Authors: Jessica Helfand.
Hardcover, 224 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication Date: 2008-11-03


Reviews :

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    Amazon Best of the Month, November 2008:  The scrapbook has long been a popular and vital form of self-expression embraced by a cross-section of American society. "To read another person's scrapbook" observes Jessica Helfand in Scrapbooks: An American History, "is to acquire a body of knowledge about an entirely different time and place." Helfand--a prominent graphic designer, art critic, and author--has combined her considerable talents to create one of the most interesting and category-defying books on American culture this year. Through some 200 albums dating from the Victorian era through the present day--albums that Helfand personally curated and researched--Scrapbooks tells the story of ordinary and extraordinary lives, innovative visual ideas, and social change within the larger context of American history. The perfectly presented color photographs of album pages and schematic renderings draw readers right in. And, Helfand's detailed, yet evocative interpretations will keep them glued to the page. Scrapbooks is a special book that engages readers with a palpable sense of the material qualities of historic scrapbooks, and provides a stimulating presentation of the complex social and cultural worlds out of which they emerged. Like any first-rate scrapbook, Scrapbooks is a treasure-trove worth poring over for hours and hours. --Lauren Nemroff

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The first book on the history of the American scrapbook. Discover untold stories in America's cultural history through nearly 200 fascinating scrapbooks.

Author Jessica Helfand Describes the Scrapbooks Project

Rich or poor, celebrity or civilian, men, women, and children of all ages kept scrapbooks. Some were ornate, with gilded covers and carefully composed pages of decoupage. Others were retrofitted from secondhand books, with chromolithographs glued sloppily on top of existing texts. Many consisted entirely of clippings, rigorously aligned and chronologically arranged, often around a central theme—pigeons, for instance, or movie stars or, not infrequently, obituaries. There were scrapbooks filled with babies, birds, and baseball statistics; scrapbooks about ice skating, dog breeding, and the intricacies of boy watching. Fragments of cloth from wedding gowns were included in bridal books, while new mothers included gentle locks from their baby’s first haircut. Debutantes saved news clippings, farmers saved weather reports, high school girls saved gum wrappers, and everyone, it seemed, saved greeting cards. Even soldiers kept scrapbooks, pasting in furlough requests, ration cards, and the tattered, beloved photos of their faraway sweethearts. Clumsily folded, haphazardly pasted, randomly annotated with fascinating afterthoughts, the material presence of these personal repositories offers a long-overlooked glimpse into the American spirit. Why did people feel compelled to save the things they did? What did they value, and question, and believe about themselves and the world around them? And how did the things they saved express what they themselves, for whatever reason, could not say in words?

Over time, the scrapbook came to mirror the changing pulse of American cultural life—a life of episodic moments, randomly reflected in a news clipping or a silhouetted photograph, a lock of baby hair or a Western Union telegram. As a genre unto themselves, scrapbooks represent a fascinating, yet virtually unexplored visual vernacular, a world of makeshift means and primitive methods, of gestural madness and unruly visions, of piety and poetry and a million private plagiarisms. As author, editor, photographer, curator, and inevitable protagonist, the scrapbook maker engaged in what seems today, in retrospect, a comparatively crude exercise in graphic design. Combining pictures, words, and a wealth of personal ephemera, the resulting works represent amateur yet stunningly authoritative examples of a particular strain of visual autobiography, a genre rich in emotional, pictorial, and sensory detail. --Jessica Helfand

Get a Closer Look at Scrapbooks
(click on images to enlarge)

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Authors: Andy Goldsworthy.
Hardcover, 120 pages
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Publication Date: 1990-09-01


Reviews :

    Using a seemingly endless range of natural materials, Goldsworthy creates sculpture in the open that manifests a sympathetic contact with the natural world. 120 full-color photographs....

    Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy uses a seemingly infinite array of purely natural materials, from snow and ice to leaves, stone, and twigs in the creation of his one-of-a-kind sculptures. Unlike such artists as Christo and Michael Hiezer, whose works leave definite marks on the landscape, Goldsworthy's approach is to interrupt, shape, or in some other way temporarily alter or work with nature to produce his fragile, mutable pieces. To create "Broken Icicle," for example, Goldsworthy was only able to work on the sculpture in the early morning, when temperatures were below freezing. As with most of his works, ultimately, the materials used to create this piece returned to their natural state, leaving no trace of the artwork's existence save for the stunning photos in this book....

