Like many who grew up during the spread of sprawl — with its predictable landscape of housing developments, interstate highways, and big-box construction — acclaimed photographer Jeff Brouws is intrigued by places that still show signs of the vernacular past. What began as cultural geography of Main Streets became a visual critique of the myth of upward mobility that created this car-centered, paved-over universe. Combining a minimal, bleak beauty with understated social commentary, these evocative color photographs seek a deeper meaning behind the cycle of construction, decay, decline and renewal. Approaching Nowhere is a meditation on the loss of place and texture in the contemporary American landscape. Brouws' luminous images elegantly capture the complex, surprising beauty and desolation of visual life in our time, as seen from the American road. The potency of the work reflects both Brouws' perceptive vision of the country's changing face and his concern for the shifting shape of its soul. View Exhibition → Jeff Brouws has traveled the country for two decades, documenting an America that is at once quintessential and peculiar. Readymades is a multi-layered catalog of found art in the landscape: partially painted pickup trucks, storage units, vibrant-hued tract homes, unique signage, and abandoned drive-in movie theaters all fall under the photographer's gaze. Provocative essays by leading writers and cultural commentators such as Luc Sante, DJ Waldie, M. Mark, Diana Gaston, Bruce Caron, and Phil Patton are juxtaposed with these images that seek beauty, uniqueness and meaning in the mundane. Elijah Gowin's Hymnal of Dreams is influenced by his ancestral roots in the southern United States and by the rich heritage of magical realism in American art and literature. His intricate constructions fuse folk art, theater, memory, and dreams, resulting in creations that are strangely familiar yet beyond the realm of pure logic. These visual puzzles invite exploration and discovery on the part of the viewer. A steel frame bed hovers in a dimly lit forest clearing, slung by various lengths of rope from the surrounding tree; an elderly woman pauses by a whitewashed building, her hands grasping a series of ropes tied to the fluttering silhouettes of birds; an arcane board game lies unfinished, its playing surface edged by old family snapshots. These images and others comprise Gowin's mysterious and evocative Hymnal of Dreams. The power of his photographs lies in their ability to guide us into the subconscious, where dreams and reality commingle. This catalog was published to coincide with an exhibition at Robert Mann Gallery. Selections from Chip Hooper's series California's Pacific are included in this catalog, along with a haiku by Jane Reichhold of Gualala, California. Hooper began to photograph the ocean along the Pacific Coast in the late 1980s, lured by its majesty and tranquility — and by the unique quality of light found there. California's Pacific balances lush, descriptive pieces with minimalist, abstract images in which light and water are the only subject. This catalog accompanied a 2004 exhibition at Robert Mann Gallery. View Exhibition → Selections from Chip Hooper's series New Zealand's South Pacific & Tasman Sea are included in this catalog, along with a haiku by Cyril Childs of Port Chalmers, New Zealand. Photographs from this series were made along the coast of the South Island of New Zealand, as part of Hooper's ongoing project photographing the oceans of the world. This catalog accompanied a 2007 exhibition at Robert Mann Gallery. View Exhibition → The small tidal island of Mont St Michel is situated just off the Normandy coast, connected to the mainland by a single causeway. Its abbey rises like a mirage, high above the sea, on this craggy, rocky perch. It is a spectacular sight, and one that Kenna has been drawn to many times over the years. By day, the island is alive with cars, buses, people, noise. It can seem a garish place. But at night, it becomes as originally intended: a place for peace, prayer, and quiet contemplation. It is that gentler face of Mont St Michel that Kenna wanted to photograph and, after the crowds have gone home, he has been able to do so. Alone, he has climbed the bell tower, explored the crypts and chapels, and ambled along the silent lanes of the island. He has watched, totally undisturbed, as the light changed, shadows came and went, and clouds subtley floated this way and that. While his camera shutter was open for long, long exposures, Kenna cherished the silence. He sees these photographs as a personal record of this time of solitary exploration; it is a record we are privileged to share. Kenna has dedicated this book to his father and, in a deeply moving introduction, he describes the connection he feels between this solid, calm, inspirational place and his much-loved parent. The Northern Japanese island of Hokkaido has abundant natural forests, clear lakes, and magnificent mountains. It is perhaps best known for its intense and brutal winters. Snow and ice make many parts of the island inaccessible and the local Sea of Okhotsk routinely freezes over. Michael Kenna has been photographing throughout Hokkaido, in these extreme conditions, for the past several years. The 84 photographs in this book are the result of his explorations. Beautifully printed on heavy, uncoated Japanese paper using special black inks, Hokkaido is bound in thin maple wooden boards and housed in a special slipcase. The book is designed by renowned Japanese designer Hideyuki Taguchi, and opens with an introduction by Daido Moriyama. Published to coincide with a major exhibition of Kenna's work opening in Spring 2006 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Michael Kenna's photographs have long inspired words such as mysterious, elegant, and hauntingly beautiful — adjectives that likewise describe the Japanese landscape. The photographs in this monograph are the result of an ideal pairing of artist and subject. Kenna has had a large following in Japan ever since his first exhibition there in 1987. His many subsequent exhibitions and publications in Japan provided him with ample opportunities to visit and photograph. The resulting images are stunning. Superbly printed in tritone, Japan is hardbound in red cloth and presented in a folding slipcase. View Exhibition → Nazraeli Press has re-issued Michael Kenna: A Twenty Year Retrospective in a larger format than previous editions, with high fidelity tritones printed 1:1 from original prints. Born in the industrial north of England, Michael Kenna has lived in San Francisco since 1980. His mysterious photographs, often made at dawn or in the dark hours of night, concentrate on the interaction between natural landscape and man-made structures. His work has been shown throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan, and is in such permanent collections as The Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; The Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; The