Photobooks by Women

• Libraryman 2019
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

The idea for I Close My Eyes, Then I Drift Away by Katrien De Blauwer (b. 1969, Belgian) was founded as a commission for De Blauwer to anatomise archival works of François Halard (b. 1961, French) into a new and rare narrative. With a seductive and dreamlike state, bordering femininity and masculinity, she lets the observer immerse by the means of power structures and illusions, with nuances and parables to the contrasting career of Halard’s, yet with the most imaginable awe.

All photographs appearing in this book were taken by François Halard and accumulated on July 3rd, 2019 by Katrien De Blauwer in Arles, France. All artworks were made in Antwerp, Belgium by Katrien De Blauwer. The concept for this book was conceived by editor and designer Tony Cederteg, who also wrote the preface for the book.

First edition of 1,000 copies.

• RRB 2019
  
• Softcover, 1st edition with 2 prints
  
• New
  

Zanjir is a conversation imagined between the artist Amak Mahmoodian (1980-present) and the Persian princess and memoirist Taj Saltaneh (1883 - 1936). In Zanjir, Amak Mahmoodian draws on imagery from King name's collection from the 19th Century held at Golestan archives in Tehran and photographs she took in Iran to explore feelings of loss and separation from family and homeland. Through memories and dreams, Zanjir mythifies absence and presence. The present which continuously exists in past, and the past which continuously exists in present. 

Special edition 100 signed copies with two signed and limited pigment prints

• BEC EN AIR 2019
  
• Hardback, 1st edition, 112p
  
• Good - see below
  

ImageSingulières is a documentary photography festival created in 2009 in Sète. Each year a renowned photographer is invited to take a look at the city and produce a series of photographs that are the subject of a book. Great photographers (Anders Petersen, Stéphane Couturier, Richard Dumas...) have thus given birth to a remarkable collection that reveals so many facets of current photography. In 2019 the residence was entrusted to Vanessa Winship. Known for her extensive work in the United States (She dances on Jackson) and Anatolia (Sweet Nothings), she is the author of a documentary work that is both classic and contemporary, questioning the relationship between man and territory.

Bump to top right corner - pages inside unaffected.

Signed copy.

• Gallery 51, 2019
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• Near fine
  

In this new book and exhibition, 'cheveux longs… cheveux courts'  Katrien De Blauwer revisits herself as a young woman by creating personae and telling their stories as if they were her own. Additionally, a new set of her more erotic 'Dirty Scenes' is presented.

For the public, De Blauwer has become known as the "photographer without a camera", compulsively seeking out magazines from the 1920s through the 1960s, cutting them up and reassembling fragments into frugal yet powerful compositions. But already in her first solo show, 'Double', it had become apparent that the artist strove to transcend the limitations of the collage medium. The transformation De Blauwer had set in motion then, has now come full circle. She has been progressively shifting shapes; e.g. experimenting with more slender works, stressing their horizontality or verticality.

Her typical confrontation between two images, or two parts of one cut-up image, is gradually replaced by a deeper tension. Ever more frequently, just one image joins together – or is trapped by – monotone surfaces, which are black as ink or bright with colour. Furthermore, De Blauwer explicitly intervenes, leaving physical traces on her material. The wrinkling, tearing or folding makes the materials look old and used; the intuitive drawing (in pencil) and painting (in acryl) on the other hand, make the works look spontaneous and spirited, like childhood creations.

Only recently, the artist started work on something new: her so-called 'Dirty Scenes'. These erotic images come alive with indistinct movements. The tenderness of bodily interaction and contact between woman and man is central here, and it is underlined by much softer pastel colours. Could these gentle scenes be the phantasies of De Blauwer’s feminine protagonists?

One element that always remains unchanged in De Blauwer’s itinerary, is the omnipresent reference to film noir and European avant-garde cinema. This not only comes about through the filmic images she uses, but also through the way they are treated. De Blauwer 'edits' her fragments with scissors, pencil and brush, before throwing these scenes into a sequence that tells the story of a woman. These imaginative sequences – beginning and ending with a 'still' image – come into motion the moment we start walking through the exhibition or start leafing through the new book that accompanies this exhibition.

Some shelfwear to spine, final copies.

• RRB 2019
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

RRB Photobooks are pleased to present a series of photographs made by Czech photographer Markéta Luskačová taken in the late 1970s on the North East Coast of Britain. The book is produced to coincide with an exhibition of the same name at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol

Czech-born Luskačová has lived in the UK since 1975 and first went to North East England in 1976 when visiting photographer Chris Killip, who at that time lived there.  She fell in love with Whitley Bay, and with the people there who, in spite of the harsh weather, enjoyed their time at the seaside. When Amber, a film and photography collective, invited her in 1978 to photograph the North East of England alongside Martine Franck, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Paul Caponigro, she was drawn back to photograph the seaside.

