Introduction

Checklist

Nigel Poor
Found

Betsy Davids
Cube

Kenneth Wilkes
Lost and Found

Other exhibitions

Green Chair Press

Curators: John DeMerritt and Steve Woodall

Check List

The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arion Press, 50 photographs by Michael Kenna illustrating text by Arthur Conan Doyle
7 3/4" x 10 1/4", 208 pages, edition of 400
Initial letters designed by Ward Dunham
Arion Press, San Francisco, 1985

The English photographer Michael Kenna had made a series of haunting landscape studies on the English moors, particularly on Dartmoor, where The Hound of the Baskervilles is set. Thus we felt compelled to make Sherlock Holmes the second detective in our mystery fiction series. In the novel the moor is more than just a backdrop; it is essential to the plot and action. Michael Kenna wrote about his photographs: "I found the reality of the moor to be as Arthur Conan Doyle portrayed it: beautiful but bleak, and subject to volatile changes. The images chosen are deliberately non-specific in terms of time and place, the suggestion of atmosphere being more important to me than literal illustrations." A trade edition was published by North Point Press in 1986. —from the Arion catalog. More information and pictures

The Invented Camera
Jo Babcock, camera-specific pinhole photography
6 1/2" x 8 1/4", 93 pages
Essays by Bill Berkson and Douglas R. Nickel
Self published, San Francisco, 2005

Repurposing a (usually) manufactured object aligns Babcock on the one hand, with Warhol and his Brillo boxes —but, in contrast to the Pop master, Babcock reintroduces his creations to the world as a new kind of functional object — a representation that now makes representations. —Douglas R. Nickel. More information and pictures

Semina 7 (facsimile)
Wallace Berman, photography, drawings, and text
5 1/2" x 7 3/4", 19 imagesEdition of 200 / facsimile edition of 300
Folded cardboard with paper sleeve, loose-leaf pages
Original self published, Larkspur, California, 1961
Facsimile published by LA Louver Gallery, Los Angeles, 1994

Berman had a radical approach to the medium of photography, treating it as a kind of personal record or testing ground for art. — Michael Duncan, Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle

Before Zero (Images from Polaroid)
Tom Bonauro, photography and design John Sullivan, printing and binding
6" x 6", 60 illustrations, edition of 350
Exposed sewn binding, tabbed-paper outer cover
Self published, San Francisco, 2005

Cut-Paper/Frederick Sommer Makes a Cut-Paper
Jonathan Clark and Frederick Sommer,text and photography
6" x 6", 26 pages, edition of 950 Concertina with paper covers, plastic sleeve, Jonathan Clark, Artichoke Editions, Mountain View, California, 1998
More information and pictures

East-West (A Book of Fortune)
Steven Cortright, text and photography
11 3/4" x 13 3/4"Paper cover, spiral binding, unique vertical/horizontal format
Chicago Books, Chicago, Illinois, 1986

Cube
Betsy Davids, scanned photos and text
3" x 3" x 3" (closed), 3" x 6" x 1.5" (open)
Re-configurable linked cubes
Self published, Berkeley, 2004

La Loteria Cosmologica
Luis Delgado Qualtrough
47 5" x 7" toned silver gelatin photographs mountedto cards in a 9" x 7" wooden box with sliding lid, individual wooden card holders, edition of 10
Self published, San Francisco, 1996

The Cosmological Loteria is a collection of photographic cards that emulates the form of a traditional Mexican "Loteria." By utilizing icons and titles, the cards explore universal values and attributes of humanity and its surroundings, and at the same time the relationship between man, nature and the structure of society. This collection is not meant for divination but for reflection, philosophical discussion, and self enlightenment. —LDQ More information and pictures

Unravelling the Ripple
Helen Douglas, photography and design
5" x 6 3/4", 208 pages
Essay by Rebecca Solnit
Morning Star Publications, Scotland, 2001

The title for this book came in a dream in 1996 and I always knew the theme of this book would be an exploration of that place of meeting, the shifting boundary between water and land. —HD More information and pictures

The Extinguishing of Stars
Carolyn Fraser, text
Carolyn Fraser and Holly Morrison, photography, design and printing
7" x 9 1/8", edition of 50
Photogravure and letterpress
Bound by John DeMerritt
Idlewild Press, Cleveland, Ohio, 2005

It is a meditation on the small within the infinite; a folding and unfolding of memory . . . The images and text weave a story of a girl exploring the intimate particulars of her everyday world — the bushland, the ocean, diamonds hidden in a soapbox — and the slow revealing of the universe. The book culminates in a premonition that brings the girl to a sudden and new awareness of her presence in the world and its mysteries. —CF More information and pictures

