Chuck Patch reviews a beautiful new book of early color photographs by Tod Papageorge, active in the mid-1960s circle of photographers that included Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and others.
Read MoreLevi Bentley examines the complex melange of past, present and future in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s book, “M Archive,” a work of speculative fiction that argues that Black feminist thought holds the “connection and knowledge and care of the earth and its people together through all time,” as Bentley says in their immersive review.
Read MoreScience tells us that Earth has had five mass species’ extinction events in its history. Writer Elizabeth Kolbert, in her Pulitzer-prize winning book, “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History,” argues persuasively that we experiencing a sixth extinction right now, one caused by man, and not by volcano or asteroid. Shawn Sheehy, in his haunting “Beyond the Sixth Extinction: A Post-Apocalyptic Pop-Up,” speculates on the dire circumstances of vast and irreversible climate change and suggests how some species may adapt, hybridize and succeed in the future. Our guest writer, Colette Fu, is an award-winning Philadelphia-based artist, whose pop-up books are owned by many museums and collections. Colette writes a cogent review of the cautiously optimistic book.
Read MoreImani reviews the new catalog from Rizzoli Electa, “I Too Sing America,” published in conjunction with the exhibit by the same name at the Columbus Museum of Art. Chock full of color images, archival materials and biographical insights, the coffee table book by writer and the show’s curator, Will Haygood, a Columbus native, is more than just a pretty face, she says.
Read MoreWill language go on if and when we do not? How does one speak of the future in a doomed world? Here Levi Bentley reviews a new book of poetry by Cynthia Arrieu-King that ponders these questions and many more. Out December 14, 2018 from Radiator Press (Philly’s newest poetry press) “Futureless Languages” is rooted in close observation of our trying times. Read on and pick up the book for yourself this Friday!
Read MoreIn Part 2 of Andrea Kirsh’s annual roundup of the best in art books, there is something for everyone on your holiday gift list from lovers of figurative painting to abstract sculpture fans. There’s also something for everyone to learn, whether it’s about a previously under-appreciated regional artist or the most famous self-promoter in the history of Modern Art.
Read More