News
Redux Pictures now representing images from art & photography book publisher powerHouse Books
Redux Pictures has announced a deal with powerHouse Books, a specialty publisher focused on conceptual art photography and illustrated books from the world’s top photographers, art directors, writers, and cultural icons. According to the press release Redux pictures will handle international serial rights to select powerHouse Book titles including upcoming releases from Jamel Shabazz, Janette Beckman, Julia Calfee, Seth Kushner & Anthony LaSala, Nathaniel Welch, Carolyn Russo, and David Yellen, as well as a memoir by Walker Evans’ former wife Isabelle Storey.
“Our partnership with Redux Pictures will enable powerHouse to reach an even larger international audience, offering greater exposure of our collective visual history as it is lived across the United States and throughout the world,” comments Sara Rosen, Publicity Director of powerHouse Books.
Redux Pictures currently syndicates the work of The New York Times, Laif in Germany, Agence REA in France and Contrasto in Italy among others.
The new titles handled by Redux include:
Walker’s Way: My Years with Walker Evans by Isabelle Storey
Walker’s Way: My Years with Walker Evans, Isabelle Storey’s memoir of her ten-year marriage to Walker Evans, is the story of an elegant young woman’s infatuation with a great American artist—with the man himself, with what he stood for aesthetically, and with his artistic and social circle—and how her initial passion gradually cooled into disenchantment. Isabelle Boschenstein was born in Switzerland and spent part of her early childhood in Berlin and Paris. She arrived in New York with her first husband, Alec von Steiger, in 1958. But their marriage lacked passion, and when she met Walker Evans, she fell for him headlong. Isabelle and Walker were married in 1960. Evans, already a prominent figure in the world of photography, introduced Isabelle to Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Helen Levitt, Robert Penn Warren, Alfred Kazin, William H. Whyte, and a host of other luminaries. But over the course of the next decade, her relationship with Walker became strained. In this candid and poignant narrative, which draws extensively on the couple’s voluminous correspondence, Isabelle describes how their marriage grew more formal, cooler, and eventually failed altogether as Isabelle felt compelled to move on.
Seconds of My Life: Photographs by Jamel Shabazz, Texts by Lauri Lyons
At age nine, Jamel Shabazz was introduced to photography by his father, who kept a signed copy of Leonard Freed’s Black in White America on the family’s coffee table. Intrigued by Freed’s provocative images of both Southern and urban life, Shabazz knew then it was his calling to document his community and the people who gave it life. Photography has given Shabazz a sense of purpose, allowing him to connect with the people he encounters on a daily basis. By connecting with his subjects, complimenting their style, and recognizing their potential—and then in turn publishing these images for the world at large to celebrate—in a small but meaningful way Shabazz has been able to counteract the damage society can wreak on self esteem. Seconds of My Life, Shabazz’s fourth powerHouse Book, delves deeply into the artist’s archives, going back over 25 years and spanning the globe in its representation of human life. Whether in the hills of Jamaica or the shantytowns of Brazil, among the immigrants in France or the Buddhist monks of Bangkok, Shabazz seeks out strong personalities from all races, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, sexualities, and class backgrounds. Shabazz appreciates the poise and confidence of people in all their luminous variety. Featuring photographs of Dave Chappelle, GrandMaster Flash, The Roots, Sweet Back, Big Daddy Kane, Public Enemy, Kanye West, Common, Mos Def, Russell Simmons, Jill Scott, Roy Ayers, Pete Rock, Jacob the Jeweler, and Grover Washington, famed fraternities Alpha Kappa Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, Delta Sigma Theta, and Zeta Phi Beta, members of the Nation of Islam, Freemasons, Shriners, Bloods, Crips, cops, and city workers, as well as parades and anti-war protests, Seconds of My Life is an unstoppable tour de force.
