BASILE MOOKHERJEE

Fully Fueled

Where once there was desert, cities sprawl for miles; sixteen-lane highways dictate urban rhythm and daily commutes, often taking hours. Abu Dhabi and Dubai’s car culture and high-consumption environment is the subject of Fully Fueled, French social documentary photographer Basile Mookherjee’s newest look into a culture rarely explored. In 2012 and 2014, Mookherjee captured young Emiratis’ nights out on the town. The traditionally garbed young men and women have created an entire subculture in and around their cars and against a Vegas-like urban backdrop. The oversized floppy catalog mimicking the glossy pages of high-end fashion magazines portrays a strange world of over-the-top consumption. Reflecting on the UAE’s abrupt petrodollar-driven modernization of essentially nomadic Middle Eastern culture, Mookherjee limns a world somewhere between desert dust and Gotham City, Islam and spending power, tradition and modernity. In addition to his career in fashion photography, Mookherjee explores the cultural contradictions inherent in our fast-changing world.

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Stefanie Moshammer

Vegas and She

Austrian-based photographer Stefanie Moshammer’s recent project Vegas and She led her into the underbelly of Nevada’s shimmering city, Las Vegas. Eightyeight color images in this photojournalistic monograph guide us through stark, shiny dreamworlds of constructed settings and beguiling scenery that exist somewhere between illusion, desire and fantasy. From portraits to details to landscapes, she portrays the ambiguities behind the shiny façade in which the protagonists are striptease dancers who keep Vegas moving—the inside that keeps the outside alive. Complementing her raw and wild images is Moshammer’s thoughtful and poetic text. A snippet: “Vegas is comedy, tragedy, happiness and sadness and it comes all in one. When you meet Vegas once you feel like you are standing on the edge of a very tall cliff. If you fall, you fall into a jungle of madness. Vegas, who is it but a desert breeze. A hot, wild breeze.”

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JÜRGEN NABER

Stops

In this slender first-time solo publication of recent works by the German photo-based artist Jurgen Nabor, a series of 48 black and white photographs of bus shelters in people-less rural Norwegian landscapes recall the visual texture of the Düsseldorf aesthetic of the 1970s. An essay by independent curator Henriette Heidbrink discusses the centering of the subject in each photograph and Nabor’s debt to other conceptual photographic series such as Ed Ruscha’s 26 Gas Stations (1963), Thomas Ruff’s series of houses (from 1987), Jens Hauge’s Treehouses (2009), and Joself Schulze’s photographic works Ubergang (2005-8) and Poststructure (2012).

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Native American Portraits

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FRANCESCO NERI

Trophy and Treasure

Gabriele Conrath-Scholl

Italian contemporary photographer Francesco Neri (b. 1982) uses family photos found in his grandparents’ apartment as the inspiration for his current exhibition and publication, Trophy and Treasure, at the photography museum SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne (July 2017). Recognized for his poignant portraits taken in the style of the iconic early 20th-century German photographer August Sander, Neri, in his latest project, shifts to an exploration of northern Italy’s towns and villages—his native countryside, people and history. Blending snapshots of family members, including his grandfather who was both a doctor and a hunter, with his own still-life photographs of familiar objects in the apartment taken with a large-format camera, Neri presents an intimate document of his family and culture in over 50 color images. Exhibition curator Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, together with the artist, creates a powerful and poetic homage to history, family and memory.

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New York City: Views of Lower Manhattan

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ANNE NOBLE

Ice Blink

“ When we look at Antarctica, from the deck of a ship, or in a makebelieve tableau, and fix it in our gaze, what we see is a figment of the imagination,” writes prominent New Zealand photographer Anne Noble in the first part of her trilogy on the myth of Antarctica. Noble set her sights on Antarctica early in the 21st century, undertaking three missions there and making a world tour of Antarctic-study centers as well. Ice Blink juxtaposes the real and the imaginary, presenting imagery taken in the study centers (including aquariums and museums) and photos of real human encounters with the icy continent. Nobel’s seductive and challenging images are complimented by the thought-provoking essay by acclaimed essayist and novelist Ian Wedde.

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ANNE NOBLE

The Last Road

Gwynneth Porter (Ed.)

The second in the Antarctic trilogy of books by acclaimed New Zealand photographer Anne Noble, beginning with Ice Blink (Clouds, 2011) and WhiteOut/WhiteNoise (forthcoming), The Last Road draws on the archive of Antarctic photographs that Noble created during her visits to the continent in 2002, 2005 and 2008 as a grantee on the US National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers program. The second volume addresses images of human intervention into the icy continent, and involves writing by the artist, author Lloyd Jones and science writer Richard Panek. Noble is the recipient of a Fulbright Award and will be an artist-in-residence at Colombia College Chicago, in 2014.

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RIKA NOGUCHI

Light Reaching the Future

Ever-ambitious even in her mid-career, Berlin-based Rika Noguchi has chosen light as her subject. One of Japan’s contemporary photography masters, she moves seamlessly between small and large universes, between the microscopic and the macroscopic. This exhibition catalog from the Izu Photo Museum highlights two decades of work, including several previously unpublished and un-exhibited works.

With its full-color reproductions and installation photos, this publication provides the best opportunity yet to understand the depth of this mid-career artist (born in 1971). Increasingly recognized worldwide, her work is included in such important collections as the Guggenheim in New York and MOCA in Los Angeles.

While words like “poetic” and “ambiguous” frequently occur in writings about Noguchi’s work, she is by no means a traditionally Japanese photo-based artist. By allowing light refraction to re-define form, her images can range widely from an explosion of color to a small detail (for instance, the shadow of a person on a far horizon). The cover image, which depicts the monochromatic shadow of a hand broken by a bright refracted rainbow, is typical of the startling contrasts that can result.

Produced with the high quality characteristic of Japanese publications, this dust-jacketed, semi-hardcover monograph provides an extensive cross-section of her work. The catalog shows her most recent works as well as her breakthrough series, Record of Creation. The new silkscreen prints are juxtaposed with photographic prints; the contrast between the two media offers an analysis on the very essence of photography.

Art critic Yuri Mitsuda adds an insightful essay about the photographer’s explorations over the years. As American interest in contemporary Japanese photography grows, Rika Noguchi remains an artist to watch.

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‘O WRITE MY NAME’ American Portraits, Harlem Heroes

Photographs by Carl Van Vechten

Darryl Pinckney Leslie George Katz & Peter Kayafas (Eds.)

‘O, Write My Name’: American Portraits, Harlem Heroes presents us with exquisite duotone portraits of 50 extraordinary people who participated in the great cultural movement that was the Harlem Renaissance. This collection by the photographer, critic and novelist Carl Van Vechten is a celebration of these inimitable writers, actors, musicians, painters, athletes and intellectuals as well as an acknowledgment of their unprecedented contribution to American art and culture. Van Vechten’s friendship with his subjects is reflected in the intimate nature of these portraits. With an insightful introduction by American novelist, playwright and essayist Darryl Pinckney, this book is an homage to the African American men and women from the Harlem Renaissance who continue to inspire generations.

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