DAIDO MORIYAMA: “BYE BYE PHOTOGRAPHY” (1972)

Bye Bye Photography. The photographer’s third book: a masterpiece of Japanese photography, and the book that best illustrates the conceptual ideals and vision of the Provoke photographers. Here Moriyama pushes the boundaries of the medium: assembling images from a variety of sources, placing them in a tumultuous and discordant anti-sequence, and assaulting the viewer with […]

Lee Friedlander: “The New Cars 1964” (2011)

  In 1964, two young art directors at Harper’s Bazaar named Ruth Ansel and Bea Feitler hired the then up-and-coming photographer Lee Friedlander to photograph the much-anticipated new car models of that year. Friedlander’s jazz album covers had proven he knew how to work on assignment, and Ansel and Feitler realized that if Bazaarwas to […]

Ed Ruscha: “One-Way Street” (2005)

 Edward Ruscha arrived in Los Angeles in 1956, delivered by the car trip he and high school friend Mason Williams took in Ruscha’s black 1950 Ford from Oklahoma to the suburban-like stretch of a rapidly developing L.A.   Ed Ruscha’s One-Way Street By Jaleh Mansoor, OCTOBER, Winter 2005, pp. 127–42. Edward Ruscha arrived in Los […]

William Klein: The New York School – Photographs, 1936-1963 (1992)

“I wanted to be visible in the biggest way possible. My aesthetics was the New York Daily News. I saw the book I wanted to do as a tabloid gone berserk, gross, grainy, over-inked, with a brutal layout, bull-horn headlines. This is what New York deserved and would get.”   By Jane Livingston, excerpt from […]

An Interview with Larry Clark – “Outlaw No More” (1984)

  The cover photograph of Larry Clark’s book ‘Teenage Lust’ is a gorgeously lit rectangle of boy/girl flesh on the seat of a car, her hand around his penis, his hand at her crotch, their tongues touching.   By Ellen Wallenstein, Spot Magazine, Fall 1985 The cover photograph of Larry Clark’s book Teenage Lust is […]

Bill Burke – ‘I Want to Take Picture’ (1987)

  “When I realized that I had access to the camps and could see the Khmer Rouge, it was like being able to see the Devil.”   Excerpt from an interview with Bill Burke by Willis Hartshorn, New York City, June 1987 Bill Burke: Each day, I was thinking about practicality, is my pass in […]

An Interview with John Gossage on ‘There and Gone'” (2000)

“One of the things that helps me with doing a book is getting a title at some point that lets me understand its content. I mean basically, that [points to the title of the book] is what’s in here. This [the first chapter] is ‘There,’ this [the second chapter] is the transition, ‘And,’ and this […]

Roger Ballen – ‘Shadow Chamber’ (2007)

Twirling Wires, 2001   This demonstrates in a fresh and very personal way photography’s intrinsic ability to lead beyond our usual conception of reality without resorting to visual exaggeration.   Roger Ballen’s Shadow Chamber By Robert Fleck, Originally Published, Eikon Issue 57 – March 2007 Seeing Roger Ballen’s extensive portfolio Shadow Chamber – made over […]

William Klein: “Life is Good & Good for You in New York” (2010)

 Everything about him suggests an anarchic temperament, capable of playing any worldly system to the hilt and then throwing away its benefits.   Brought to ASX by Errata Editions. Full essay included in Books on Books #5 William Klein: Life is Good…New York! By Max Kozloff, Excerpt from William Klein and the Radioactive Fifties, originally appeared […]

BOBBY ABRAHAMSON: “One Summer Across America” (2002)

“Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues, you can tell by the way she smiles… ” sings Bob Dylan, and I know exactly what he means. Since I’ve been back from my trip there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t have to fight the urge to pack my bags and leave […]