The Brooklynites: Photographs by Seth Kushner, Text by Anthony LaSala, Foreword by Terrence Winter
A complex and quixotic urban animal found ranging across southwest New York, the Brooklynite has obtained a sort of mythological status, representing the “you tawkin’ to me” attitude for which the city is known. For over three years, writer Anthony LaSala and photographer Seth Kushner trekked tirelessly across the borough, documenting these charismatic characters in The Brooklynites, a collection of images, interviews, and essays. Kushner and LaSala, native Brooklynites themselves, sought out the famous and the nameless, current residents and former inhabitants, providing a profoundly comprehensive portrait of both the metropolis and its denizens. Featuring the likes of Paul Auster, Spike Lee, Steve Buscemi, Rosie Perez, Sufjan Stevens, John Turturro, Casey Spooner, Steve Schirripa, Matisyahu, and Jonathan Lethem—as well as local heroes, The Brooklynites features figures from nearly every neighborhood, from Brooklyn Heights to Brownsville, Bensonhurst to Bedford-Stuvesant, Bay Ridge and beyond. Providing images and musings from directors and workers at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Peter Luger’s Steakhouse, the Coney Island Aquarium, Brooklyn College, the Prospect Park Zoo, Totonno’s Pizzeria, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Coney Island Freak Show, or the Brooklyn Museum, The Brooklynites also features a foreword by Brooklyn-born, Emmy Award–winning writer and producer Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Get Rich or Die Tryin’). Think you know Brooklyn? Fugghedaboutit.
The Breaks: Stylin’ and Profilin’ 1982-1990, Photographs by Janette Beckman, Texts by Tom Terrell and Bill Adler
In the fall of 1982, celebrated photographer of the British music scene Janette Beckman moved to New York City, where she found hip hop on the edge of explosion. After a decade underground, the DJs, MCs, b-boys, fly girls, and graff writers were finally getting their due from the downtown crowd. While trains were covered in graffiti and boomboxes were blasting on the corners, DJs were up in the clubs while the dancers rocked the floor. Artists were getting signed and local legends were born. And while others called hip hop a fad, Beckman knew better. Her photographs, collected in The Breaks: Stylin’ and Profilin’ 1982–1990 transport us back to a time before music videos, marketing departments, and uber-stylists took control. The queen of the 80s album cover, Beckman shot the icons of the era: Africa Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Fearless Four, the World Famous Supreme Team, Lovebug Starsky, Salt’n’Pepa, Run-DMC, Stetsasonic, UTFO, Roxanne Shante, Sweet T, Jazzy Joyce, Slick Rick, Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. and Rakim, EPMD, NWA, Ice-T, 2 Live Crew, Tone Loc, Gang Starr, Ultramagnetic MCs, Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock, Special Ed, Leaders of the New School, Jungle Brothers, Beastie Boys, Rick Rubin, and countless others. The era was as original as it was innocent, and Beckman’s images remind us of a culture that brought forth The Message before it got Paid in Full.
Inside: The Chelsea Hotel by Julia Calfee, Edited by Antonin Kratochvil, Designed by Justus Oehler/Pentagram Design
The Chelsea Hotel is a place where excess is welcome, where the psyche can be annihilated or resurrected. It has a magical potential for transformation, whether it is rebirth or destruction. Artists such as Mark Twain, Edith Piaf, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jasper Johns, Jack Kerouac, Wilhelm de Kooning, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Ethan Hawke have been drawn Inside by a seemingly irresistible magnetic force. Julia Calfee has lived and photographed in the Chelsea Hotel for four years. As she points out, “When I photographed at the Chelsea Hotel, I would stay in a space or situation for hours. Time would pass and my presence would become less and less visible. Sometimes I would even disappear. People are always asking me what it’s like to live in the Chelsea Hotel. Not always easy. There are times I felt like a fly caught in a spider’s web, at risk of being eaten alive if I made the wrong move. This goes with living and working in the same place with a large extended, temperamental family full of artistic sensitivities and colossal egos, with long, exposed nerve ends—but there were also many moments of friendship, generosity, and complicity.” In an intimate style, Inside: The Chelsea Hotel documents not only the archetypes and atmosphere in, but also echoes from the spirits and ghosts of, the Chelsea Hotel.
