Wen-You Cai: Minnan Exit
$65.95
(available in store)
Summary:
Since 2015, Wen-You Cai has returned on multiple occasions to her parents' hometown of Quanzhou, Fujian, to attend the funerals of her deceased relatives. The ceremonies in the Minnan region unfold like grand dramas in which she is both an observer and a participant. Throughout the ceremony, Wen-You is enveloped in the unknown; everything seems meticulously arranged.(...)
Photography monographs
May 2025
Wen-You Cai: Minnan Exit
Actions:
Price:
$65.95
(available in store)
Summary:
Since 2015, Wen-You Cai has returned on multiple occasions to her parents' hometown of Quanzhou, Fujian, to attend the funerals of her deceased relatives. The ceremonies in the Minnan region unfold like grand dramas in which she is both an observer and a participant. Throughout the ceremony, Wen-You is enveloped in the unknown; everything seems meticulously arranged. Amidst the overwhelming grief of losing loved ones, there exists a feeling of confusion, and taking photographs was one of the ways for her to engage in the funeral process. For this photo series, Wen-You was initially confronted by her own fear of death, intertwined with her bewilderment and curiosity about the complex funeral rituals and its uniqueness inherent to Minnan culture. To demystify these subjects, Wen-You, joined by te editions, interviewed a funeral director who provides comprehensive “one-stop services,” a monk who hosts Buddhist ceremonies, and a folklorist of Minnan rituals. Minnan Exit can be interpreted as many things–a family album, a curated collection of photographs, an unfinished journey of discovery, as well as the process of Wen-You's reconciliation with her mortality.
Photography monographs
$43.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Rivers, on a long view, are alive. They are born; they change; they shift their channels; they forge new routes to the sea; they move both gradually and violently; they can teem (usually) with life; they may die a quasi-natural death; they are frequently maimed and even murdered. It is the annual flood pulse?the brief time when the river occupies the floodplain?that gives(...)
In praise of floods: The untamed river and the life it brings
Actions:
Price:
$43.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Rivers, on a long view, are alive. They are born; they change; they shift their channels; they forge new routes to the sea; they move both gradually and violently; they can teem (usually) with life; they may die a quasi-natural death; they are frequently maimed and even murdered. It is the annual flood pulse?the brief time when the river occupies the floodplain?that gives a river its vitality, but it is human engineering that kills it, suppressing the flood pulse with dams, irrigation, siltation, dikes, and levees. In demonstrating these threats to the riverine world, award-winning author James C. Scott examines the life history of a particular river, the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) of Burma, the heartland and superhighway of Burman culture. Scott opens our understanding of rivers to encompass their entirety?tributaries, wetlands, floodplains, backwaters, eddies, periodic marshlands, and the assemblage of life forms dependent on rivers for their existence and well-being. For anyone interested in the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration, rivers offer a striking example of the consequences of human intervention in trying to control and domesticate a natural process, the complexity and variability of which we barely understand.
Landscape Theory
books
$75.00
(available in store)
Summary:
Cemetery and landscape studies have been hallmarks of North African archaeology for more than one hundred years. "Mortuary landscapes of North Africa" is the first book to combine these two fields by considering North African cemeteries within the context of their wider landscapes. This unique perspective allows for new interpretations of notions of identity, community,(...)
November 2006, Toronto, Buffalo, London
Mortuary landscapes of North Africa
Actions:
Price:
$75.00
(available in store)
Summary:
Cemetery and landscape studies have been hallmarks of North African archaeology for more than one hundred years. "Mortuary landscapes of North Africa" is the first book to combine these two fields by considering North African cemeteries within the context of their wider landscapes. This unique perspective allows for new interpretations of notions of identity, community, imperial influence, and sacred space. Based on a wealth of material research from current fieldwork, this collection of essays investigates how North African funerary monuments acted as regional boundaries, markers of identity and status, and barometers of cultural change. The essays cover a broad range in terms of space and time – from southern Libya to eastern Algeria, and from the seventh century BCE to the seventh century CE. A comprehensive introduction explains the importance of the 'landscape perspective' that these studies bring to North African funerary monuments, while individual case-studies address such topics as the African way of death among the Garamantes, the ritual reasons for the location of certain Early Christian tombs, Punic burials, Roman cupula tombs, and the effects of rapid state formation and imperial incorporation on tomb builders.
books
November 2006, Toronto, Buffalo, London
$91.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Joseph Gandy’s life is in many respects the familiar saga of genius unrecognized. Upon his death he seemed to the world, and to himself, a failure. Having begun his career with high hopes, great imagination and exceptional talent, he ended it in a state of neglect and obscurity. A century and a half later Gandy is recognized as one of the most original figures of(...)
