“one of the most affordable ways to collect books and original prints”

That is the verdict of New Yorker magazine.

Chris Pichler had a great idea back in 1998. He loved Art Photo books. He also enjoyed the small pocket books he saw in Germany. Finally, he loved the idea of making art accessible to new buyers and collectors.

So, combining the three, he developed the concept of “One Picture Books” published by Nazraeli press. Each book, would be a pocket book, and would contain one original photograph by a photographer (some well known, others emerging artists). Each book would be signed and  numbered by the artist and would contain 16 pages.

             

Here we present 16 of these sought after photobooks in one collection at auction. Many are no longer available and are now collectors items. Start your collection today!
9 : Bill Jay ” Bill Brandt ” 2002.

10 : Julien Coulommier ” Soleil cou coupe ” 2002.

32 : Steve Pyke ” Post Partum ” 2005.

33 : Steve Pyke ” Post Mortem ” 2005.

34 : mars/Mills ” Lilly’s Waist ” 2006.

36 : Twinkako Ishiwata Pichler ” Desperately Seeking Twinka ” 2006.

40 : Emi Anrakuji ” e hagaki ” 2006.

42 : Tanya Mareuse ” Fruitless ” 2007.

49 : David Maisel ” Cascade Effect ” 2008.

50 : Rob McDonald ” “Birth Place ” 2008.

51 : Neeta Madahar ” Sustenance ” 2008.

52 : Julius Shulman & David Tseklenis ” Julius Shulman Does His Own House ” 2008.

54 : Raymond Meeks ” Doctrine of an Axe ” 2009.

55 : Mayumi Lake ” Ex Post Facto ” 2009.

57 : Eduardo del Velle y Mirta Gomez ” En Vista ” 2009.

58 : Edward Bateman ” Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny ” 2009.

 

An unusual look at 1980’s America

A house burns in the background, but it takes you a moment to notice that there is a fireman shopping for pumpkins in the foreground.  Is it real or a set up?  There is a wry humour to Sternfeld’s images of 1980’s America, that mean you are never entirely sure.

American Prospects was Sternfeld’s first photobook. Originally published in the 1980’s – this re-digitised edition from 2006 has an additional photograph, and is produced in finer quality that the original version.

Richard Prince – Adult Comedy Action Drama – signed, limited and numbered.

This week we have an exciting new item in our exclusive photo-book auction. Rare limited first edition of the book of Richard Prince enriched with a silver print in colour. Signed, dated and numbered “X/26” in ink under the image (format 40 x 50 cm). In original casing titled on the cover.

Adult Comedy Action Drama is a visual diary mixing and mingling snapshots with found imagery of media culture’s detritus, inane jokes painted on canvas, trashy book covers, and cartoons from The New Yorker. It is a hilariously intelligent, delightfully wacky, and convincingly accurate portrayal of life in an era where real and fake, fact and fiction, media and everyday life have become almost undistinguishable. Adult Comedy Action Drama is both an inventive artist’s book and an overview of Prince’s work. Prince is an obsessive collector of images and a gifted photographer. From his immense archives he has chosen these pictures and arranged them into this truly contemporary, provocative, sexy, and political visual narrative. Prince plays with havoc with the 1970’s credo that the personal is the political and vice versa. It’s a sophisticated breviary for pop culture aficionados, art world mavens, and anyone enamoured or repelled by the late 20th century’s media madness.

As both a photographer and an artist, Prince is in demand. My favourite fact about Prince, is that he built a house / museum in upstate New York. He sold this to the Guggenheim museum, and shortly afterwards it was struck by lightning and burnt down. Poor Guggenheim!

The Perfect Childhood – a dysfunctional photobook by Larry Clark

Larry Clark is a controversial American photographer. He is drawn to images of adolescent boys – and to both the creative and destructive forces that they hold in their grasp. He grew up in a drifting, dysfunctional family, and by 1959 was routinely injecting amphetamines.

The themes of drug use, dysfunctional families and small specific subcultures have routinely appeared in his work. In addition to his films depicting young drug abuse and sex, he produced a number of photobooks looking at these themes. These include The Perfect Childhood

The Perfect Childhood combines an overview of Clark’s work-ranging from collages and found images to photographs from his native Oklahoma in the late 1960’s-with a new series of tender and erotic portraits of a skater boy-the latest incarnation of the mythical eternal youth Clark investigates and idolizes in his work. Material from the past 30 years is combined to create one new work of art-overwhelming proof of the consistency of Clark’s artistic vision. The book is as raunchy and brutally straightforward as it is melancholy and affectionate. Its attitude will confound all those thinking in comfortable and complacent opposites-gay and straight, creative and destructive, tenderness and violence, good and evil. Clark’s work is a mirror for those strong enough to face the truth about growing up as a boy.

Vincent Borrelli