Hair Wars: Photographs by David Yellen, Introduction and Interviews by Johanna Lenander
Remote controlled hairy-copters, an eight-foot wide hawk, a birthday cake spouting confetti, a working barbeque grill, a Bible made of hair—these are just a few creations featured in Hair Wars, David Yellen’s jaw-dropping collection of portraits taken at the touring American showcase of the same name. Combining advanced styling techniques, countless pounds of human hair extensions, and irrepressible imagination, these proudly outrageous coiffures take the time-honored tradition and culture of African American hairstyling out of the beauty parlor and onto the runway. Founded by David Humphries, a.k.a. “Hump the Grinder,” in the nightclubs of Detroit during the mid-80s, the “hair off” events started out as “Wednesday Night Hair Connection,” a weekly party. By 1994, the event had grown into a national showcase that toured the country, visiting cities including New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, as well as hometown Detroit. At these “hair entertainment” events, professional stylists battle each other with wildly innovative designs. Just as colorful as their creations, the stylists sport eccentric signature looks and eclectic stage names. Hair Wars stylists push themselves to create bigger, bolder, and more bodacious ‘dos at every show. But this is not a competition—it is a showcase of some of the most incredible talent and design this country has ever seen.
Jesse James and His Beautiful Machines: Photographs by Nathaniel Welch
He’s a welder and a gear-head, a tattooed wiseguy, and stone-cold TV star. Jesse James works with his hands, making custom motorcycles for big spenders who like their choppers loud and built from the ground on up. James got famous as the host of TV’s Monster Garage and Motorcycle Mania, but it all begins at his West Coast Choppers factory in Long Beach, California, where James and his crew piece together these epic handmade machines, welding and sculpting an array of gleaming pipes and fenders from scratch and polishing every detail right down to the magnum shell casings that decorate West Coast gas caps. The bikes are fast, but building each one is a year-long process, and the waiting list is long. Jesse James (named for the Old West outlaw and distant cousin) is a one-time juvenile delinquent who became an international pop culture phenomenon, a grease monkey superhero with a blowtorch, and an impossible success story that began in his mother’s garage in 1993. He does it now for both love (of his machines and their aluminum engines) and money: He has a giant $100 bill tattooed across his back, and the words "Pay up, sucker!" written in the palm of one hand. He’s not joking. In Jesse James and His Beautiful Machines, photographer Nathaniel Welch documents that life and every step of the creative process in a collection of elegant, grease-stained portraits of people and the motorcycles they create—the welding, sandblasting, painting, fueling—and of James himself roaring along some Long Beach highway on one of his beautiful machines.
In Plane View: Abstractions of Flight, Photographs by Carolyn Russo, Foreword by Patty Wagstaff, Introduction and Essays by Anne Collins Goodyear
In Plane View: Abstractions of Flight, by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum photographer Carolyn Russo, redirects our attention to the often-overlooked simple beauty of aircraft design. With precedents in the work of Robert Delaunay, Charles Sheeler, and Arshile Gorky, among others, Russo uses fine art photography to bring out new visual dimensions of these powerful symbols of the 20th century, transforming them into works of art. Russo’s striking color photographs distill the complexity of civil and military airplanes and spaceships into bold combinations of line, shape, light, and color. Beautiful in themselves, the bold colors, textures, shapes, and patterns of Carolyn Russo’s photographs become even more intriguing when we learn their source: the iconic air and space craft of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Through her unconventional approach, the NASM photographer reveals new layers of meaning, from the whimsical to the profound, in the appearance of some of history’s most revered flying machines. Juxtaposing Russo’s playful and discerning eye, scholarly text from NASM and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery provides fresh perspectives on flight and photography that will leave audiences looking at the world with new eyes. The book features 90 color photographs, quotes by aviators, artists, and poets, historical captions on each aircraft, and interpretive essays by Anne Collins Goodyear, assistant curator of prints and drawing from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and a specialist in the relationship of art, science, and technology.
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