2 Saunters: Summer & Winter (1978)
Jack Fulton, text and photography
12" x 12", 42 pages
Pencil Press, San Rafael, California, 1986

This book, celebrating the 20th anniversary of its publication, is sui generis, about as original as landscape photography gets, and a perfect antidote to the sometimes oppressive ghost of Ansel Adams. —SW

Go
Bruce Gliden, photography
9" x 13 1/4"
Browns/London, London, 2000

Flag Book Model
Karen Hanmer, concertina with "flags"
6" x 8 1/4" closed, model (unique)
Photograph from the Library of Congress
Inkjet printed
Glenview, Illinois, 2005

The "flag" book structure was developed by Hedi Kyle in the late '70s, and Karen Hanmer is one of its most advanced practitioners. The image, downloaded from the Library of Congress website, is of a woman working in an aircraft factory. The image presented here is rendered in what Hanmer calls the 'stepped" style. Another version, in what she terms the "consolidated" style, is available for viewing on request. —SW. More information: Karen Hammer and on making flag book structure

Oscar 365
Michael Henninger, photographs and design
18 1/2" x 4", 18 1/2" x 10" unfolded, unique copy
concertina, inkjet printed
Self published, RatArt Press, Oakland, 2002

This book is the result of a project to photograph my first son, Oscar, once a day from birth to one year old. Small day-to-day changes which were unnoticed by a weary parent become apparent when looking at the entire collection of photos. The use of a digital camera, computer, and digital printing made this book feasible; otherwise it would have been difficult and expensive to produce. —MH

Upbntitled
German Herrera, photographs and design
7 1/2" x 7 1/4"
18 photographs, unique copy
Inkjet printed
Self published, 2002
More information and pictures

Mars Observations
Craig Hickman, text and photography8 1/2" x 11", 64 pagesDry Reading Press, Eugene, Oregon, 2001

Craig Hickman is a serious artist who is funny. His recent work combines image and text in ways that build on traditions going back more than a hundred years to include the editorial cartoon, the cubist collage, dada experimentation with language, and the image-text artworks of the 1980's. However, Hickman's use of photographs and text is inspired more by play and poetry than by politics or polemics. These qualities of humor, word play, and delight in literary and visual coincidence reward the viewer who spends time with Hickman's art. —Terri M. Hopkins. More information and pictures

Still Water
Roni Horn, text and photography
21" x 15", edition of 1000
Twin Palms Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2000

The work speaks to us, as viewers; it engages us with questions and directs us with its syntax and references. Both text and photographs consciously play with the conventions of traditional writing and photography. Sometimes they are synchronized, producing together the effect of staring at water and letting one's thoughts run and drift. —Allison Moore. More information: here and here

The Map (Chizu)
Kikuji Kawada, photography and design
11" x 12", facsimile edition of 500
49 plates, 23 four-panel black and white gatefolds
Original Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, Tokyo, 6 August, 1965

This facsimile reprint by Nazraeli Press, Tucson, Arizona, 2005
Kawada's photographs are a masterly amalgam of abstraction and realism, of the specific and the ineffable, woven into a tapestry that makes the act of reading them a process of re-creation in itself. In the central metaphor of the map, and specifically, in the idea of the map as a series of interlocking trace marks, Kawada has conjured a brilliant simile for the photograph itself — scientific record, memory trace, cultural repository, puzzle and guide. —Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, vol. 1. More information and pictures

Family Album
Susan E. King, Polaroid transfers and prints
Eight framed plates from the book—each 15 1/4" x 10 1/2", edition of 7
Calligraphy by Janet Takahashi
Self published, Los Angeles, California, 2002

Family Album is a combination memorial album/photo album, documenting various deceased members of my family, some of whom I knew, some were dead before I was born. They range from my great uncle and grandmother, both dead in the early part of the century, to my Dad who died only a few years ago. Each family member, identified by name only, is represented in an archetypal manner, by figures that stand in for them after death. —SK. More information and pictures

Thousands
Kumi Korf, photography and mixed media
8 1/2" x 7 3/4", edition of 5
Accordion-pleated fixed inner pages, cardboard, satin ribbon, metallic thread, and quill peg, oval hinged-paper cover
Self published, Ithaca, New York, 1986

The Lexington Project
Riya Lerner, photography and design
9" x 13", unique copy Digital prints on Moab paper
Self published, San Francisco Art Institute, 2004

