Richard Misrach is among the most influential, prolific, and internationally recognized photographers working today. Best known for his epic ongoing project, Desert Cantos–an extensive and unique photographic exploration of place–Misrach consistently addresses political and social issues through the adaptation of different photographic strategies, even as he expands notions of traditional landscape practice, and builds a complex and poignant document of American culture. His subjects have included manmade floods and fires, military bombing ranges, mass graves of dead animals, sublime night skies, and details of paintings housed in the museums of the Southwest. In one recent series, On the Beach–which was inspired by Nevil Shute’s postapocalyptic novel of the 1950s–Misrach’s color photographs deal with the human figure seen at a distance on an unspecified beach or in the water, observed from an unsettling and difficult-to-identify point of view located high above. Misrach’s newest publication, Chronologies is a compelling study of the photographer’s process over the past 30 years. Stripped of their original context, the photographs–presented in chronological order–illuminate how the photographer thinks and works. Through fits and starts, reiterations and detours, the work evolves and matures, weaving in and out of the series for which Misrach has become known. Side-by-side, classic images and never-before-seen pictures flesh out the photographer’s logic and complicate it at the same time. Ultimately, Chronologies is about time: The span of thirty years, the importance of time in each photograph, the chronology of a life within its time, and the book itself as a timepiece. [Misrach] offers a totally convincing sense of place–the Mohave, the California inlands, the Nevada deserts, over which he has roamed repeatedly. His moment of perception is always the present, gritted in by sand ochres and limned by sage green, mauve, and blond hues often emerging into an exquisite bleached depth, though sometimes reddened by dusk or fires. Misrach lives such moments to their sensory brim without standing on any ceremony. He gives us the feeling that what happens out there in the nominal wild happens for him and to him quite in advance of being filtered through any memory of art. –Max Kozloff American Art, National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution Clothbound, 15 x 12 in./280 pgs / 135 color.
From Yard to Garden: The Domestication of America’s Home Grounds (Center for American Places – Center Books on American Places)
In the early 1800s, Americans employed their home grounds for agriculture, sustenance, and domestic activities. Grampp takes this as the starting point for his narrative, from which he tracks the evolution of the American front and back yards as the nation evolved from an agrarian to an industrial economy. He connects the emergence of the modern home garden to the rise of suburbanization, the growth of city services and the post–World War II baby boom, which established the single-family home and its grounds as the ideal American dwelling. From Yard to Garden argues that the home garden is best understood as an expression of “habitability,” or the ways in which Americans have collectively and individually transformed their home grounds into functional outdoor living areas. Grampp analyzes the gardens of California homes as quintessential examples, revealing that the mild climate, demographics, land costs, and media influences of the region have led many California homeowners to create beautiful outdoor family rooms.
A captivating and vibrantly illustrated study, From Yard to Garden digs up the broader historical reasons why we seek to create personal Edens in our own yards.
Landscape Architecture in Scandinavia: Projects from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland
Just as modern Scandinavian architecture captivates with its elegance and high quality so too does its landscape architecture. During the last century Danish and Swedish landscape architecture was amongst the European avant garde, and in more recent years, the development in Scandinavia along with Spain, the Netherlands and France has captured our interest once again. A new generation of designers has been responsible for creating landscape architectures which met with international praise, and the names Snøhetta, Thorbjörn Andersson, Stig L. Andersson, Steen Høyer und Preben Skaarup are now known far beyond the borders of Scandinavia. Featuring examples from Topos which include the harbour area in Copenhagen, new squares in Bergen, the redesigning of the railway station area in Jordro/Haninge, and avalanche protection in Iceland, this volume provides an overview of Scandinavia’s contribution to the design of new parks, squares and landscapes.
Landscape Architecture in Scandinavia: Projects from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland