We are back to highlight some more publications made by our readers. The best part of this corner of our website is seeing visuals from artists with different point of views, subject matters and concepts for their publications. From choosing the cover, the pages, the size and the work of course, there are so many details that make a book unique and interesting in their own way. So, come get inspired with us and these amazing books.
Do you have a book/zine/publication that you would love to share with us? Follow our guidelines here to submit! Have Questions? Feel free to contact me at dana@aint-bad.com
Evan Jenkins, Sunflower Sutra, 2018
Released March, 2018. Self-published, edition of 50. 34 pages, staple bound.
SUNFLOWER SUTRA collects images created across multiple trips to Southern California between 2012 and 2018. The project borrows its title from an Allen Ginsberg poem in which the narrator is struck by the beauty of a solitary sunflower in the midst of a modernized, desolate landscape. This analogy summarizes both the dream and desperation that California and its mythology traditionally represent.
I grew up in the coastal town of Ventura, CA. and lived there until I moved to Chicago in 2006. Over the past twelve years my perception of my home state has shifted to include a much broader understanding of its contentious status as a symbolic place of hope and reinvention. By interweaving staged and “found” imagery I aim to avoid the traditional documentary mode and instead present an examination of the place as both real and imagined.
Price: $15
Publisher: Self Published
Artist Website: www.evanpjenkins.com
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Pascual Martínez + Vincent Sáez, The tree of life is eternally green, 2018
An intimate notebook of documentary work undertaken in Romania, exploring the country’s landscape and integral connections Romanians have with nature. Martínez and Sáez travelled more than 6000km photographing mostly in rural areas, meeting with local people along the way. Their exploration encompasses winter through summer seasons, with the guiding theme that since the first inhabitants of Europe populated fertile Romanian lands, the spirit of Romanian society has been instinctively linked to the land.
Romania has a complex history where its people have struggled to claim territory, faced brutal oppression, communist nationalisation, and foreign exploitation of resources and agriculture.
The central region of Transylvania was claimed at the end of the First World War, extending the country’s wealth of natural resources from the border with Ukraine to the Danube Valley. Industrialisation increased exponentially from the 1950s to 1980s and the effects had a massive impact on the economy, social progress, and the landscape.
Romanians have been resilient in the face of progress and adversity, and since the fall of communism in 1989 the country has seen an intellectual revival and a return to practicing long-held traditions. For over 15 years in a conflict in Roşia Montană, public administration and environmental organizations have confronted a mining company in a fight to keep their natural environment free from continued over-exploitation.
In The Tree of Life is Eternally Green, Martinez and Saez focus on identity and history from a perspective that transcends socio-political issues, and dispels stereotypes associated with Romanians. Their record is seeped in the natural environment and celebrates Romanian people, their traditions, the untamed landscape and the country’s rich flora.
Price: $45
Publisher: Overlapse
Artist Website: www.ninorojo.com
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Timothy Frazier, Pulaski, Va, 2018
Pulaski was incorporated as a town in 1886 and was named after a Revolutionary war hero from Poland, Count Casimir Pulaski. Pulaski was once a thriving industrious area backboned by manufacturing jobs. As the American economy changed, these manufacturing jobs were relocated overseas, which furthered the division between Pulaski County’s upper-middle class and the poor.
With a church on every other block, Pulaski’s deep-rooted faith in Christianity is ever-present. It’s the kind of small town where you might get looked at funny if you don’t have a deep-southern drawl, drive a truck, or go to church on Sunday. Everyone knows everybody and everybody talks about everyone. As the world continues to progress and move forward, long-time residents of Pulaski remain content with keeping things the way they’ve always been.
Price: $10
Publisher: Self Published
Artist Website: trfrazier.com
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Rachel Moron, In the Middle of the Atlantic, a Part of Me Was Left Behind, 2017
As a multiple passport holder, and multi-lingual individual, I represent what many people of my generation are or will become; a transnational person in a globalizing world. When I moved to the Netherlands at the age of seventeen, I began to question my identity and sense of place. Through travel and photography, I seek what I thought I had lost, and retrace my family’s former homelands and the numerous migrations they undertook.
Diving into this personal history, it became clear that the journeys of my ancestors were forced ones: due to (rising) anti-semitism they were persecuted or expelled because of the fact that they were Jewish. These photographs are of the places that my family and I used to call home as well as where we live today; Utrecht, Curaçao, Sevilla, Morón de La Frontera, Warsaw and Krakow. What is revealed is a growing awareness of how the history of a place seeps through the cracks of time, becoming part of my identity.
‘In the middle of the atlantic, a part of me was left behind’ is presented as a book, together with a wall installation. The special graduation publication has been printed at Libertas & Pascal (Utrecht) in an edition of 50 books with the help of graphic designer Melanie van der Linde.
