“Red,” 2002, by Thomas Allen.
All photos © Thomas Allen
Manly men grappling in bare-knuckled knockdowns; sultry vixens scratching each other’s eyes out; lonely gunslingers drawing first and asking questions later: these are the wicked and fanciful visions of photographer and designer Thomas Allen, whose amazing work I encountered a few years ago in a New York gallery. Allen’s hot-house characters have now returned, thankfully, in book form. Uncovered: Photographs by Thomas Allen (Aperture) collects 27 of his photos in a compact volume of thick board pages, like a child’s picture book, that perfectly complements the artist’s playful pop-up sensibility. The rogues and femme fatales of Allen’s world are literally cut out of pulp paperbacks and other kitschy tomes, suggestively arranged, and then shot in shallow focus on tabletops, with no post-camera manipulation. Funny, provocative, wildly creative—this one’s going to be a holiday gift no-brainer.
“Breathtaking,” 2006
“Teeter,” 2004
“Swell,” 2004
“Topple,” 2006
“Thirst,” 2004
“Distraction,” 2006
The first copies of Mark Powell’s V.I.P. are in, and mine arrived just in time for the New Year. Mark is location_iceburg on Fotolog, and we covered his work and news of his forthcoming debut here. Seeing this compact jewel of a book for the first time, it’s even more gorgeous than I figured it would be. Locaburg’s very important people are laid out with great intelligence, both in echoing pairs and extended sequences. Throughout the pages, blocks of sumptuous colors keyed to either major or minor highlights in the pictures offer almost musical bursts of emotional frisson.
Ninety-nine percent of the 135 pictures in V.I.P. are digital, made using a Canon G2 (!) and a Rollei d7, and a great many of them were first posted on Fotolog. The book is available now at the web site of the Mexican bookseller Librerías Gandhi (registration required), for 168 pesos, or just under $15 US. (However the only available shipping outside Mexico, by FedEx, starts at $22 to the US.) US and European Web site availability will be coming soon. Stay tuned. Fifteen dollars is an extraordinary bargain for a book of this quality, and the initial printing is only 1500 copies, so we’d advise you not to wait too long before you put in your order!
From the September11 group log
The new book Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) explores the ways in which the countless thousands of still and video images taken on September 11, 2001, and immediately after found their way into the mass media and helped transform how we see the world. Author David Friend (who is also a friend of Fotolog) relates the intimate, often harrowing accounts of scores of men and women who were compelled to document the tragedy unfolding in front of them.
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