PHOTO-EYE BEST BOOKS 2018

Adam Bell's favorite book from 2018

As everyone rushes to put out their book, the simple act of waiting is often underappreciated. Although not always by choice, time can strengthen a body of work. Wood River Blue Pool + Blue Pool Cecelia, by Jo Ann Walters and Emma Kemp, gathers together twenty year's worth of portraits made by Walters along with two excellent texts, an essay by Laura Wexler in the main volume, and an experimental, genre-defying artist profile in Kemp’s book, Blue Pool Cecelia. Two books in one, these individual volumes could easily exist on their own, but form a symbiotic relationship, strengthening and enriching each other. Good work often takes a long time to find a proper home; rarely is it presented in such a powerful and elegant package.

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Adam Bell is a photographer, writer, and educator. He received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts and his work has been exhibited and published internationally. His books include Vision Anew: The Lens and Screen Arts (2015) and The Education of a Photographer (2006); his writing and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including Afterimage, Aperture, FOAM Magazine, Paper Journal, photo-eye, The Photobook Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. He recently received a 2018 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey Council of the Arts and is on staff and faculty at the MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

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Adam Bell's favorite book from 2018

Michael Ashkin’s quiet and austere images of the damaged landscape of the Mojave desert have a disquieting beauty perfectly attuned to our fraught moment. Pairing image and poetic text, were it not for is an urgent and timely book as we slowly awaken from the lies and empty promises of 20th-century hypercapitalism. Whereas the titular refrain speaks of limits and excuses—forestalling possibilities, hope, and progress—the accompanying photographs are a tragic foil of unfettered excess and ruin.

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Adam Bell is a photographer, writer, and educator. He received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2004, and his work has been exhibited and published internationally. His books included Vision Anew: The Lens and Screen Arts (2015) and The Education of a Photographer (2006), and his writing and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Afterimage, Aperture, FOAM Magazine, Paper Journal, photo-eye, The Photobook Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. He recently received a 2018 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey Council of the Arts and is on staff and faculty at the MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

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Adam Bell's favorite book from 2018

Expansive and generous, Electronic Landscapes offers a nuanced portrait of the resilient and influential Black electronic music scene in Detroit. Brilliantly designed and structured, Diggs and Hillel’s book not only surveys the spatial landscape and interiors where Detroit's unique brand of techno, house, and hip-hop are made and live but also includes portraits, interviews, and oral histories by its key practitioners and participants that speak to a vibrant culture that refuses to be silenced or gentrified. Eschewing simplistic narratives of Detroit (past and present), Electronic Landscapes is a reminder of the city’s vital and enduring cultural landscape.

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Adam Bell is a photographer, writer, and educator. He received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts and his work has been exhibited and published internationally. His books included Vision Anew: The Lens and Screen Arts (2015) and The Education of a Photographer (2006), and his writing and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Afterimage, Aperture, FOAM Magazine, Paper Journal, photo-eye, The Photobook Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. He received a 2018 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey Council of the Arts and is on staff and faculty at the MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

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Adam Bell's favorite book from 2018

The first book by photographer, filmmaker and artist RaMell Ross is long overdue. This book combines his best known large-format color work from Hale Country, Alabama along with more recent sculpture and performance based work. Bound together by rivets and resembling a dossier, the book deftly weaves together Ross’ poetic prose essays and luminous images into a vital statement about contemporary America, its violent histories, and the US south.

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Adam Bell is a photographer, writer, and educator. His books include The Education of a Photographer and Vision Anew: The Lens and Screen Arts. His reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, photo-eye, Aperture, Foam, and elsewhere. He currently works and teaches at the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. He lives and works in NYC and New Jersey.

www.adambbell.com

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Adam Bell's favorite book from 2018

Like Askhin's previous volume, were it not for (Fw:Books, 2019), There will be two of you throws us headlong into the post-industrial landscape of the America. Originally commissioned for Documenta 2002 by the late-great curator Okwui Enwezo, Ashkin’s panoramic images lead us through the swampy morass of New Jersey’s Meadowlands that border New York City — low slung warehouses give way to rubble-strewn fields, streets, and tall grass; outwards, circling in ambulatory paths flattened in the weeds.

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Adam Bell's favorite book from 2018

More artist book than a traditional photobook or exhibition catalog, the fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner’s Dream in the Rhythm accompanies her current Artist Choice exhibition at MoMA. Like the show it accompanies, the book is a synesthetic exploration of photographs, sound, and text and includes the work of Greg Tate, Anthony Barboza, Amiri Baraka, Ming Smith among many others. Although distinct, both the show and book are not to be missed.

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