Book picks similar to
Joe by Hiroshi Sugimoto
art
photography
fiction
novels-tangible
Device 6
Jonas Tarstad - 2013
All she remembers is an unusually unpleasant doll...Why are there two identical castles on the island? Who is the mysterious man in the bowler hat? And above all, what is the purpose of the tests Anna is put through?Read, listen and peek into three-dimensional photographs to solve the bizarre mysteries of DEVICE 6.
LaChapelle Land
David Lachapelle - 1996
And rightly so. The marriage of LaChapelle’s vivid, high-octane images with graphic artist, Tadanori Yokoo’s supersaturated designs make for an astonishing physical object. The reissue of this now classic, long out-of-print volume showcases all the lollipop giddiness of the original now lavishly reproduced in a larger format. “There’s a tradition of celebrity portraiture that attempts to uncover the ‘real person’ behind the trappings of their celebrity. I am more interested in those trappings,” says LaChapelle. Indeed, he exaggerates the artificiality of fame and Hollywood culture in a head on collision of color, plastic, and whimsy. His photographs confront our visual taste and challenge our ideas of celebrity, all the while taking us on a roller coaster ride through his hyper-sensationalized galaxy. Lil’ Kim becomes the ultimate status symbol, tattooed in the Louis Vuitton pattern. Madonna rises from pink waters as a mystical dragon princess. Pamela Anderson hatches out of an egg; and Alexander McQueen burns down the castle dressed as the Queen of Hearts. David LaChapelle’s uncompromising originality is legendary in the worlds of fashion, film, and advertising. His images, both bizarre and gorgeous, have appeared on and in between the covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Vibe and more. La Chapelle Land is fun park America gone surrealistically wrong — but in such an attractive way.
Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer
Jamie Figueroa - 2021
In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother's passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa's own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be.As the siblings reckon with generational and ancestral trauma, set against the indignities of present-day prejudice, other strange hauntings begin to stalk these pages: their mother's ghost kicks her heels against the walls; Rufina's vanished child creeps into her arms at night; and above all this, watching over the siblings, a genderless, flea-bitten angel remains hell-bent on saving what can be saved.
Lost Souls at the Neptune Inn
Betsy Carter - 2020
Geraldine is a fiery beauty, turning heads while running the local bakery with her devoted husband, Earle-but she never quite takes to motherhood. Her daughter, Emilia Mae, spends her life chasing her mother's affection and goes looking for love in all the wrong places. So when she gives birth to her own daughter, Alice-the girl with the quick laugh and music running through her veins-she vows to do things differently. Then, Dillard Fox, a handsome stranger with a Southern drawl sails into town, bringing with him a gentle warmth that draws in all three of the Wingo women. Emilia Mae, never thinking she'd find true love, builds the kind of happy life with Dillard that neither of them ever expected. Geraldine slowly learns to be kinder to her difficult daughter, and young Alice may have found the father figure she always wanted. But everyone has their secrets, and the one that Dillard has been carrying all of these years threatens to upend their idyllic family. Over the course of their lives, these three women navigate their relationships with each other and the changing world around them. Filled with Carter's characteristic wit, this charming, wise novel is a paean to love-any way you can find it.
How to Be Alone
Tanya Davis - 2013
If you've not been alone much or if, when you were, you weren't okay with it then just wait...Since its debut on YouTube, Tanya Davis's beautiful and perceptive poem, How to Be Alone, visually realized by artist and filmmaker Andrea Dorfman, has become an international sensation. Her wise and perceptive words, vivid in their evocation of solitude's beauty and calm, have touched millions. Now her poem's deep eloquence and compelling illustrations have been adapted for the page in this beautiful, meditative volume, a keepsake to treasure and to share. From a solitary walk in the woods to sitting unaccompanied on a city park bench to eating a meal and even dancing alone, Tanya reveals the possibilities and joys waiting to be discovered when we engage in activities on our own. As she soothes the disquietude that accompanies the fear of aloneness, and celebrates the power of solitude to change how we see ourselves and the world, Tanya reavels how, removed from the noise and distractions of other lives, we can find acceptance and grace within.For those who have never been by themselves and those who feel lost or lonely on their own, this moving work encourages us to recognize and embrace the possibilities of being alone-and reminds us of a universe of joy, peace, and discovery waiting to unfold.
The Daybooks of Edward Weston
Edward Weston - 1973
His journal has become a classic of photographic literature. Weston was a towering figure in twentieth-century photography, whose restless quest for beauty and the mystical presence behind it resulted in a body of work unrivaled in the medium. John Szarkowski observes that "It was as though the things of everyday experience had been transformed... into organic sculptures, the forms of which were both the expression and the justification of the life within... He had freed his eyes of conventional expectation, and had taught them to see the statement of intent that resides in natural form."
Dance Dance Revolution
Cathy Park Hong - 2007
Cathy Park Hong's passionate and artful poem sequence weaves an ultimately revitalizing dialogue on shared experience in a globalized world, using language as subversion and disguise.