Price: $40
Publisher: Self Published
Artist Website: www.rachelmoron.com
Zach Phillips, GENERATIONS, 2018
The project GENERATIONS presents a new way of looking at the history of the First World War. Through the gallery and book a viewer is confronted by images of cheering crowds, colorful propaganda posters, and bodily destruction. This material, drawn from substantial archival research is presented as truth, key moments and artifacts replicated to transport an audience back to the war to end all wars. However things are not quite as they seem. Within the frame of an image, figures and actions repeat, what appear at first to be crowds of people shift and change upon closer looking. Within the book text flies across and off the page and a viewer is immersed in a moment long passed. Taken together, one is left to question the seemingly empirical and factual quality of archival images and documents.
Price: $40
Publisher: Self Published
Artist Website: www.zachphillips.me
Gian Marco Sanna, MALAGROTTA, 2017
The Malagrotta Dump is the main long-term storage site for urban solid waste from the city of Rome. It is located in the western suburbs of the city, in the estate of Malagrotta. The name derives from the Latin Mola Rupta , a name originated by a broken grinding wheel on the nearby stream Rio Galeria. According to some, the largest landfill in Europe. 240 hectares, between 4500 and 5000 tons of waste were dumped every day.
In 2013, Italy was sanctioned at the European Court of Justice by the European Environment Committee as part of the waste discharged at the landfill did not undergo the biological treatment (MBT) required by the European regulations. On January 9, 2014, the NOE (ecological department of carabinieri) commanded by Sergio De Caprio, known as “Ultimo” , stopped 7 people. Among others the owner of the dump Manlio Cerroni, know as “Re della monnezza” (“the king of garbage”) and the former president of the Lazio region Bruno Landi.
Since the closure of the malagrotta dump the situation has not improved. Abandoned waste of all kinds are still visible in the areas surrounding the landfill. Malagrotta consists of black water flows, worn tires, rubbles, abandoned cars, dead palms trees and ashes. A wounded ground. In the night the air is filled with a thick cloud of smoke and stench. It’s the city of snow.
Price: $20
Publisher: Urbanautica
Artist Website: www.gianmarcosanna.com
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Sem Langendijk, LOT, Docklands, 2017
Docklands is an ongoing research, documenting the transition of former Docklands in various cities worldwide.
Focusing on the high demand for living near the water the project tries to get a grip on shifting social demographics, waterfront development and similarities within these areas.
With LOT, the project focuses on New York, questioning the function of public space within the residential area in Red Hook. A mix of landscapes, people and details reflect the current state of this neighborhood, with its contrasts and diversity.
LOT is a newspaper print publication with a cardboard insert.
Price: $22
Publisher: Self Published
Artist Website: www.semlangendijk.com
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Mike Vos, It Only Feels Strange Here to Me, 2018
It Only Feels Strange Here to Me is a glimpse of our modern world and our environmental impact through a lens of magical realism and subtle horror.
Shot on 35mm film in the Winter of 2018 in Portland, OR.
Price: $10
Publisher: Self Published
Artist Website: deadcitiesphoto.com
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Peter Byrne, This Land, 2017
‘This Land’ examines the relationship between cowboys in the American West and the landscape in which they work. It explores how the landscape provides the perfect backdrop for those at one with nature, and how its ever-changing existence can shape the temperament of the cowboy.
Price: $35
Publisher: Reckless Publications
Artist Website: peterbyrne.co.uk
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Miska Draskoczy, Gowanus Wild, 2016
Gowanus Wild is a personal exploration of nature and wilderness in the contaminated industrial neighborhood of Gowanus, Brooklyn where I live. As the Gowanus Canal has been declared a federal Superfund cleanup site and seen over 150 years of continuous industrial use, one of my aims with the series is to show just how tenacious nature can be in the face of such grave environmental destruction. Set entirely at night when the area empties of people and activity, the mood is one of stillness, reflection, and discovery. While an indictment of man’s abuse of the environment is perhaps inevitable, my goal is to not just celebrate nature’s resilience but to show how it is paralleled by the human ability to seek and find the balm of nature in the most unlikely of places.
I believe that our desire to connect with wilderness is a primal force in constant search of outlets, and has less to do with finding pristine vistas and more with awakening to our surroundings, however distraught they may be. I hope to inspire this sense of discovery in others so that they may find their own relationship with nature in a world where increasingly no corner of the planet is left untouched by human activity. Gowanus Wild was published as a photobook in October 2016 in conjunction with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy.
Price: $50
Publisher: Unnatural Kingdom
Artist Website: miskadraskoczy.com
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Antti Sepponen, Lahti, 2015
Welcome to Lahti, a hard-up Finnish paradise city, also known as Chicago of Finland. A place located 4635 miles from the geographic center of the United States – a place where everyone enjoys, but no one says it out loud. Everyone is equal here. If you manage in Lahti, you manage everywhere in the world. (2011-2015)
Publisher: Self Published
Artist Website: www.anttisepponen.com