John Gossage

Photographer / Bookmaker

Looking In.
ROBERT FRANK

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.
THOMAS RUFF

Book craft pulling a retrospective into something special. It’s all in the paper choice.

The Joy of Portraits.
KEIZO KITAJIMA

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.
CHAUNCEY HARE

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.
QUENTIN & CLEMENT CHERO BAJAC

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.
VICTOR & COSTA MARTINS PALLA

A perfect reprint of the classic Portuguese photo book that should have been impossible to reproduce, but this is a perfect job.

Wald.
GERHARD RICHTER

An unrelenting look at a forest, by Germany’s greatest painter.

Riley and His Story.
MONICA HALLER

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.
BRITT SALVESEN

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.
MARTIN PARR

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 has since the age of 14 devoted his life to photography, photobooks, and the music of Charles Edward Anderson Berry.

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