape imagery with pit stops in small towns, collecting postcards, ephemera, and other samples of Americana that oscillate between humor and melancholy.

The book is offered in an open edition through 2018, though the first 100 copies also come with a free print. The book was edited and designed by Wilson and Pat Reynolds, and it features introductory texts by Michael Patten and filmmaker John Wilson (Tom’s brother).

Price: $34
Publisher: Beatrice
Artist Website: cargocollective.com/tomjosephwilsonphoto
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Do you have a book/zine/publication that you would love to share with us? Follow our guidelines here to submit!

Have Questions? Feel free to contact me at dana@aint-bad.com