Joseph Gandy : an architectural visionary in Georgian England
Actions:
Price:
$91.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Joseph Gandy’s life is in many respects the familiar saga of genius unrecognized. Upon his death he seemed to the world, and to himself, a failure. Having begun his career with high hopes, great imagination and exceptional talent, he ended it in a state of neglect and obscurity. A century and a half later Gandy is recognized as one of the most original figures of English romanticism. Works such as "Pandemonium" or "Tomb of Merlin" have a hypnotic power that he brought to bear on Sir John Soane’s bizarre "Monk’s Parlour" at his renowned house-musuem in Lincoln’s Inn and on the lost masterpiece of Soane’s Bank of England in the City of London, buildings that we have come to see through Gandy’s eyes. Brian Lukacher, the acknowledged authority on Gandy, has now written the definitive life of this architect-artist who exemplified the cultural temper of the romantic period. It is a fresh, deeply researched biography and a critical assessment of Gandy’s work in its historical context. It is a tragic story but also an inspiring one, and a significant episode in the history of the architectural imagination and the visual arts during the nineteenth century.
Architecture Monographs
$56.00
(available to order)
Summary:
He was the most iconoclastic of architects, and at the height of his career his output of writings about architecture was as prolific and visionary as his architecture itself. Frank Lloyd Wright pioneered a bold new kind of architecture, one in which the spirit of modern man truly "lived in his buildings." "The Essential Frank Lloyd Wright" is a one-volume compendium of(...)
Architecture Monographs
March 2008, Princeton, Oxford
The essential Frank Lloyd Wright : critical writings on architecture
Actions:
Price:
$56.00
(available to order)
Summary:
He was the most iconoclastic of architects, and at the height of his career his output of writings about architecture was as prolific and visionary as his architecture itself. Frank Lloyd Wright pioneered a bold new kind of architecture, one in which the spirit of modern man truly "lived in his buildings." "The Essential Frank Lloyd Wright" is a one-volume compendium of Wright's most critically important - and personally revealing - writings on every conceivable aspect of his craft. Wright was perhaps the most influential and inspired architect of the twentieth century, and this is the only book that gathers all of his most significant essays, lectures, and articles on architecture. Bruce Pfeiffer includes each piece in its entirety to present the architect's writings as he originally intended them. Beginning early in Wright's career with "The Art and Craft of the Machine" in 1901, the book follows major themes through "The Disappearing City", "The Natural House", and many other writings, and ends with "A Testament" in 1957, published two years before his death. This volume is illustrated with original drawings and photographs, and is complemented by Pfeiffer's general introduction, which provides history and context.
Architecture Monographs
books
$78.00
(available to order)
Summary:
László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) was one of the most ardent seekers of the ‘New Vision’ among the early twentieth century avant-garde artists. His ongoing preoccupation with the phenomenon of light defined all periods of his artistic creativity, and his strength lay in his effortless skill translating light and spatial dimensions from one medium to another. In the early(...)
Photography monographs
January 1900, Göttingen
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy : color in transparency, photographic experiments in color
Actions:
Price:
$78.00
(available to order)
Summary:
László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) was one of the most ardent seekers of the ‘New Vision’ among the early twentieth century avant-garde artists. His ongoing preoccupation with the phenomenon of light defined all periods of his artistic creativity, and his strength lay in his effortless skill translating light and spatial dimensions from one medium to another. In the early 1930s the first color processes became widely available. After he had mastered the different fields of black/white photography, it was only to be expected that Moholy would focus his creative energy on the next hot issue among photographers. Color photography proved to be one of Moholy’s most important media of artistic production, but until now, with a few exceptions, his work in the field of color photography is unknown. This book presents 100 works — advertisements, portraits, urban views, New Bauhaus studies, and abstract compositions — from the early days of Moholy’s experimentation with color in 1934 until his death in 1946. A foreword by Hattula Moholy-Nagy, an introductory essay and extended captions by Jeannine Fiedler, a chronology and bibliography will present the history of color photography and the significance of these works in Moholy’s own oeuvre.
books
January 1900, Göttingen
Photography monographs
Degas and his model
$16.95
(available to order)
Summary:
"Monsieur Degas, you just said some things that would make an old soldier blush!" There are many myths about Edgar Degas—from Degas the misanthrope to Degas the deviant to Degas the obsessive. But there is no single text that better stokes the fire than Degas and His Model, a short memoir by Alice Michel, who purportedly modeled for Degas. Never before translated into(...)
