Art and Photography
Here you will find books in the genre of of art and photography. Reviews are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent review appearing first in the list.
Master Breasts
A few years ago, I organized a visiting speaker to my college to talk about ethical issues for women contemplating breast implants. I had to get approval an…
Angry Youth Comix #2
This comic book highlights the gross; most readers will just think it’s stupid. I don’t really know who would enjoy Angry Youth Comix. I can’t say I…
Stranger Passing
The introductory essay to Stranger Passing by Douglas R. Nickel describes this book as a collection of portraits. But this strikes me as misleadin…
The Birthday Riots
Kanan’s book, set in Britain, tells the complex tale of an election for the mayor of London, a group of traveling gypsies, Max Collins, who is working in th…
2 ¼
William Eggleston is a major American photographer – he is listed on the Masters of Photography…
Strange Stories for Strange Kids
Apart from Art Spiegelman and Kaz, the artists here are all different ones from those featured in last year’s…
Coming of Age
This book of photographs of young males comes with an Introduction by Guy Davenport and an Afterword by William Simon. Davenport talks of the artis…
The Body
The Body is a thoughtful and inventive collection of images selected by William Ewing, with high quality reproduction. Ewing has given a wide range o…
Chris Verene
Verene’s photographs of some of his relatives and their friends evoke powerful emotions. He explains in his introduction that he loves his family and admire…
Amnesia
In 64 pages, John Molloy tells the story of Chloe, a writer for an arts magazine, who travels from L.A. to Baltimore to interview alternative film-maker and…
Autoportrait
These Polaroid black and white photographs explore Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexual life. Many of them feature him naked, or wearing sexual apparatus; cock r…
Hans Bellmer
Sue Taylor’s Hans Bellmer: The Anatomy of Anxiety is an impressive book by any standards. Every page displays intelligence, erudition and visual acui…
Love Lust Desire
Looking through these pictures confirms a dreadful suspicion I have had for years — I am quite abnormal! Nearly all of these pictures, apparently masterpie…
Outsider Art
Outsider Art is a collection of essays that deal with the question of the artistic canon and the art that does not immediately find itself to be situ…
Girls, Some Boys and Other Cookies
I’ve had this book on my desk for months. I probably wouldn’t have paid it much attention if I hadn’t wanted to review it. I’ve picked it up, browsed though…
Berko
This is a collection of black and white photographs of nude women taken by Ferenc Berko. Born in Romania in 1916, he moved around Europe, and then in 1938 h…
Postmodernism
This excellent little book (80 pages, many filled with images) explains postmodernist art by setting out five movements: neo-expressionism, anti-aesthetes,…
Listening to Cement
Stivers’s photographs are monumental and elemental, like Rothko paintings, or Henry Moore sculptures. They are monochromatic, generally sepia or even close…
Deus Ex Machina
Deus Ex Machina, by Ralph Gibson, is a collection of Gibson’s photography, beginning with his early days as a student in 1960 and continuing through…
Robert Maxwell
Maxwell is a photographer of celebrities for national magazines — you have probably seen some of his pictures, even if you didn’t know that he took them. B…
1000 Families
Over 1000 photographs of families from all over the world, taken over four years. Most of the pictures are in color, some are in black and white. Most of th…
Lucky
Lucky is a collection of three Lucky comic books chronicling Gabrielle Bell's life in 2003 and 2004 as she lives as a low-income artist in Brooklyn. Bell is in her twenties and has a boyfriend, Tom, and for the first issue, much of their time is…
Thin
Thin is a book of photographs of women and girls with eating disorders at the Renfrew Center, old snapshots of them, their journals and other writings, their therapeutic art works, and their families. The book includes three essays by experts on eat…
Boneyard
This second graphic novel book in the Boneyard series is a great deal of fun — it continues the supernatural story of Michael Paris and his spooky friends. In the first book, he defeated Satan, but now he has a visit from the IRS and finds that the gran…
Schizophrenia
The work here called Bodé/Schizophrenia was written in 1973 and appeared first in black and white in 1974; it is reproduced for the first time in color. Vaughn Bodé died in 1975; the cause of death is not given here. Indeed, there’s n…