Series in Artists Books
Books in Artists Books
Better Worlds
This is the March, 2025 revision of BETTER WORLDS. It replaces all earlier editions. Two hundred and seventy-six bright, fantastical paintings by cyberpunk master Rudy Rucker, some realistic, and some abstract. Includes detailed comments on the background and creation of the individual works. Rucker took up painting twenty-six years ago, when he was writing a novel about the old master, Peter Bruegel. Rucker calls himself a transreal SF writer, meaning that his novels tend to be inspired by events in his life---transmuted into SF of surpassing strangeness. The same holds for his paintings, inspired by his experiences and his visions. And he's not above painting aliens and saucers now and then. You might call his work pop surrealism. For more info, see www.rudyrucker.com/paintings
David Goldblatt: In Boksburg
David Goldblatt's In Boksburg stands as one of the most important observations of a middle-class white community in South Africa during the apartheid years. Published in 1982, it presents an accumulation of everyday details from the community of Boksburg through which a larger portrait is revealed of white societal values within a racially divided state. “Blacks are not of this town,” writes Goldblatt. “They serve it, trade with it, receive charity from it and are ruled, rewarded and punished by its precepts. Some, on occasion, are its privileged guests. But all who go there, do so by permit or invitation, never by right.” This facsimile reproduces all 71 black-and-white photographs as well as Goldblatt's eloquent introduction to the work, and noted writer and editor, Joanna Lehan, contributes a contemporary essay written for this volume. Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.
Krass Clement: Drum
Photographed in a small pub in Drum, Ireland, on a single evening and with only a few rolls of film (and a rumored “five pints of Guinness”), Krass Clement (born 1946) created one of the most important contributions to the contemporary Danish photobook. His 1996 Drum opens in a darkening and foggy town, with a workday ending and some men heading off for a drink. Through subtle shifts in focus and a masterful filmic sequencing, the book comes to concentrate on one principal character in the shadowy pub: a hunched, weather-beaten old man sitting alone with his drink. Drum is a quiet, dusky meditation on community, the outsider, alienation and the terrors of being alone. A virtually unobtainable and therefore highly sought-after photobook, Clement’s masterwork is here reproduced in full, accompanied with an essay by photo historian Rune Gade. Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.
Long Live the Glorious May 7 Directive
Long Live the Glorious May 7 Directive , published in 1971, is one of the key propaganda photobooks of Chairman Mao Zedong’s infamous Cultural Revolution. Illustrated with both color and black-and-white photographs taken by uncredited photographers, the book extolls the virtues of Mao’s communist ideology and purports to document the joyful, industrious effects of these ideas in action. In Long Live the Glorious May 7 Directive , smiling workers and peasants read together from Mao’s “Little Red Book” of quotations, stalwart soldiers march in unending ranks and Chinese fighter pilots conquer the open skies. Of course, history remembers the realities of Mao’s Cultural Revolution quite differently. Long Live the Glorious May 7 Directive is now extremely rare; Errata Editions’ Books on Books 20 presents this fascinating volume in its entirety with essays by Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu and Shuxia Chen.
Michael Riedel: Oskar
Over the past decade, German artist Michael Riedel has incorporated a wide range of media into his practice, including large-scale works on canvas, fabric works, film and video, audio recordings, installations, and events. A central focus of his work is the publishing and production of artist’s books, catalogues, brochures, posters, and cards. In 2000, Riedel and Dennis Loesch launched a collaborative project in an abandoned building in Frankfurt. Using the building’s address—Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16—as the name for their new space, they created an experimental laboratory where they restaged cultural events held at other locations throughout the city, effectively duplicating them in space and time. Occasionally, these re-presented events—which included book readings, film screenings, art exhibitions, and music concerts—were hosted on the same night as the actual event elsewhere in the city, but mostly, they were presented days or weeks after the original activity took place. According to Riedel, “We presented one concept over and over again. To create a distance to some original that had been done at another place.” With the call of “record, label, playback,” a group of young artists reiterated the language of a city’s cultural offerings, often without a full understanding of what they were reciting, but always with an acute aesthetic interest in the faults of transmission and transference. Oskar is the account of Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16. The art space became renowned as a gigantic “replication device,” and this book itself is a product of such practices. Scores of audio and visual materials, partly in the form of transcripts from two Conferences of Anecdotes, chronicle its years of activities. Produced by the artist, this book was published to coincide with Riedel’s 2014 exhibition, Laws of Form, at David Zwirner in London.
Mike Mignola: The Quarantine Sketchbook
During the coronavirus quarantine, legendary Hellboy creator Mike Mignola posted original pencil sketches online and auctioned off the art to raise money for José Andres' World Central Kitchen. The sketches went viral and were the talk of the comics internet. Now those sketches are published in print for the first time, with all profits going to the World Central Kitchen. This new, oversized hardcover collection is a must have for Mignola readers and art fans alike. The book features an introduction by Christine Mignola, alongside sketches of Hellboy , beloved and unexpected pop culture characters, macabre chess pieces, gothic vegetable creatures, strange vampires, and more.
