Ken Graves and Eva Lipman

• TBW 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

Demolition derbies are spectacular celebrations of car culture, carnival culture, and a maximalist desire to be loud and destructive, all because… well, why not?  They’re chaotic, a ritualized nihilism of automotive destruction, metal and mud everywhere, but in Ken Graves and Eva Lipman’s Derby, an understated poetry emerges from the scene. There is not a collision to be found; instead the couple focuses on the nuanced moments that surround the event, crafting images that are equally anthropological and expressive, yet surprisingly quiet and kind, revealing the inexplicable beauty of a community in complete control of its own entertainment.

As viewers, we become privy to an endless cycle of wreckage and repair. Before an event, amateur mechanics make ad hoc repairs with full knowledge that their hard work will be undone in half the time. Sisyphean to a T.  Chicken wire replaces windshields and gangly teenagers gut the interior of someone’s former dream car, which they likely bought the day before for the price of an old lawn mower. The cars are merely something to use and abuse, and possibly provide some laughs along the way. Hell, you might even break a rib or two.

For more than three decades Ken Graves and Eva Lipman were partners in both life and art. Always shooting as a singular entity, they blurred the lines of authorship and shared equal artistic credit for their images.

• TBW 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• NEW

Restraint and Desire is the culmination of a lifelong creative partnership between husband and wife Ken Graves and Eva Lipman, whose visionary life together was defined by the unique and selfless act of claiming artistic credit as a singular entity.

For decades they acutely surveyed high school dances, military ceremonies, football games, boxing matches, and other American social rituals, seeking to capture the complex intensity between humans often overlooked in these commonplace settings. These mostly prosaic happenings often revealed sexual tensions that Ken and Eva saw not only in the world around them, but in their own relationship. As Eva says, “our work reflected back to us, like a mirror, the intensities and power dynamics of our shared life together.” Acts of generosity and humility, domination and submission, passions, both violent and tender, straight and homoerotic, are all beautifully enhanced through the intimacy of the photographs.

With a profound visual sensitivity, Graves and Lipman collect human gestures that betray the complex interiority of their subjects. Hands often act here as the protagonist– grabbing, touching, reaching –entering and exiting the photographs like a visual metronome. Lust, fear, boredom, exhaustion and a myriad of feelings beyond the realm of language are all on display through the discerning glare of their camera and its flash.

Sealed copy