Books
Photographing the Universal Drama of the School Playground
Even if you don't remember a lick of elementary school classwork, it's likely the joys and terrors of the schoolyard linger.
Books
Books
Finding a Haven for Taboo Fantasies in Erotica
Reviewing erotica is a difficult task, and maybe a futile one.
Books
Grayson Perry's Art World 101
Grayson Perry's Playing to the Gallery is presented as a beginner’s guide to the machinations of the art world, though it also holds a mirror up to the so-called “certainty freaks” — members of the art world who have an axe to grind or are stubbornly set in their beliefs.
Books
Still Photographs that Convey the Passage of Time
In the '60s, photographers anxious about the art form's legitimacy set out to distinguish fine art from documentary practices.
Books
You've Been Shot by a Smooth Photographer: The World of Michael Jackson Impersonators
Lorena Turner’s book The Michael Jacksons is the end product of a journey to track down, photograph, and interview Michael Jackson impersonators.
Books
A Personal Journey Through the Legacy of Apartheid
Catherine Taylor’s book centers on her search — what feels like an obsessive search — through veins of history buried in the time of apartheid in South Africa, where she and her family are from.
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Photographs Document the Global Traditions of Living with the Dead
Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us, a photography book by Paul Koudounaris out this month from Thames & Hudson, is a visual narrative of how a more visceral relationship to the dead thrives across the globe.
Books
A Poetic Record of Creations Lost, Missing, or Destroyed
Rarely has a book been so dizzyingly impenetrable while being, at the same time, so eminently readable. Les Unités perdus (The lost unities), by the French poet Henri Lefebvre, manages to both live up to this paradox and flourish within its idiosyncratic ramparts.
Books
A Comic Draws on the Dark Side of Hollywood's Golden Age
When the double-sized first issue of The Fade Out surfaced last summer — an ongoing comic noir set in 1940s Los Angeles — a share of the print run featured a limited-edition cover (commonly called a "variant" cover).
Books
A Graphic Novel Portrait of Slavery in Brazil
The history of black slavery in Brazil has largely been told from the perspective of the colonizers, not the enslaved.
Books
Inside Andy Warhol's Book Factory
It’s strange to picture Andy Warhol curled up with a novel, but the eccentric pop artist “lived and breathed" books, according to Warhol by the Book, the first US museum exhibition to explore the literary side of his practice.
Books
The Mystery of the Painter of Light™
Thomas Kinkade was a painter of cabins, lighthouses, and improvable sunsets. He was an avowed evangelical Christian who fortified his saccharine landscapes with passages from the scriptures.