Degas and his model
Actions:
Price:
$16.95
(available to order)
Summary:
"Monsieur Degas, you just said some things that would make an old soldier blush!" There are many myths about Edgar Degas—from Degas the misanthrope to Degas the deviant to Degas the obsessive. But there is no single text that better stokes the fire than Degas and His Model, a short memoir by Alice Michel, who purportedly modeled for Degas. Never before translated into English, the text’s original publication in Mercure de France in 1919, shortly after the artist’s death, has been treated as an important account of the master sculptor at work. We know that Alice was writing under a pseudonym, but who the real person behind this account was remains a mystery. Yet the descriptions seem too accurate, the anecdotes too spot-on to discount; even the dialogue captures the artist’s tone and mannerisms. What is found in these pages is at times a woman’s flirtatious recollection of a bizarre “artistic type” and at others a moving attempt to connect with a great, often tragic man. The descriptions are limpid; the dialogue is lively and intimate, not unlike reading the very best kind of gossip, with world-historical significance.
Art Theory
Curating as ethics
$39.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Today, everyone is a curator. What was once considered a hallowed expertise is now a commonplace and global activity. Can this new worldwide activity be ethical and, if yes, how? This book argues that curating can be more than just selecting, organizing, and presenting information in galleries or online. Curating can also constitute an ethics, one of acquiring, arranging,(...)
Curating as ethics
Actions:
Price:
$39.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Today, everyone is a curator. What was once considered a hallowed expertise is now a commonplace and global activity. Can this new worldwide activity be ethical and, if yes, how? This book argues that curating can be more than just selecting, organizing, and presenting information in galleries or online. Curating can also constitute an ethics, one of acquiring, arranging, and distributing an always conjectural knowledge about the world. 'Curating as Ethics' is primarily philosophical in scope, evading normative approaches to ethics in favor of an intuitive ethics that operates at the threshold of thought and action. It explores the work of authors as diverse as Heidegger, Spinoza, Meillassoux, Mudimbe, Chalier, and Kofman. Jean-Paul Martinon begins with the fabric of these ethics: how it stems from matter, how it addresses death, how it apprehends interhuman relationships. In the second part he establishes the ground on which the ethics is based, the things that make up the curatorial—for example, the textual and visual evidence or the digital medium. The final part focuses on the activity of curating as such—sharing, caring, preparing, dispensing, and so on.
Museology
$73.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Including newly commissioned essays by curators and scholars, this book explores how Sottsass’s art and philosophy presaged the dawn of PCs, the service industry, and the gig economy. Ettore Sottsass was an architect, industrial designer, painter, writer, photographer, and founder of the Memphis group, whose designs are undergoing an impressive renaissance. But Sottsass(...)
Ettore Sottsass and the social factory
Actions:
Price:
$73.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Including newly commissioned essays by curators and scholars, this book explores how Sottsass’s art and philosophy presaged the dawn of PCs, the service industry, and the gig economy. Ettore Sottsass was an architect, industrial designer, painter, writer, photographer, and founder of the Memphis group, whose designs are undergoing an impressive renaissance. But Sottsass was more than just an important designer. His approach to object design–marked by bold colors, tactility, and vitality–was a direct response to the world of mass production and the assembly-line economy. This revelatory collection of essays by leading thinkers in the fields of political theory, economics, the media, design history, and cultural theory contextualizes Sottsass’s work in unprecedented arguments that draw a line from his work at Olivetti to the iconoclastic designs he produced at the dawn of the 21st century. Divided into five chronological sections–from the late 1950s to Sottsass’s death in 2007– these essays are illustrated with vibrant images of his work and archival photographs. Deeply researched, the book makes crucial connections between postwar Europe and America, and the way we work and live today.
Design Monographs
$60.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Samuel Mockbee believed in architecture as a tool for social and environmental change. He also understood the limitations of traditional architectural teaching in providing the students with hands-on experience and a moral sense of service to the community. And so he founded the Rural Studio, 200 miles west of the Auburn University campus, in the heart of Alabama's(...)
The making of the porch house
Actions:
Price:
$60.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Samuel Mockbee believed in architecture as a tool for social and environmental change. He also understood the limitations of traditional architectural teaching in providing the students with hands-on experience and a moral sense of service to the community. And so he founded the Rural Studio, 200 miles west of the Auburn University campus, in the heart of Alabama's poorest county, Hale. Until Mockbee's death in 2001, the studio had sown the land with thirty homes and community buildings. Under its successor, Andrew Freear, an architect hailing from England and a product of London's Architectural Association, the studio has continued to thrive. Over the last fifteen years, it has earned the respect of the communities it works with. Work is now pouring in, and its ambitions have grown with its reputation: larger projects are being undertaken, budgets have increased and students are now able to take on greater responsibility. In 2006, the Rural Studio was selected by the American Institute of Architects to represent the country at the famed Sao Paulo Art Biennial. Each and everyone of the forty projects exhibited was designed and built by students.
Architecture Monographs