A constellation of freckles. Interlocked knees. A folded torso. The feminine rendered sculptural. Olivia Malone’s (b. 1982, American) Tonal is, at its core, a study of color. Married with her interest in the natural abstractions possible within the female form, the book is an embodied spectrum. Through fragmentation, Malone twists and turns the body into new shapes; a unique perspective transforming details of the figure into the unrecognizable. By the introduction of a myriad of textures, the project plays with light and material to create the desired tone. Not being defined or limited by skin tone, each photograph becomes hue specific. Whites, pinks, reds and browns are generated and assembled into a gradient of images, taking us from the absence of tone to the richly saturated and back again. Each image then stands alone as a sensorial study while also shaping the larger body collage. Whether submerged, contorted, or embraced, the language of the female body is redefined through distinct contours and imprints left behind.
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First edition of 1,000 copies. Special edition of 50 copies, numbered, in paperboard slipcase, screen printed in burgundy, with signed original print. Choice of 4 prints.
+ Publication details
Published in 2020 by Libraryman
First edition:
ISBN 978–91–88113–38–2
23 x 30 cm. 80 pages. 54 color plates. Offset printed hardcover. Linen thread bound. Printed cloth cover. Beige headband.
Additional information
| Weight | 0.5 kg |
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Bela Borsodi – Unicorn
Books & MagazinesUnicorn by Bela Borsodi (b. 1966, Austrian) is comprised of a series of seemingly abstract still life photographs, which upon further inspection reveal themselves to be tautly illustrative photographic rebus puzzles — allusive devices that use pictures to represent words or parts of words. When viewed without context, the photographs contain a seemingly random conflation of imagery and items, but slowly and through observation, patterns emerge through clues laid throughout the frame. Objects appear precisely placed, and letters indicate verbal additions or subtractions. You start to break down the images into sectors, forcing yourself to look at the photographs in a manner unlike your regular ways of seeing. You excoriate the frame, searching for clues. By the time you’ve solved the puzzle, you’ve also luxuriated into a new photographic realm. [spb_text_block title="" animation="none" animation_delay="0" simplified_controls="yes" custom_css_percentage="no" padding_vertical="0" padding_horizontal="0" margin_vertical="0" border_size="0" border_styling_global="default" width="1/1" el_position="first last"][/spb_text_block] [spb_toggle title="+ Read more" open="false" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]
Importantly noted, Borsodi’s images are composed entirely in camera. While from afar they might seem to be abstract collages combining unconnected images and overlaid typography, Borsodi’s control of composition is nothing if not entirely ordered. The seemingly flat typographic clues are in fact three dimensional hand crafted letters placed among the objects. Through these elements, the images do two things at once — they aesthetically compel as visual art must and also work as a thematic device. “They are ruthlessly governed by utmost restriction and inflexibility,” says Borsodi. “Creating a solvable functional puzzle AND a cohesive attractive meaningful photograph with a message was my initiative.” So as not to deny any of us the pleasure of solving Borsodi’s intriguing compositions, too much explanation of any image’s meaning here should be avoided. But it is important to state that each image’s word retains a strong connection to the artist himself, and in some ways can be viewed as a subliminal summary of the artist’s ethos and character. [/spb_toggle] [spb_toggle title="+ Publication details" open="false" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Published in 2018 by Libraryman First edition of 700 copies. ISBN 978–91–88113–15–3 23,5 cm x 30 cm. 40 pages. 20 color plates. Offset printed clothbound hardcover. Linen thread bound. White headband. Authentic tip-in image on front cover with typography on spine and back cover in gold foil. [/spb_toggle]
Lisa Sorgini – Behind Glass
Books & Magazines, Goods, LibraryLisa Sorgini (b. 1980, Australian) is a photographic artist that has found her own maternal experience to be central to the themes in her work. Behind Glass, offers a layered exploration of motherhood as shown during the months of the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic, as unprecedented stay-at-home measures swept across Australia and the World. It’s an opus that stands as both a creative commentary and an important cultural record. Born of the pandemic, shooting began for the series as the first stay-at-home orders came into force in Australia. Making portraits of those in her immediate community, It’s a body of work motivated by a need to make visible the unseen role of parenting during such isolation and one that evokes a spectrum of deep tenderness, tedium, quietude, love, frustration, fear, and despair. These works present the light and darkness of motherhood during these extended periods of lockdown; the use of soft lighting and tonal contrast bringing this metaphor to visual life. [spb_text_block title="" animation="none" animation_delay="0" simplified_controls="yes" custom_css_percentage="no" padding_vertical="0" padding_horizontal="0" margin_vertical="0" border_size="0" border_styling_global="default" width="1/1" el_position="first last"][/spb_text_block] [spb_toggle title="+ Read more" open="false" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]
