A selection of the best art and photography books to buy this month, from Tyler Mitchell’s debut monograph and a tome dedicated to Naomi Campbell to a close look at horror film Hereditary and unseen photographs by Karlheinz Weinberger
I Can Make You Feel Good by Tyler Mitchell, published by Prestel
Tyler Mitchell’s much-anticipated debut monograph, I Can Make You Feel Good, was published this month by Prestel. A collection of the American photographer’s portraiture, fashion and personal images, the book is an intimate and powerful vision of Black utopia. “I’m in fashion because those things are linked: identity, dress, masculinity, and personhood,” Mitchell told fellow image-maker Ryan McGinley as I Can Make You Feel Good was published, in a conversation for AnOthermag.com. “Images have a powerful way of changing associations and making all of these things irrelevant so we have new notions of what life could be.”
Love’s Labour by Sergio Purtell, published by Stanley/Barker
The black and white photographs in Love’s Labour, a new book from Sergio Purtell, capture European summers in the 1970s and 80s, when the photographer would leave New York to travel around the continent on a cheap rail pass. 40 years later, and his photographs – taken in city centres and on beaches alike – feel particularly poignant to look at in the midst of a summer like no other. “The sequence and edit we worked on with Sergio is really about the flowing narrative of a young man on a grand tour through Europe,” publisher Rachel Barker told AnOther. “It’s meant to feel like a novel, like you’re reading a book.”
Naomi by Naomi Campbell, published by Taschen
Updated and published in XL, Taschen’s newest tome traces Naomi Campbell’s extraordinary life and career. The iconic supermodel shares memories from her fashion career and her early life, as well as stories of her family, friendships and philanthropic work in Naomi, which is a two-volume edition. The book features some of her most enduring fashion shoots, with some of the world’s most renowned photographers: from Peter Lindbergh and Arthur Elgort to Richard Avedon and Ellen von Unwerth.
Self-Portraits by Yurie Nagashima, published by Dashwood Books
“I believe that taking self-portraits means a lot to a great many people … Especially for women, for whom too often it is not about who we are, but about how we look. I want to subvert such an unfortunate criterion, and I believe that self-portraiture is a powerful approach to do so,” Yurie Nagashima told AnOther as her most recent book, Self-Portraits, was published earlier this month. Self-portraiture is a genre that the celebrated Japanese photographer has returned to time and again throughout her 20-year career. Describing her self-portraits as “performative and political”, Nagashima’s photography is distinctly feminist and Self-Portraits charts how her personal approach to image-making has evolved.
Karlheinz Weinberger: Photographs: Alone & Together, published by The Song Cave
A new book brings together 200 prints by the late Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger which were only discovered in 2017. Simultaneously voyeuristic and artistic, the previously unpublished photographs variously depict the “Halbstarke” – a group of Swiss “rebels” active in the late 1950s and early 1960s – construction workers, street vendors, bicycle messengers and more. “Weinberger’s nudes are actually poignant,” writes Collier Schorr in the book’s introduction, an excerpt from which was recently published exclusively on AnOthermag.com. “The flesh is usually small, white. Illusions and expectations are a bit lost. For me, it’s a search but I don’t know the dialogue. The before-and-after that results in these almost shy, tender images.”
An Attic Full of Trains by Alberto di Lenardo, published by MACK
Selected by the photographer’s granddaughter from an archive of more than 8,000 images, An Attic Full of Trains compiles photographs by Alberto di Lenardo. Photography was a hobby for Di Lenardo – the book’s title takes its name from another of his great pastimes, adding to a sprawling model railway in the attic of his house – and the photographs he took over the course of his life present “a joyous cross-section of life in the 20th century: one of beaches and bars, mountains, road trips, lovers and friends,” according to publishing house MACK.
Hereditary Screenplay Book, published by A24
Variously described as one of 2018 scariest films and “creepy beyond belief”, Hereditary marked the feature film debut for director Ari Aster (who went on to release Midsommar the following year). The film – which stars Toni Collette and Milly Shapiro – follows a family as they are haunted in the wake of a grandmother’s death. Aster fans and horror film aficionados will be pleased to note that A24 has published the Hereditary Screenplay Book, featuring the meticulous filmmaker’s original script and annotated shot list, as well as a foreword by Parasite director Bong Joon-ho.
View Point by Thomas Lohr and Olu Odukoya
Throughout lockdown in Paris, where he had moved just two months prior, image-maker Thomas Lohr took daily photographs from his apartment’s balcony, documenting the people on the city’s newly quiet streets. After collaborating with artist and art director Olu Odukoya, the pair published View Point, which brings together Lohr’s photographs and a series of graphic interventions, phrases and symbols by Odukoya. “I want people to enjoy all the little stories happening in the book,” Lohr told AnOther as View Point was released, with Odukoya adding: “It was easy to go down a route of doom and gloom with the book, due to the topic, but I felt the approach with the design – the bright colours, the edit of the images – speaks to hope and human strength.”
Riviera: Photographs of Palm Springs by John Brian King, published by Spurl Editions
“I wanted to photograph the Palm Springs that I lived in and interacted with every single day, the beautiful, the mundane, the ugly, the hot desolate nature of Coachella Valley,” writes photographer John Brian King in his recently published book Riviera: Photographs of Palm Springs. “I was interested in the debris – architectural and natural – left behind by generations of people who lived in or visited Palm Springs to escape, to exist, to die.” Captured over the course of two years, the photographs in Riviera were taken on a “cheap instant film camera” and offer an unexpected view of the California city.
Sicily by Olivier Kervern, published by Jil Sander
In October 2019, photographer Olivier Kervern documented the Italian island of Sicily alongside Jil Sander’s creative directors Lucie and Luke Meier. Jil Sander collections are captured in Kervern’s quietly beautiful images, which have recently been published in a photo book by the house and were also used for its Spring/Summer 2020 campaign. “These photographs are both abstract and sensitive,” say the Meiers. “Sharp, delicate and extremely honest.”