Foto Motel

My Favorite Books from 2008

Including one re-issue and a pop-up book.

 

Focus on AIDS 11: UpDate

PDN Online reports that, The 11th Focus On AIDS photo auction raised about $270,000. The biggest sellers: Henri Cartier-Bresson's “Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Paris 1932,” for $17,500, and Sally Mann's limited-edition platinum series book, for $8,000.

Steve Smith's book

Congratulations to Steve Smith on the publication of his book, The Weather and a Place to Live: Photographs of the Suburban West. Which was made possible by, The Center for Documantary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize from Duke University.

And I remember when Steve Smith came to RISD. I wonder if he'll sign my copy.

The Ongoing Moment

Is anybody reading The Ongoing Moment, by Geoff Dyer? I hope to finish it this week. It looks promising. Here's a review. If you are in LA (wish I was), he has a reading at The Hammer Museum in November. More HERE.

Abercrombie-Vogue

Some things I never got to post this summer:

• The Polaroid Book, from Tashen
• "Who is Platon?"
• My fantastical idea to collect every magazine cover by Herb Ritts.
• Pitt & Jolie's romp through W
• David Hilliard
• Being underemployed
• American & Other Works, by Andres Serrano
• Why I bought the 800 paged Vogue
• My desire to buy Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs from ebay. I bought a red hoody instead.
• Leitmotif: Photos of celebrities with guns; Madonna and here, Morrissey, Nancy Sinatra, Brad Pitt, Mapplethorpe

Richard Avedon's latest book

Looked through the book, Woman In The Mirror, published posthumously by Richard Avedon, recently during a very un-Funny Face lunch break at Olsson's. Not into this one. The NYT had this to say, "Avedon's photography animated women with spirit and determination." Read the rest HERE. OK, I get it, Dick liked women. Well, I like men and I'm over this. Seriously, In what seems like a pattern of a new book of Avedon's every two years, Woman In The Mirror, is the weakest. We've seen more than 90% of this stuff too recently in other collections. I will say, it was nice to recall a previous fall afternoon when I discovered Avedon's "return to fashion" in the New Yorker years ago, where Nadja Auermann was paired with a skeleton. Which brings up the question, when will his last project (unfinshed), for the New Yorker, "Democracy" be put in book form? Might I suggest pairing it with his 1976 work for Rolling Stone, "The Family," as was done earlier this year at Andrea Rosen Gallery. An election year is right around the corner, get ready.