A celebrated writer on contemporary art and queer culture argues that Andy Warhol’s films enable us to see differently, and to see a different world.
A reconsideration of Chris Marker’s famous film, examining its treatment of time, its use of sound, the influence of the comic book form, and other topics.
"Our job is to tell stories we have heard and to bear witness to what we have seen. The science was already there when we started in 2004, but we wanted to emphasize the human dimension, especially for those most vulnerable." —Guy-Pierre Chomette, Collectif Argos
What if Jacques Lacan—the brilliant and eccentric Parisian psychoanalyst—had worked as a police detective, applying his theories to solve crimes? This may conjure up a mental film clip starring Peter Sellers in a trench coat, but in Lacan at the Scene, Henry Bond makes a serious and provocative claim: that apparently impenetrable events of violent death can be more effectively unraveled with Lacan's theory of psychoanalysis than with elaborate, technologically advanced forensic tools. Bond's exposition on murder expands and develops a resolutely
"Payne is a visual poet as well as an architect by training, and he has spent years finding and photographing these buildings—often the pride of their local communities and a powerful symbol of humane caring for those less fortunate. His photographs are beautiful images in their own right, and they also pay tribute to a sort of public architecture that no longer exists. They focus both on the monumental and the mundane, the grand facades and the peeling paint." —Oliver Sacks, Asylum
Chris Marker's legendary "ciné roman" ("film novel") La Jetée is considered one of the greatest and most influential experimental films of all time. This short film—a postapocalyptic story composed almost entirely of black-and-white still photographs—has been praised by cultural theorists and Netflix subscribers alike.
Milk and Melancholy looks at milk through the lens of photography and from the angle of art. Specifically, it considers the milk splash in all its manifestations, representations, and variations, tracing the complex flow of the image in works ranging from Harold Edgerton's milk drop coronet to Jeff Wall's exploding milk carton.
In this groundbreaking work, Ariella Azoulay provides a compelling rethinking of the political and ethical status of photography. In her extraordinary account of the "civil contract" of photography, she thoroughly revises our understanding of the power relations that sustain and make possible photographic meanings. Photography, she insists, must be thought of and understood in its inseparability from the many catastrophes of recent history.
The small Central American country of Costa Rica—less than one-eighth the size of California—boasts the highest density of plant and animal species in the world. Its wild and rugged landscapes include dense rainforests where jaguars roam, a volcano that spews rivers of molten lava, and beaches as unspoiled as they were when Christopher Columbus first anchored his ships off the Caribbean coast in 1502.
The artist's relationship to landscape was once invoked by a canvas on an easel in a picturesque vista. No more. In the 1960s, the Earth Artists started focusing on natural systems and entropy; in the 1970s, photographers in the New Topographics movement turned their attention unsentimentally to the industrialized "man-altered" environment; in the 1980s, artists animated the natural landscape with art, movement, and performance; and in the 1990s, Eco-Artists collaborated with scientists to address sustainability, pollution, and politics.
"This book version of La Jetée is, to my mind, astonishingly beautiful. It brings a total freshness to the work and a new way to use photos to deal with dramatic events. Not a film's book, but a book in its own right—the real ciné-roman announced in the film's credits." —Chris Marker
Powerful photographs of the grand exteriors and crumbling interiors of America’s abandoned state mental hospitals.
A celebrated writer on contemporary art and queer culture argues that Andy Warhol’s films enable us to see differently, and to see a different world.
How science consultants make movie science plausible, in films ranging from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Finding Nemo.
A reconsideration of Chris Marker’s famous film, examining its treatment of time, its use of sound, the influence of the comic book form, and other topics.
A new perspective on the enormously influential but insufficiently understood work of San Francisco-based artist Bruce Conner (1933–2008).