Authors: Charlie Scheips.
Hardcover, 319 pages
Publisher: Assouline
Publication Date: 2007-09

Authors:
Hardcover, 248 pages
Publisher: Underwood Books
Publication Date: 2008-11-01


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Authors: Dave Stevens.
Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Underwood Books
Publication Date: 2008-12-01


Reviews :

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Authors: Chuck Fischer.
Hardcover, 12 pages
Publisher: Bulfinch
Publication Date: 2005-10-26


Reviews :

    This interactive pop-up book makes the perfect gift for anyone who loves the holiday traditions that originate in New York – from the lighting of the Christmas tree to watching the ball drop on New Year's Eve in Times Square. CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK features these world-famous holiday events, as well as scenes of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Angel Tree, George Balanchine's Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, and holiday store windows through the 20th century in the three-dimensional art of a pop-up book. Its unique construction combines original art by Chuck Fischer with photographs of famous New York City landmarks. The pop-up spreads include short histories, architectural legacies, anecdotes, and fun facts contained in pull-outs, removable booklets, and other extras. No collection of Christmas keepsakes is complete without the magic of CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK....

Authors: Wendy Goodman. Hutton Wilkinson.
Hardcover, 416 pages
Publisher: Abrams Books
Publication Date: 2007-12-01


Reviews :

    American artist and design legend Tony Duquette (1914–1999) was known for his over-the-top style in interiors, jewelry, costumes, and set design. His clients included Elizabeth Arden, the Duchess of Windsor, and Herb Albert.

The multi-talented Duquette designed sets for MGM musicals with Arthur Freed and Vincente Minnelli, and designed Tony Award–winning costumes for the original Broadway production of “Camelot.” Duquette was the first American to exhibit a one-man show at the Louvre in Paris.

Tony Duquette is a lavishly illustrated book with many lost and never-before published photographs from the Duquette archives, including portraits and pictures taken by Man Ray, John Engstead, Fredrich Dapriche, Andre Ostier, George Platt Lynnes, as well as original sketches, designs, and texts by Duquette himself. With commentary, interviews, stories, and contributions from Liza Minnelli, Arlene Dahl, Steven Meisel, Bruce Weber, and others....

Authors: John James Audubon.
Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Belknap Press
Publication Date: 2008-09-30


Reviews :

   

In 1805, Jean Jacques Audubon was a twenty-year-old itinerant Frenchman of ignoble birth and indifferent education who had fled revolutionary violence in Haiti and then France to take refuge in frontier America. Ten years later, John James Audubon was an American citizen, entrepreneur, and family man whose fervent desire to “become acquainted with nature” had led him to reinvent himself as a naturalist and artist whose study of birds would soon earn him international acclaim. The drawings he made during this crucial decade—sold to Audubon’s friend and patron Edward Harris to help fund his masterwork The Birds of America, and now held by the Houghton Library and the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University—are published together here for the first time in large format and full color. In these 116 portraits of species collected in America and in Europe we see Audubon inventing his ingenious methods of posing and depicting his subjects, and we trace his development into a scientist and an artist who could proudly sign his artworks “drawn from Nature.” The drawings also serve as a record of the birds found in Europe and the Eastern United States in the early nineteenth century, some now rare or extinct.

The drawings are enhanced by an essay on the sources of Audubon’s art by his biographer, Richard Rhodes; transcription of Audubon’s own annotations to the drawings, including information on when and where the specimens were collected; ornithological commentary by Scott V. Edwards, along with reflections on Audubon as scientist; and an account of the history of the Harris collection by Leslie A. Morris.

Splendid in their own right, these drawings also illuminate the self-invention of one of the most important figures in American natural history. They will delight all those interested in American art, nature, birds, and the life and times of John James Audubon.

(20080901)...

Authors: Frank Zollner.
Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Prestel USA
Publication Date: 2008-03-30


Reviews :

    The visual arts have always played a significatn role in Bob Dylan's worldview, and drawing and painting served as an outlet for his huge creative energy. Exquisitely reproduced, these intensely colored works are variations of sketches Bob Dylan completed while touring America, Europe and Asia, revealing a new facet of the artist.

Bob Dylan's watercolors and gouachse recreate scenes of everyday life in riotous color: hotel room and apartment interiors; land- and cityscapes; views of sidewalk cafes, train tracks and wandering rivers. this beautiful collection, which reveals yet another dimension of Bob Dylan's poetic vision, will be treasured by all who respond to his extraordinary talent....

Authors: Jeffrey Deitch. Julia Gruen.
Hardcover, 522 pages
Publisher: Rizzoli
Publication Date: 2008-10-28


Reviews :

    Closely based on Haring’s own concept for the monograph he wanted to publish before his untimely death, this volume represents more than a decade of research and contains a wealth of unpublished photographic and written material including drawings, studio photographs, and journal entries. From chalk drawings deep in the New York City subways to murals in Pisa and Berlin; collaborations with William Burroughs and the famous body painting of Grace Jones, this book follows the incredible trajectory of Keith Haring’s artistic career: how a young man from a small town in rural Pennsylvania came to revolutionize the art world—and the course of art history—within little more than a decade. An incredibly prolific artist, Keith Haring created countless bold, provocative, endearing, and unforgettable images that continue to inspire artists—and delight children—worldwide. Tracing the arc from his early subway "tags" to his poignant work on social issues as diverse as AIDS, illiteracy and apartheid, this visually stunning book is the definitive work on Keith Haring....