Mort Kunstler
"I learned how to compose, how to tell a story. There's no way I could have done what I did later if I hadn't had all that men's adventure magazine work." -Mort Künstler Known today as "America's Artist" for his popular and much admired historical paintings, it was in the wild world of men's adventure magazine illustration that Mort Künstler honed his ability to present large-scale action while never losing sight of essential details. It led to a mastery of capturing conflict in paint-both the spectacle, and the human cost. At long last, The Men's Adventure Library brings an unequaled selection of Künstler's finest pieces from the men's adventure magazine era back into print in this bold, colorful collection, available in both softcover and expanded, deluxe hardcover editions. From the explosive intensity of battles on the sea and in the air, to taut, face-to-face showdowns and animal attacks, every page explodes with action, color, and artistry.
Mort Kunstler
"I learned how to compose, how to tell a story. There's no way I could have done what I did later if I hadn't had all that men's adventure magazine work." -Mort Künstler Known today as "America's Artist" for his popular and much admired historical paintings, it was in the wild world of men's adventure magazine illustration that Mort Künstler honed his ability to present large-scale action while never losing sight of essential details. It led to a mastery of capturing conflict in paint-both the spectacle, and the human cost. At long last, The Men's Adventure Library brings an unequaled selection of Künstler's finest pieces from the men's adventure magazine era back into print in this bold, colorful collection, available in both softcover and expanded, deluxe hardcover editions. From the explosive intensity of battles on the sea and in the air, to taut, face-to-face showdowns and animal attacks, every page explodes with action, color, and artistry.
Nobuyoshi Araki: The Banquet
First published in Japan in 1993, Nobuyoshi Araki’s The Banquet ( Shokuji ) offers a moving tribute to the photographer’s late wife, Yoko, through a photo-diary of the food they shared together in the last months of her life. The book is composed of three related sections: commercial color photographs of meals shot by Araki from 1985 onwards, using a ring flash and a macro lens; a (written) food diary; and black-and-white photographs taken at home, using only available light, a series Araki began after doctors told his wife she had only a month to live. As Martin Parr and Gerry Badger observe, “The obvious metaphor is to suggest that the color was leaving Araki’s world, but his intentions are not quite so simple. The retreat from color is a retreat from realism to romanticism....” This deeply personal diary of loss is here reprinted in its entirety along with an essay by Ivan Vartanian.Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.
Picher, Oklahoma
On May 10, 2008, a tornado struck the northeastern Oklahoma town of Picher, destroying more than one hundred homes and killing six people. It was the final blow to a onetime boomtown already staggering under the weight of its history. The lead and zinc mining that had given birth to the town had also proven its undoing, earning Picher in 2006 the distinction of being the nation’s most toxic Superfund site. Recounting the town’s dissolution and documenting its remaining traces, Picher, Oklahoma tells the story of an unfolding ghost town. With shades of Picher’s past lives lingering at every intersection, memories of its proud history and sad decline inhere in the relics, artifacts, personal treasures, and broken structures abandoned in disaster’s wake. In Todd Stewart’s haunting photographs, faded snapshots and letters, well-worn garments, and books and toys give harrowing and elegiac testimony of constancy and dislocation. Empty buildings and bared foundations stand in silent witness to the homes, schools, churches, and businesses that once defined life in Picher. As these photographs and Alison Fields’s accompanying essays explore the otherworldly town teetering over massive sinkholes, they reveal how memory, embedded in everyday objects, can be dislocated and reframed through both chronic and acute instances of environmental trauma. Though hardly known outside the Three Corners Region of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri, the fate of Picher echoes well beyond its borders. Picher, Oklahoma reflects the broader intersections of memory, time, material objects, and changing environments, demanding our attention even as it resists easy interpretation.
Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites, earlier known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, were a society of English artists with an incredible wealth of talent. Their name was a reference to their rejection of the Renaissance master Raphael and the immensely popular classical, elegant poses that had come to be fashionable. Instead, they included abundant colour and detail in their works, leading their movement to become an integral and controversial part of art history, which is explored in this beautifully illustrated new book.
Realms: The Roleplaying Art of Tony Diterlizzi
New York Times bestselling creator Tony DiTerlizzi is known for his distinctive style depicting fantastical creatures, horrific monsters, and courageous heroes. His illustrations reshaped and defined the worlds of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons , Planescape , and Magic: The Gathering in the imaginations of legions of devoted roleplaying gamers during the 1990s, before he transitioned to mainstream success with The Spiderwick Chronicles and The Search for WondLa . Collected here for the first time, this book features never-before-seen artwork and photographs, in addition to showcasing DiTerlizzi's most iconic roleplaying work with commentary by the artist. Introduction by Christopher Paolini ( Eragon ) and featuring appreciations by Guillermo del Toro, Brom, Jane Yolen, Holly Black, Zeb Cook, Jeff Easley, and Donato Giancola, among others! Tony's work has a distinct flair, a love for monsters if you will . . . His creatures have the charm of Henson or Rackham but they carry with them hints of their own ecosystem . . . Tony stands alone as a world creator and a weaver of tales, may you treasure these art pieces as much as I do. --Guillermo del Toro