Thursday 17 August 2023

Aaaahhh.... (5/5)














Definitely a book with the ...aaaahh factor. Delightful photos of farm and countryside animals either playing with each other or paying close attention to photographer Miki. There is no text in the book except for captions (in Japanese) with thumbnails at the back of the book. Oddly these thumbnails have page numbers but there are none in the book.

Lambs, goats, cows, horses, geese, rabbits, pigs and more are presented whole page or two photos to a page in this landscape paperback. They all look remarkably clean, healthy and relaxed. I wonder though why no chickens or piglets to make the cute complete? The few shots of the landscape remind me of the at TV series Tellytubbies with its gently rolling fields and very green grass.

Your young kids will enjoy the photos and stressed-out adults could probably benefit from these peaceful scenes, too.
I think it's worth searching the net for the cheapest version of this paperback.

UK
Makiba Cute Farm Animals /Japonais : Miki Hirabayashi: Amazon.co.uk: Books

US
Amazon.com: Makiba: Cute Farm Animals: 9784756244673: Miki Hirabayashi: Books

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Wednesday 16 August 2023

Friedlander is working with the workers (5/5)
























This is the workers edition of Friedlander's 'Human clay' series with 253 photos selected from his archives. As you would expect he manages to brilliantly capture people doing their jobs and mostly ignoring a man with a camera looking at them though there are some posed shots like a group of firemen in Minneapolis in 1966, looking at Friedlander while a building burns away behind them or the  shoe repairers in New York looking out of their store window in 1960.

The photos have been arranged in themes, the first few pages feature agriculture, then what is seen on any street, factory workers, carnival strippers, computer workers, telemarketing (some of the last two have appeared in Friedlander's 2002 book 'At work') fashion show, boxing, opera singers, a long section on authors, photographers, artists, and other creative folk, with the last few pages revealing jazz musicians.

It's certainly a very diverse collection of worker photos with a range of compositions showing people in their work environment, either in a long shot or, in case of telemarketers, extreme close-ups of their faces. 

The photos were taken between 1954 and 2016 and shown mostly one to a page with a brief caption of name, location and year. They are printed (by Steidl) on matt art paper with a 175 screen. Workers is part of Friedlaner's Human Clay series, other titles include Portraits, Parties, Children, Street and At Work. 

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Thursday 10 August 2023

Karl Gerstner and his mathematical abstracts (5/5)














Design for a Swatch watch
















The essential Gerstner books

Hatje Cantz published two books that summed up Gerstner's creative career. 'Karl Gerstner: Review of 5x10 years of graphic design etc' from 2001 (ISBN 3775790594) looked at his commercial work as an Art Director for an ad agency, a publication and type designer (all the type in both books use the face he designed).

This book, published in 2004, covers his remarkable mathematical abstract art and it's written as a part autobiography. there are just over six hundred pictures from Gerstner's first abstracts in 1953 up to his work with fractals in the mid-nineties. The six chapters, each dealing with a different abstract style, start with an essay followed by pages of stunning art, mostly one to a page. A final section of eighteen pages has a long essay: Visual art in the twentieth century.' I've always thought that his work is unique because it's very precise and controlled and within these limitations he produces such exciting pictures.

It's worth saying that the book is long out of print but a few copies do appear on the net.

UK
US

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