“I was very touched by it all: the families with children, old women in their best hats, elderly couples with grandchildren, teenagers courting shyly or boisterously, the ponies and donkeys walking patiently to and fro on the beach.  The dogs and children were everywhere, dogs enjoying themselves as much as the children did. The fairground and the omnipresent tents, fortresses against the wind and rain, the seaside cafes selling sandwiches, apple pies, custard pies, ice creams and teas, of course. But they also sold boiling water to women who brought with them from their homes their teapots and teabags, because to buy tea for the whole family would be too expensive.”

Although well known in photographic circles, Luskačová’s work in recent years has lacked the exposure of some of her contemporaries. This exhibition and new book aim to contribute to a recent resurgence of interest in Luskačová’s work and to introduce it to new audiences.

Out of print, final copies.

• Mack Books 2017
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• Fine
  

The images in Sam Contis's Deep Springs were made in a remote desert valley east of the Sierra Nevada. The work centres on a small, all-male liberal arts college, founded in 1917 by the educational pioneer L. L. Nunn. 

The college and its surroundings provide a stage on which Contis explores the construction of myth, place, and masculine identity. Bringing together new photographs with pictures made by the first students at the college a century ago, Deep Springs engages with the enduring image of the American West––one that Hollywood, mass media, and the history of American photography have imprinted into the collective psyche. 

Sam Contis lives and works in California. Her work is represented in the collections of LACMA, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Whitney Museum of American Art and has recently been exhibited in solo shows at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York. In 2018, her work will be on view in “Being: New Photography” at the Museum of Modern Art. Deep Springs is her first book.

Signed copy.  Fine copy with very faint wear to edges of cover.

• Self 2019
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

'A Star in the Sea is an overture for embracing the unexpected. The photographs, text & title pertain to three independent, personal life events: A love story; my first & only trip to my place of birth in the UK & a vision on a beach in Italy. It is inspired by a desire to redefine my relationship with the ideals of success & happiness. In this context, A Star in the Sea is an opportunity to celebrate imperfection — an artistic gesture to have faith in the Universe.'

- Laura El-Tantawy


The book is conceived as an artistic object demanding intimacy — something you want to protect & treat with care. Each book comes in a custom handmade Batik pouch made by the artist in collaboration with her mother.

Signed & numbered edition of 150 copies.

• Kominek Books 2015
• Softcover, 2nd edition
  
• New
  

Sketches is showing Polaroids made in Africa between 2002 and 2010. This book could be an explanation or a introducion to the previous Flamboya book and project but in fact Sketches is a small and magic book on its own, showing the beautiful universe of Viviane Sassens photography. Viviane is normally using the polaroids as sketches and tryouts before taking the final picture, its like not long ago most of the fashion and advertisment photographers did. But In the book it seems like that the polaroids start to live their own life, capturing the raw energy of a spontaneously staged street scene, building together a new photobook that becomes a piece of its own. The design of the book is by Sybren Kuiper, a dutch designer who did many interesting books for Cuny Janssen, Niels Stomps o Rob Hornstra.The reproduction of Polaroid piles on a white page suggests the 3 dimensional feeling of a real Polaroid but threw the simple stamped cardboard cover and the binding with stitched black thread this publication never gets over designed but just incredibly balanced.

2nd edition.  

• Prestel 2018
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New

Viviane Sassen is one of today’s most innovative photographers and this stunning book looks back at a decade of her work, including new collages and previously unpublished photographs.

This mid-career retrospective volume focuses on Viviane Sassen’s fine art photography, revealing a surrealist undercurrent in her work. Sassen recognizes Surrealism as one of her earliest artistic influences, seen in the uncanny shadows, fragmented bodies, and otherworldly landscapes she captures in her work. In addition to images from the acclaimed series “Umbra,” this volume draws from the series “Flamboya,” in which she returned to Kenya, “Parasomnia,” a dreamlike exploration of sleep, the “Roxane” series, a mutual portrait created with her muse, Roxane Danset, “Of Lotus and Mud,” a study of procreation and fecundity, and “Pikin Slee,” a journey to a remote village in Suriname. This book features a contextualizing essay and an insightful interview with the artist. Throughout, Sassen emerges as a poetic photographer obsessed with light and shadow and a brilliant technician, who is a master of both vibrant color and muted hues. Selected by Sassen herself from across the last ten years, the images draw on the surrealist strategies of collage and unexpected juxtapositions to give a survey of her practice.

• Ceiba 2018
• Softcover, 1st trade edition
  
• New
  

"I am often attracted by what repulses or scares the others. I like misfits, outcasts, eccentrics, those who don’t fit in the norms. Although I look quite normal and common, I identify in a way with those who do not fit in society. For this reason, I followed the Black Label Bike Club for about 3 years when I was living in NY.
The Black Label Bike Club is known as the first “outlaw bicycle club.” It was created in 1992 by Jacob Houle and Per Hanson in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has chapters nationwide. They are one of the main contributors to the rise of tall bike culture and organize jousting competitions. It is interesting to see this destructive, rebel culture revolving around such a non-threatening object: the bicycle.