Each work is framed by a window in the home, a practice that feels poignant given the circumstances of mandated isolation where no contact was allowed. It’s a process that suspends each subject within a liminal space of transference and adaptation, one that mothers endure but children are protected from. Babies are seen clinging to their mothers. Tiny hands tug at clothing and skin. Each image, a delicate assemblage of flesh, unposed, set against the backdrop of quiet familiarity. There’s tenderness, but also an omnipresent claustrophobia and intensity. Dewy faces and subdued tonality lends some works the appearance of a baroque portrait. It’s a disarming technique that adds to the body of work’s transcendence and timeless narrative. One mother looks out from the pane – seen for a moment in a time they were only just beginning to understand, her expression almost indecipherable. Behind glass, mother and child appear like living and breathing masterpieces – divine comedies of domesticity. Whilst informing of a particular time, Behind Glass also speaks more broadly of the existing maternal experience. Its most blatant subtext is that of motherhood as contextualised within the modern western milieu; where women lie at the core of an intense inner world whilst continuing to remain begrudgingly detached from the outer. Yet central to this story is also the concept of hope and connective awareness. Mothers joined through a collective experience. Through this work, the unseen is seen. [/spb_toggle] [spb_toggle title="+ Publication details" open="false" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] The book contains a foreword by writer and curator Federica Chiocchetti (b. 1983, Italian). First edition of 1,000 copies. Special edition of 25 copies, numbered, in paperboard slipcase, screen printed in bordeaux, with signed original print. Published in 2021 by Libraryman ISBN 978–91–88113–53–5 24 x 29,3 cm. 64 pages. 34 color plates. Offset printed paperbound hardcover. Linen thread bound. Beige headband. Typography on front cover, spine and back cover in bordeaux foil. [/spb_toggle]
Saul Leiter – Francois Halard
Books & MagazinesWhat is left when everything is gone? In 2015, François Halard (b. 1961, French) visited late Saul Leiter’s almost empty apartment in the East Village, two years after his passing, in 2013. He took photographs of the decrepit walls, the empty closet, and of what Saul Leiter had left behind. Saul Leiter (1923–2013) was an American painter and photographer whose work was deeply connected to the East Village, the neighborhood he lived in for over fifty five years. His sometimes abstract, always soulful, photography constitutes a record of street scenes in both black & white and color. After the release of a first book in 2006, fifty years after he started working, Leiter has been considered a pioneer in color photography, even if he would have resented the use of the word; he just happened to have his camera with him, never particularly planning to take photographs as he explained in the 2011 documentary In No Great Hurry: » I don’t know if I’m going to get what I’m going to get «. [spb_text_block title="" animation="none" animation_delay="0" simplified_controls="yes" custom_css_percentage="no" padding_vertical="0" padding_horizontal="0" margin_vertical="0" border_size="0" border_styling_global="default" width="1/1" el_position="first last"][/spb_text_block] [spb_toggle title="+ Read more" open="false" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]
François Halard somehow manages to catch the spirit of Saul Leiter, turning the pages you feel he might appear in the next spread. Or at least his cat will. But the space remains beautifully empty. Except for the bodies and people present in the photographs he left behind which François Halard photographed as part of the interior. This might be the most surprising element yet; bodies and people appearing in François Halard’s photography, most of the time strictly uninhabited. They are Halard’s homage to Saul Leiter. First edition of 1,500 copies. Special edition of 50 copies + 6 Artist Proofs, numbered, in clothbound slipcase, typography in silver foil, with signed archival pigment print. Japanese edition of 100 copies, numbered, in clothbound slipcase, typography in white foil, with signed archival pigment print. Choice of 10 prints—10 copies of each print. Sold exclusively through Twelvebooks. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Saul Leiter by François Halard, curated by Libraryman, in Tokyo, Japan at POST. [/spb_toggle] [spb_toggle title="+ Publication details" open="false" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Published in 2017 by Libraryman Second edition: ISBN 978–91–88113–36–8 23,5 cm x 28,5 cm. 64 pages. 45 color plates. Offset printed clothbound hardcover. Linen thread bound. Black headband. Authentic tip-in image on front cover with typography on front cover, spine and back cover in black foil. [/spb_toggle]
Ron Jude – Vitreous China
Books & MagazinesRon Jude’s (b. 1965, American) Vitreous China is comprised of an archive of photographs he made while exploring areas of light industry in (primarily) Midwestern American cities. Rather than comment on the workings of industry itself, Jude depicts the ambient peripheral zones suffusing these environments: big rig parking lots, side exits, and other secondary spaces in which Jude imagines his grandfather might have daydreamed, or let his mind wander, during his many years as a kiln operator in vitreous china plants, first in the Midwest, and later in Southern California. [spb_text_block title="" animation="none" animation_delay="0" simplified_controls="yes" custom_css_percentage="no" padding_vertical="0" padding_horizontal="0" margin_vertical="0" border_size="0" border_styling_global="default" width="1/1" el_position="first last"][/spb_text_block] [spb_toggle title="+ Read more" open="false" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]
Supplanting the narrative inadequacies of photography with an alternate experience of atmospheric immersion, Jude exploits the seemingly factual, descriptive traits of the medium while also pursuing moments of subjective transcendence. Like the paradoxical relationship between the surface beauty of vitreous china (an enamel coating applied to porcelain) and its blunt, utilitarian function (strengthening toilets & sinks), the photographs, interwoven with a series of short texts by Mike Slack, attempt to tease out an experience that embraces both the physical crudeness of these spaces as well as the intangible complexes of memory and narrative encoded within them. [/spb_toggle] [spb_toggle title="+ Publication details" open="false" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Published in 2017 by Libraryman Second edition, revised, in paperbound hardcover. ISBN 978–91–88113–11–5 16 cm x 20 cm. 54 pages. 1 fold-out. 29 color plates. Color offset printed paperbound hardcover. Linen thread bound. Typography on front cover, spine and back cover in black foil. Headband in black. [/spb_toggle]