National Gallery of Art, Washington; and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In her foreword, Ruth Bernhard describes Kenna's prints as "exquisitely seductive, spiritual experiences, akin to poetry and music." An essay by Peter C. Bunnell considers Kenna's background and development, providing a thoughtful introduction to the 130 images that represent the twenty-year period from 1974 to 1994. Michael Kenna began photographing the Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station in Nottinghamshire, England in the early 1980s, and in the ensuing years visited the site many times, producing a body of work as ominous as it is beautiful. The Ratcliffe photographs take on the tonal quality of a partially lit ecosphere unique to the photographer and his subject. A brilliant manipulator of half-light, Kenna's grainy, spatial topography epitomizes the gray skies of Northern England that were the ubiquitous backdrop to his childhood. Kenna's Ratcliffe photographs create the impression of an atmospherically foggy day, registering the homeostasis of a mood that is a dominant characteristic of his work. La Méthode is Laurent Millet's newest body of work, a series of photographs that portray fragile, fantastical houses on the shore. For the first time, Millet pairs his black and white photographs with color images. Constructed of found objects, these small, inanimate buildings have a life of their own; some sprout legs of rusted wire or gnarled branches from their brilliant orange and yellow facades. Others reveal intricate diagrams and enigmatic messages scrawled across the surface. The black and white images are more somber, carrying on the meditative spirit that is at the heart of much of Millet's past work, and calling to mind past series completed by the artist, such as The Petite Machines and The Wind Traps. The structure of the catalog itself captures the playful spirit of Millet's La Méthode series — it folds like an accordion, allowing it to be displayed vertically as a unique piece of artwork. The photographs of Austrian painter Artur Nikodem were not exhibited or discussed outside of the studio until after his death. The images in Photographic Essays on Intimacy examine this rarely seen aspect of his creative life. Although he worked as a painter for the bulk of his artistic career, he was also a prolific photographer, documenting the small towns and pastoral beauty of the Austrian countryside as well as the women in his life. Nikodem captures the essence of these women: his lover Gunda Wiese (who died of tuberculosis), and his wife, Barbara Hoyer. These sensual portraits portray the erotic tension between the older artist and his much younger subjects. The body language is reminiscent of the work of Egon Schiele. Artur Nikodem's portraits have also invited comparison to the series of photographs by Alfred Stieglitz of Georgia O'Keefe, similarly characterized by both playful experimentation and somber meditation. Many of Nikodem's photographs were printed only once, making them singular objects of art. Published by Robert Mann Gallery to coincide with the exhibition of the same name, with images reproduced 1:1 from the original photographs, this book provides a unique and valuable insight into Nikodem's life and work. View Exhibition → Susan Rankaitis completed her Limbicwork series in 2005 at Europas Parkas, the Outdoor Museum of Central Europe in Vilnius, Lithuania. Suspended in the dense forest, long arcs and loops of bright plastic tubing represent the components of the limbic system, part of the brain which influences the formation of memory by connecting emotion to physical sensation. By choosing the Vilnius site, Rankaitis also references the persecution of the Lithuanian people by both the Nazis and the Russian Army. Of Lithuanian descent herself, Rankaitis felt a kinship both to the landscape and to the group of young artists with whom she worked to complete the series. The resulting photographs — ranging from mural-sized prints to images no larger than a postcard — are the end product of the Limbicwork installation. Early in the morning, before breakfast and the beginning of the workday, photographer Jem Southam takes to the countryside of southwest England, visiting and revisiting the hills and dales of Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset. His lyrical photographs of these places, taken in series over long periods of time, chart the subtle evolution of this picturesque countryside as it has been transformed by both natural processes and human intervention. Ostensibly topographic and descriptive, each achieves a greater power thanks to an allegorical language that draws on our collective imagination. Landscape Stories is the first comprehensive collection of Southam's work, drawn from three completed series: "The Pond at Upton Pyne," "The Red River," and "Rockfalls, Rivermouths, and Ponds," along with several smaller groups of pictures from series still in the making. Southam's brief narratives about each site — together with essays by Gerry Badger and Andy Grundberg, which examine Southam's work from European and American perspectives, respectively — create a rich context for viewing these remarkable, large-format photographs. Containing 133 photographs, this book offers an insight into Henry Wessel's work, from his early photographs in the 1960s to his most recent series in Las Vegas, 2000-2004. In Wessel's images the idiosyncrasies and anomalies of Southern California and the American West are chronicled with a wry objectivity. Insightful and often ironic, these photographs demonstrate that photography can surpass its documentary role to embrace speculation and suggest narrative. Ultimately the work challenges not only our expectations of the photographic medium, but our ways of seeing and our preconceptions about the familiar. "Wessel's remarkable work: witty, evocative and inventive, is distinctive and at the same time a component part of the great development of photography which flourished in the 1970s. The pictures continue to grow and evolve and the work is now regarded as an individual and important contribution to twentieth-century American photography." (from the introductory essay by Sandra Phillips, Curator of Photography at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) View Exhibition → The photographs in these five books represent a sustained effort to describe the contemporary vernacular landscape of Southern California and the American West. From his early work in the 1970s to the most recent series in Las Vegas (2000-2004), Wessel's wit and insight illuminate a world rich in nuance, humor, and irony. For the past thirty years, Henry Wessel has observed and recorded the unusual and the iconic, the light, the landscape, and the surprising effects both have on the people who made their way to the edge. In the end, the work creates a synthesis that reflects our world back on to us, challenging us to examine our preconceptions of Southern California and the American West. View Exhibition →