I consider them as a blend of punk, grunge and hippie culture. They are an independent community rebelling against the system. In a society that pushes us to consume, focus on money and overly use technology, it is interesting to see a group of young people resisting and fighting against it. Their community is mainly based on the bike culture, art and on the real value of relationships; these basic, simple values that seem to have disappeared. This particularly affected me when I was in NYC and everyone seemed to be living virtually on social networks and obsessed by success. These “kids” felt real: they speak frankly and are not afraid to take risks and hurt themselves (physically or life decisions). They are living in the moment, in a risk-less society yearning for security. They are passionate, well-read, talented young people with real discussions.

When I find subcultures like the Black Label Bike Club, a creative group, using very little technology, interested in defending causes and resisting the main stream, it gives me hope, and I think it could be very encouraging for today’s youth." 

_ Julie Glassberg

 Trade edition (untitled) of 400 copies, of this acclaimed book originally created during the Reminders Photography Stronghold Photobook workshop.

Recommended.

• Dewi Lewis 2017
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Under ‘natural’ circumstances, the average woman would get pregnant about 15 times in her life, resulting in ten births. Seven of those babies would survive childhood. For centuries, people have searched for ways to delay or terminate pregnancy. Today, safe and efficient means of abortion finally exist, yet women around the world continue to use ancient, illegal or risky home methods: Every year, 47,000 women die from botched abortions.

Across many countries and religions, millions of women are still denied access to abortion by the law or by social coercion. They are forced to carry pregnancies to term against their will, even minors and rape victims, and for many the pregnancy is not viable or poses a health risk. But all can be criminalized for trying to abort.

On Abortion is the first part of Laia Abril’s new long-term project, A History of Misogyny. The work was first exhibited at Les Rencontres in Arles in 2016 and awarded the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro and the Fotopress Grant. Abril documents and conceptualizes the dangers and damage caused by women’s lack of legal, safe and free access to abortion. She draws on the past to highlight the long, continuing erosion of women’s reproductive rights through to the present-day, weaving together questions of ethics and morality, to reveal a staggering series of social triggers, stigmas, and taboos around abortion that have been largely invisible until now.

Signed copy.

• Mack 2018
• Softcover, 1st edition
• NEW
  

And Time Folds accompanies a retrospective exhibition of the British photographer Vanessa Winship at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. At once intimate and epic, Winship’s black-and-white photographs explore notions of borders, land, memory, desire and history. This volume comprises photographs from seven series, including projects made during a decade living in the region of the Balkans, Turkey and the Caucasus; as well as work made in Georgia, America and the U.K. Winship has long been concerned with the elusive nature of transience in our landscape and society, and her oeuvre moves sure-footedly between genres – reportage, documentary, portraiture and landscape. Alongside her luminous photographs, And Time Folds brings together personal archival material that reveals Winship's thought process, working methods, and the importance of the written word, as well as an extensive essay by the renowned photography historian David Chandler, proffering a multi-faceted view of her work and artistic trajectory.

Out of print.

Sealed.

• FW 2017
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• Fine

“Spending long periods of time in solitude in remote landscapes, Awoiska van der Molen slowly uncovers the identity of the place, allowing it to impress upon her its specific emotional and physical qualities. Using her personal experience within the landscape for her creative process, she instinctively searches for a state of being in which the boundary between herself and her surroundings blur”. —  Anna Dannemann, The Photographers’ Gallery | Deutsche Borse Photography Foundation Prize 2017. ‘Blanco’ is Awoiska’s second publication, following the much celebrated Sequester.

Signed copy.

• Images En Manoeuvres 2008
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• Fine
  

Photographer Vanessa Winship lived and worked in the area of Eastern Turkey for almost a decade an explosive region containing the borderlands of Iraq, Iran and Armenia. Struck by enduring images of rural schoolgirls wearing little blue dresses and their delicate status within politically loaded discussions over borders and identity, Winship systematically documented her encounter with them. The result is a fascinating collection of images, each of which tells a simple story while also documenting these girls in their fragility, grace and without any form of posturing.

Sealed copy with some very faint ageing/rippling to the dust jacket.

Unsigned.

Text in French and English.

• Silas Finch 2014
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Includes 48 black and white and full color plates printed with UV inks on uncoated paper. Leporello binding with multiple panel widths and stiff front and back covers. Spine closure printed on synthetic paper with an essay by Mark Alice Durant.

With the spine detached from the front cover, the book becomes an installation piece approximately 34 feet in length.