Saving Beck
Courtney Cole - 2018
The cold needle in his warm vein was a welcome comfort to my son at first. But then it became the monster that kept us apart. Heroin lied, and my son believed. It took him to a world where the last year didn’t happen, to a place where his father was still alive. What Beck didn’t understand was that it couldn’t bring his father back from the dead. It couldn’t take away his pain, not permanently. You think it can’t happen to you, that your kids, your family, will never be in this situation. I thought that too. But you’re wrong. Step into our world, and see for yourself. Watch my golden boy become a slave to this raging epidemic. Watch me try and save him. Drug addiction comes with a price. Trust me, you’re not equipped to pay it. Don’t miss this heartwrenching, evocative, yet hopeful novel—it will leave you forever changed.
And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
John Berger - 1984
This lens is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every story, ground between the temporal and the timeless . . . . In our brief mortal lives, we are grinders of these lenses."This brooding, provocative, and almost unbearably lovely book displays one of the great writers of our time at his freest and most direct, addressing the themes that run beneath the surface of all his work, from Ways of Seeing to his Into Their Labours trilogy.In an extraordinary distillation of his gifts as a novelist, poet, art critic, and social historian, John Berger reveals the ties between love and absence, the ways poetry endows language with the assurance of prayer, and the tensions between the forward movement of sexuality and the steady backward tug of time. He re-creates the mysterious forces at work in a Rembrandt painting, transcribes the sensorial experience of viewing lilacs at dusk, and explores the meaning of home to early man and to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in our cities today.A work of unclassifiable innovation and consummate beauty, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos reminds us of Nabokov and Auden, Brecht and Lawrence, in its seamless fusion of the political and the personal.
By Love Possessed
Lorna Goodison - 2011
Bingham Prize“Written by the hand of a poet, the prose in this collection is consistently beautiful.”—Elizabeth Nunez, author of Prospero’s Daughter and Boundaries“I love the tender beautiful writing; I love the characters, and in many ways it felt as if I had met them before….I just love this book.”—Uwem Akpan, author of Say You’re One of Them, an Oprah Book Club selectionInternationally renowned and award-winning poet Lorna Goodison brings us By Love Possessed, her long-anticipated collection of short fiction. Making dazzling use of the Creole patois of Jamaica, Goodison limns the beauty and despair of the human condition and explores the unique power of love to both uplift and destroy. Goodison’s powerfully moving stories explore the pain, the struggle, and the triumph of Jamaicans—particularly women—those still living on their Caribbean island and those who have emigrated elsewhere. By Love Possessed is a rare and beautiful gift from an extraordinary writer who was mentored by the legendary Derek Walcott and who stands with Edwidge Danticat as a brave and breathtaking voice in contemporary literature.
There's a Word for That
Sloane Tanen - 2019
I couldn't put it down." ---Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness ProjectA hilarious and moving chronicle of a wildly flawed family that comes together--in rehab, of all places--even as each member is on the verge of falling apart Introducing the Kesslers: Marty, a retired LA film producer whose self-worth has been eroded by age and a late-in-life passion for opioids; his daughter Janine, former child star suffering the aftereffects of a life in the public eye; and granddaughter Hailey, the "less-than" twin sister, whose inferiority complex takes a most unexpected turn. Nearly six thousand miles away, in London, celebrated author Bunny Small, Marty's long-forgotten first wife, has her own problems: a "preposterous" case of writer's block, a monstrous drinking habit, and a son who has fled halfway around the world to escape her.When Marty's pill-popping gets out of hand and Bunny's boozing reaches crisis proportions, a perfect storm of dysfunction brings them all together at Directions, Malibu's most exclusive and absurd rehab center.But for all their failings, the members of this estranged--and strange--family love each other. Rich with warmth, humor, and deep insight, There's a Word for That is a comic ode to surviving the people closest to us, navigating the perils of success, and taking one last look in the rearview mirror before mapping out the road ahead.
Other People's Comfort Keeps Me up at Night
Morgan Parker - 2015
Parker’s collection is hyper-contemporary, drawing on what it means to be alive today when our phones autocorrect our texts and we’ve given into a kind of living that prioritizes work, money, and power over justice, equality, and happiness.
East Is East
T. Coraghessan Boyle - 1990
In the hands of T. Coraghessan Boyle, praised by Digby Diehl in Playboy as "one of the most exciting young fiction writers in America," the result is a sexy, hilarious tragicomedy of thwarted expectations and mistaken identity, love, jealousy, and betrayal.
The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States
Edwidge Danticat - 1997
Their dyaspora, much like a butterfly's fluctuating path, is a shifting landscape in which there is much travel between two worlds, between their place of origin and their adopted land.This compilation of essays and poetry brings together Haitian-Americans of different generations and backgrounds, linking the voices for whom English is a first language and others whose dreams will always be in French and Krey�l. Community activists, scholars, visual artists and filmmakers join renowned journalists, poets, novelists and memoirists to produce a poignant portrayal of lives in transition.Edwidge Danticat, in her powerful introduction, pays tribute to Jean Dominique, a sometime participant in the Haitian dyaspora and a recent martyr to Haiti's troubled politics, and the many members of the dyaspora who refused to be silenced. Their stories confidently and passionately illustrate the joys and heartaches, hopes and aspirations of a relatively new group of immigrants belonging to two countries that have each at times maligned and embraced them.