The Enigma of Belonging — Binh Danh. Published by Radius Books.
This two-volume slip-covered publication by artist Binh Danh is another masterpiece of printing, book making, and artistic expression by Radius Books. Volume One gorgeously reproduces Danh's chlorophyl prints of Vietnam War-related images (on black pages) and daguerreotypes of the American national parks (in reflective metallic ink), conveying the physicality of the original artworks through enlarged details and shifts in scale. The second volume alternates texts with collections of personal and vernacular photographs, documents, and printed materials reproduced to convey the unique properties of the objects, with their curled edges, bent corners, scalloped borders, and discolored pages. The second volume explores Danh's process, and makes visible the research, background, and context for his works, with annotations to images; texts by Andrew Lam, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Joshua Chuang, and Boreth Ly; and an interview between Ly and Danh. I am thrilled to see such a thoughtful and beautifully crafted book dedicated to such a thoughtful and masterful body of work as Dahn's. Don't miss the subtle endpapers — black on black in volume one and off-white on white in volume two!
Dr. Rebecca Senf is Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Her B.A. in Art History is from the University of Arizona; her M.A. and Ph.D. were awarded by Boston University. In 2012, her book Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe was released by University of California Press; in 2017, her book To Be Thirteen, showcasing the work of Betsy Schneider, was published by Radius Press and Phoenix Art Museum. Senf is an Ansel Adams scholar, and in 2020 published a book on Ansel Adams’s early years, called Making a Photographer, co-published by the CCP and Yale University Press. Her exhibition "Richard Avedon: Relationships" debuted in Milan at the Palazzo Reale during fashion week in 2022, was shown at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Palermo, Sicily in Spring of 2023, and will open at the Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands in June 2024.
RebeccaSenf.com
@beckysenfccp
Becky Senf Ccp