Yes, that's about a quarter of my library. I had promised myself to stop or at least pause buying books but oh well. These are new in the library.
The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War - Louis Menand
Bought this after reading about it in The Atlantic. It's similar to another book I have "Art and Politics in the Weimar Period" it outlines how art, media and thought evolved during the Cold War and how they were influenced by the economic, demographic and technological forces that drove social and cultural change.
Criticizing Photographs 6th Edition - Terry Barret
Got into this book while watching Eileen Rafferty's talk on the B&H Event Space channel on the YouChoobies. Rafferty's talk is more focused on studio critiques while this book gives you the tools to actually understand and write about photographs. It's been an eye opener to be sure! I've filled many pages of notes and bookmarks that make the book look like a hedgehog.
Strange Things Behind (Belgian) Windows - Jean-Luc Feixa
Picked this up at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (LMMA) in Humlebaek DK, despite promising myself that I wouldn't by any photobooks on the trip. Oh well. Quirky, fascinating and really good project. Might have to try that in Calgary.
Pia Arke - Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Pia Arke was a Greenland photographer and artist. This was the catalog for a retrospective at LMMA. Articles and interviews interspersed with her work. Just cracking the surface of this one.
Magnumb - Arthur Jafa
This show was on at the same time as Pia Arke at LMMA and in someway they reflect each other. This book is the companion to the show and overview of Jafa''s sweeping, dynamic and disquieting video portraits of Black American life. I made some notes at LMMA that I hope to work into a further post.
Tror du vi vågner i morgen (Do you think we'll wake up tomorrow?) - Linda Hansen & Maiken Abildgaard
A fascinating interchange of images and ideas. From the back cover:
[This] is a correspondence between photographer and visual artist Linda Hansen and author Maiken Abildgaard. For a year they have exchanged photographs and phrases. A sentence was answered with a picture and a picture with a sentence. This created 100 small works consisting of text and photography. 40 of these are selected and compiled in this book.
Google Translate will be working overtime.
Keld Helmer- Petersens Fotografiske Verden (Keld Helmer- Petersen's Photographic World) - Inger Ellekilde Bonde
All in Danish, this will take some time reading. Remember, in Danish the vowels don't count and the consonants don't matter. I guess this is learning Danish the hard way. I should be able to write to my grandson when I'm done with this.
From the back cover:
The first full introduction to the photographer Keld Helmer-Petersen, who in Denmark made the photograph an art...
After the Silence: Women of Art Speak Out - Stats Museum fur Kunst (SMK)
This is the companion book that SMK gave out (for free) for this exhibit. From the SMK website:
Come explore art that’s ready to do battle! In this year’s major autumn exhibition, we give the floor to some of art history’s prominent women artists. Taking the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s as our springboard, we focus on how women have used art as an instrument of battle to create change in the world over the last hundred years.
In my journal I had been writing a lot about context and its importance in photography especially after seeing the baffled looks of the Danes viewing Jafa's exhibition at LMMA. Now, it was my turn. The art was masterful, gripping but as a male I had no context to truly understand the depth and real meaning of the exhibit. More thought required here, to be sure.
Lots of reading, lots of note making, lots to think about.