Every person's identity is a construct, especially in a bar. I am fascinated by the way people choose to present themselves. More specifically, I am fascinated by the way that gender and sexuality can be an important and malleable element of this presentation. Specific to this lesbian bar exists a striking ambiguity of public and private space. This bar is not just any bar — it is specific to the subculture that exists inside and outside of it. —RL

a sort of universal presumption
Paula McCartney, photography and design
8" x 8", concertina, edition of 10
Text from Scott Bradfield's The History of Luminous Motion
Self published, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2004

The opening text, "because nobody was where they wanted to be in the first place," (part of a quote from a Scott Bradfield novel) compliments the constant swimming and movement of the mackerel that I photographed in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was attracted to their ceaseless movement, and wanted to create a book that reflected this instinct to persevere without always understanding why. The swimming fish can be experienced page-by-page, or extended completely to an 80-inch accordion span and be displayed sculpturally. More information and pictures

Was Here
Emily McVarish, text, design and letterpress printing
10 3/4" x 13 1/4", 64 pages, edition of 50
Binding by Coriander Reisbord
Granary Books, New York, 2001

Was Here takes Photography and the Book as distinct metaphors for History, playing them off one another to provoke and unwind their respective implications. As markers of a former presence and constellations of the unfulfilled, photographs punch holes in the book's inherent pretenses of organicism and linearity, calling attention to the citational nature of the book's very element, language. On the other hand, with its potential to carry out alternation and repetition over paginated time, a book can make tangible the temporal and ontological paradoxes at the heart of every photographic image. With obvious compositional and material attention to the medium (letterpress) in which both texts and photographs—labels and vignettes, captions and scenes, statements and evidence—are presented, Was Here seeks signs of the historical truths that link reproducibility and transcendence. —EM

The Nameless Dead
Clifton Meador, text, photography, design and printing
6 1/4" x 10 1/2", 112 pages, edition of 900
Printed at The Center for Editions, Purchase College
PABA Publishing, New Haven, Connecticut, 2004

The Nameless Dead is one of the most remarkable artist's books of recent years, with a deep and mysterious narrative that is both literary and visual—simultaneously a story of a journey to a lifeless museum city in western Uzbekistan, an exploration of the history of Russia's conquest of Central Asia, and a journey through the afterlife. Meador worked as a true auteur: not only did he provide the entire contents and layout, he also designed a typeface for the book and did the offset printing. —SW. More information and pictures

Night Flight
John Miles, photography; Michael Pinney, text
5 1/2" x 5", 52 pages, concertina
Bettiscombe Press, London, 1969

Sara Cedar Miller
Sara Cedar Miller, panoramic photographs
22 1/2" x 5 1/4", 22 images, plastic comb binding
Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, Oregon, 1986

Paisaje Landscape
Howard Munson, photographs and mixed-media collage
15" x 10 3/4"
Unique copy, six images, vertical concertina
Self published, San Francisco, 2005

American Negatives
Abner Nolan, 24 Iris prints from found negatives
11 1/4" x 15 1/4", edition of 30
Trillium Press, Brisbane, California, 2003

Found (July)
Nigel Poor, photography, text and binding
8 1/4" x 10 1/4", unique copy
Printing by Urban Digital Color, San Francisco
Self published, San Francisco 2002

On January 1st, 1998, I began a project called FOUND. It is a journal of time, the environment, and of myself. Every day I took a walk to collect something outside—in streets and alleys, playgrounds and fields, gutters and lawns. The objects I found varied, but they all were things that had been cast off, things that would be considered debris. I brought each piece back to my studio and then photographed it individually with a black background to induce the feeling of something hovering or floating to the surface. Through the photographs, the objects began to acquire new meanings: they were reminiscent of anatomy, they became beautiful sculptures, they were clues to hidden worlds, and so on. It is as if each object had fallen from a story, and, in its finding, was plucked out of the obscurity of some invisible narrative. In this sense, the object became "evidence" which deserved closer inspection. The entire Found project relates to the entomologist's or taxonomist's process: collecting, sorting, cataloging, and assigning value to things which might be seen everyday but are often ignored, overlooked or misunderstood." —NP More information and pictures

Hamburger Eyes
Ray Potes, editor, photo journal
7" x 8 1/2"
San Francisco, 2001-present

"the continuing story of life on earth." More information and pictures

The Sensitive and Vegetable Souls: A Bestiary
Sara Press
C-print photographs, silkscreen and mixed media
6" x 7", edition of 30
Sterling silver closure by Heather Rubin
Self published, San Francisco, 2005

