The Center for Book Arts Announces its Fall Exhibitions
The Center for Book Arts is pleased to announce its Fall Exhibitions. The Main Exhibition, titled Inside/ Out: Self, Family, Memory, Loss, Displacement, Catastrophe, is organized by Carole Naggar, poet, artist, curator, educator, and photography historian.
Self-published photobooks first made their appearance in Europe right after World War II. At that time photographers mainly published in magazines, and the form of the photobook was still somewhat exotic, used infrequently by photographers. Today, self-published photobooks are also well represented in collections such as the New York MoMA’s library, The Indie Photo Library at the Beinecke (Yale), which inspired the creation of other independent photobook archives, like The Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive, as well as private collections.
This exhibition features thirty-four self-published photobooks, varying in sizes and aspect, usually printed in small editions. Their form varies from the classic, traditionally printed book to the zine, the folio, the leporello book, the panoramic shape, the I-phone… Also including selected photographs, Inside/Out shows a range of media from gelatin prints to C-prints, collotype, inkjet and Xerox.
The photographers and artists in this exhibition see the self-published photobook as a place of independence, a place where they can experiment freely with form, but, more importantly, as a testing ground for reflection, self-examination, meditation and ideas that the main market does little to accommodate. The quick turnaround from concept to creation also allows them to react to national and international news, making the books not only an aesthetic endeavor but also a political one.
The chosen books illustrate very personal subjects such as family, memory, loss and identity as well as larger topics such as immigration, displacement and exile and catastrophic events such as World War II, the AIDS epidemic, September 11 and Fukushima. A few are historical and most contemporary. They originate from twenty countries: Argentina, Azerbadjian, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, Mexico, The Netherlands,The Philippines, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and Vietnam.
It had been predicted that the rise of the Internet would mean the end of the book on paper. However, it had an opposite effect, creating “digital fatigue” because ephemeral images are everywhere. Readers still crave a hands-on experience and the concrete sensations associated with reading and looking.
While some deplore the rise of self-publishing because it tramples the gates and gatekeepers who once decided what should be published, the trend gave artists new freedom. Self-published photobooks provide the experience of looking at work the way the artist envisioned it. Most self-published photobooks are issued in limited editions, hand-numbered or signed, which makes them works of arts themselves. They become places for debating ideas, articulating insights and experience, and testing out new forms. And many are objects of beauty.
Artists include: Olivia Arthur, Barbara Bash, Doug Beube, Julia Borissova, Machiel Botman, Chien Chi Chang, Cristina De Middel, Giovanni del Brenna, Michel Delsol, Eamonn Doyle, Carolyn Drake, Tina Enghoff, Veronica Fieiras, Claire Fouquet and Patty Smith, Lee Friedlander, Ralph Gibson, Hiroshi Hamaya, Simone Hoang, Ilkin Huseynov, Fumiko Imano, Miho Kajioka, Kent Klich, Anouk Kruithof, Susan Meiselas, Editha Mesina, Kazuma Obara, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Sophie Ristelhueber, Alec Soth, Jordan Sullivan, Peter Van Agtmael, Todd Walker, Mo Yi, and Ksenia Yurkova
Roundtable Discussion: Friday, October 19, 2018, 6:30 pm
The roundtable will include Barbara Bash, Michel Delsol, Editha Mesina and Patty Smith. and will be moderated by Carole Naggar.
For inquiries please contact the Center at eahern@centerforbookarts.org.
When: October 5 - December 15, 2018
Where: 28 W 27th St., 3rd Floor, NY, NY
Subway: N/R to 28th St, or F to 23rd St
Exhibition URL: https://centerforbookarts.org/events/category/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/
Gallery Hours: M-F, 11a-6p; Sat, 10a-5p
Admission: Free
ALSO ON VIEW: FALL 2018 FEATURED ARTIST PROJECTS
In addition to Inside/Out, The Center presents Cultivating Book and Land by Sally Alatolo and Celestial Bodies by Monica Ong, both organized by Alexander Campos, Executive Director & Curator for The Center for Book Arts. All three shows are on view through December 15.
Cultivating Book and Land by Master Faculty Fellow Sally Alatolo is a project that originated in the rehabilitation of an orchard and woodlands in rural SW Michigan. Alatolo is eager to bridge her interests in language and its dissemination with the discourses of rural economies.
Monica Ong is a visual artist and poet whose hybrid image-poems juxtapose diagram and diary, bearing witness to silenced histories of the body. Her Featured Artist Project is presented as a series of art installations. The poems are as much visual journeys as they are lyrical haunts of medicine and memory.
Visit our website for up-to-date details on all events and programs: www.centerforbookarts.org
Image: Miho Kajioka, And Where Did the Peacocks Go?, 2018, Courtesy of the Artist
