Five of the best new reads
Independent publishing is flourishing and two of the areas to benefit the most are arts and fashion. I asked Lucy Moore, owner of cult Soho-based specialist photography, fashion & art bookshop Claire de Rouen (read more about it here) to recommend her top five fashion-slash-arts picks of the season.
1. Karen Knorr, Gentlemen, STANLEY/BARKER, 2016.
An important new book published by STANLEY/BARKER which launches at Claire de Rouen on Thursday 13 October, 6-8pm (Karen will be present to sign books!), ‘Gentlemen’ presents a collection of staged photographs of upper class English men in the private male-only clubs that surround St James's in London, described by Knorr as 'the most elite and exclusive enclaves of male power in Britain'. Taken between 1981 and 1983, the images foreground the semiology of language, architectural setting, fashion and pose in relation to aristocratic values.
Buy it here: http://shop.clairederouenbooks.com
2. ALL-IN magazine, issue 2
ALL—IN is a biannual arts and culture print publication which brings emerging and established artists together to collaborate, acting as a platform for new visual material. ‘I launched this in New York at the New York Art Book Fair last month and have the first copies in the UK at Claire de Rouen,’ says Moore. ‘It's my favourite new magazine.’ Alex Da Corte's photographs of Willem Dafoe, accompanied in Issue 1 by an interview with photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron, are emblematic of the collaborations achieved in ALL—IN. Through curating elements of art, design, food, and other media, ALL—IN represents life in an increasingly digital society.
Buy it here: http://shop.clairederouenbooks.com
3. Miles Aldridge, Please Return Polaroid, Steidl, 2016
Miles Aldridge revisits his Polaroid archive from 20 prolific years of magazine assignments. Many of these Polaroids were intentionally or accidentally damaged while working on different shoots — in order to enhance, modify, reassemble or discard. Liberated from their original context, the images take on a life of their own. By partly enlarging and arranging the Polaroids in unexpected ways, Aldridge treats them as singular, independent images. The reader is granted a rare insight into a photographer’s storyboard and work process while learning to appreciate the importance of flaws and imperfections, but also of playfulness, on the journey to the finished photograph.
4. Peter Lindbergh, A Different Vision on Fashion Photography, Taschen, 2016.
When Lindbergh shot five young models in downtown New York City in 1989, he produced not only the iconic British Vogue January 1990 cover but also the birth certificate of the supermodels. Coinciding with his major retrospective at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, this book gathers more than 400 images to celebrate the new romantic and narrative vision Lindbergh’s photography brought to art and fashion. We see how his trademark monochrome pictures redefined standards of beauty by emphasizing personality as much as looks. Images are accompanied by commentaries from collaborators such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Grace Coddington, Cindy Crawford, and Anna Wintour.
5. Female Chic, Thelma Selection, Patrick Frey, 2016
The fashion label Thema Selection and its outlet in Oberdorf, a Zürich neighborhood, made quite a splash back in the 1970s with its plainly-cut work clothes for women made from men’s fabrics. In 1974, after Vogue wrote rapturously about avant-garde fashion in Oberdorf, the shop itself became a favorite haunt of Zürich’s arts scene. The history of this avant-garde enterprise is recounted here in Female Chic by the shop’s founders Katharina Bebié, Ursula Rodel and Sissi Zöbeli as well as other influential figures behind the business.
