John Gossage
Photographer / Bookmaker
Looking In.
This starts the theme of this year for me, a year of many books and little innovation, but great retrospection. This, though, is a look at a great book that produced a great show that produced a great book of scholarship. (Got that?)
This starts the theme of this year for me, a year of many books and little innovation, but great retrospection. This, though, is a look at a great book that produced a great show that produced a great book of scholarship. (Got that?)
Surfaces and Depths.
Book craft pulling a retrospective into something special. It’s all in the paper choice.
Book craft pulling a retrospective into something special. It’s all in the paper choice.
The Joy of Portraits.
A two volume set with one terrific volume of older work, and one boring volume of new work. (Does this count as half a choice?)
A two volume set with one terrific volume of older work, and one boring volume of new work. (Does this count as half a choice?)
Protest Photographs.
A redo of “Interior America,” Hare’s first book with more photographs, and Chauncey coming around to the fact that duo-tone is not the work of the devil.
A redo of “Interior America,” Hare’s first book with more photographs, and Chauncey coming around to the fact that duo-tone is not the work of the devil.
La Subversion Des Images.
The best show of surrealist photography I have ever seen, even if it concentrates a little too much on work done in France. A complete catalogue of the show.
The best show of surrealist photography I have ever seen, even if it concentrates a little too much on work done in France. A complete catalogue of the show.
Lisboa.
A perfect reprint of the classic Portuguese photo book that should have been impossible to reproduce, but this is a perfect job.
A perfect reprint of the classic Portuguese photo book that should have been impossible to reproduce, but this is a perfect job.
Wald.
An unrelenting look at a forest, by Germany’s greatest painter.
An unrelenting look at a forest, by Germany’s greatest painter.
Riley and His Story.
As it says in the book “project by Monica Haller, photos by Riley Sharbonno”. Riley was a nurse at Abu Ghraib prison, Monica an artist in Minnesota. An innovative collaboration. Buy this book.
As it says in the book “project by Monica Haller, photos by Riley Sharbonno”. Riley was a nurse at Abu Ghraib prison, Monica an artist in Minnesota. An innovative collaboration. Buy this book.
New Topographics.
I haven’t seen this book -- it didn’t make the show in LA, since Steidl is late with everything these days (please don’t ask me how I know this). But it includes a bunch of my friends with some of their greatest pictures, so how bad could it be?
I haven’t seen this book -- it didn’t make the show in LA, since Steidl is late with everything these days (please don’t ask me how I know this). But it includes a bunch of my friends with some of their greatest pictures, so how bad could it be?
Playas.
A book intended to be so ugly that after you have looked at it once you don’t have to look at it again. A real time saver.
A book intended to be so ugly that after you have looked at it once you don’t have to look at it again. A real time saver.
John Gossage is an artist who makes history present in photographs. He photographs places and sites that tell an everyday story: paths worn through abandoned tracts of land, corners where debris collects, markings on a wall, a table after a meal. Gossage photographs that which has just occurred to remind us that we may have already forgotten it happened or that we were there. By asking us to look at what we have misplaced or abandoned, he brings us face to face with the present as it becomes history. Throughout the 1980s, Berlin became Gossage's overriding focus. With its Wall, forgotten tracts of land, unwanted histories - both forgotten and remembered - Berlin became the place where Gossage discovered the ideas that have come to mark his personalized style of photographic storytelling. The art from this period is arguable his most important and has unquestionable influenced all his subsequent work.
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