Modeled on my great-grandmother's annotated tintype album, this bestiary explores our familial relationship with the rest of the natural world. It questions the rigid boundaries we've drawn between animal & human, between science & fiction, and between family & enemy. —SP. More information and pictures

The New & Improved More Homes of the Stars
Jaime Robles, photography, design and text
4 3/4" x 3 1/4", 14 pages, concertina, edition of 400
Women's Graphic Center, Los Angeles, 1984

246 little clouds
Dieter Roth, concept, drawings, text and photography
6 3/4" x 9"
Introduction by Emmett Williams
Originally published by Something Else Press, New York, 1968
This edition hansjog mayer, Stuttgart, 1976

In 246 Little Clouds, scraps of paper (little clouds) with sketches are taped onto the page below a particular phrase. This is then photographed with the illumination moving one degree at a time from left to right representing the rising sun with the taped pieces of paper casting shadows such as clouds might create. —Gwendolyn J. Miller

Verses
James Sansing, photography and design
3 1/2" x 2 1/4", unique copy
15 inkjet prints, graphite fore-edge
Self published, San Francisco, 2004

The photographs in this book are from juvenile hall ledgers dating from the 1940s-1960s written by juvenile hall counselors on the daily events of the children detained there. The ledgers were abandoned and left to deteriorate, creating the Rorschach patterns that so poetically refer to the psychological nature of the institution. —JS

Exquisite
Alice Shaw, photography and design
10" x 18", 16 pages
"exquisite corpse" structure, unique copy, spiral bound
Self published, San Francisco, 2006

I have taken the idea from the exquisite corpse, where one person draws part of a body then folds the paper so the next artist cannot see what was previously drawn before they add onto it. I have bound two layers of photographs, eight in each stack, and when the pages are turned the images play off one another and create different associations. —AS. More information and pictures

fStop: Pictures by Designers for Designers
Stefan Sagmeister, designer
Erik Spiekermann, publisher
3 3/4" x 4 3/4"
FontShop International, Berlin, 2002
A commercial catalog of royalty-free images, photographs by designers.

Camera Book
Peter Thomas, photographs and design
Camera with photographs, unique copy
Self published, Santa Cruz, California, 2005
More information and pictures

Target
Lex Thompson, photography, letterpress printing and design
7 3/4" x 13 1/4", edition of 7
Self published, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2004

Target is a book comprised of photographs taken in the abandoned Winchester Rifle Factory in New Haven, Connecticut. Intermingled with the images are old photos and textual excerpts taken from items (a time card, manufacturing inspection sheet, newsletter, etc.) found in the factory. The book is made with a combination of inkjet and letterpress printing. The photographs document the now hollow place where labor and social life intermingled. But, only so much can be known from these remnants alone. The spaces are filled by the artifacts gathered off the factory floor. They present the life and activity of those that inhabited this building. The beauty and romanticism of the ruin is populated by a specific, if incomplete, record of the building's life. —LT. More information and pictures

Lost and Found
Kenneth Wilkes, Binding by Howard Munson
Three vertical concertina hanging books
15 1/2" x 16" each, 15 1/2" x 63" unfolded
San Francisco 2006

Twenty-five year old discarded paper Polaroid negatives were scanned and enlarged to emphasize the surface texture. Except for some minor color shift adjustments made in Photoshop, no digital manipulation was employed in this project. Images were printed on an Epson 7600 inkjet printer using archival Ultrachrome inks and acid-free semi-matte paper. Lost and Found is one of an on-going series of projects dealing with found objects. —KW

Making Waves
Michael Wolfe, photography, text and design
12" x 7 1/4", 18 pages, sewn binding, title on plastic sleeve
Self published, Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, California, 2003

Nature Abhors
Philip Zimmermann, photography, printing and design
5 1/4" x 5 1/4", 30 pages, edition of 150
Based on a structure by Hedi Kyle, corrugated-paper fold-out box
Spaceheater Editions, Rhinebeck, New York, 2003

In addition to being a great vehicle for communicating directly to an audience, artists' books have the wonderful advantage of being time-based like video and film. Static pictures on a wall seem and impoverished way of making an artistic statement after one works with sequence, rhythm, movement, translucency, narrative arc; the list goes on and on. I know I am biased: I have been in love with books ever since I was a small child, but the medium is so rich with possibilities that it is hard to go back to working any other way. —PZ