Monument — Trent Parke. Published by STANLEY/BARKER.
Australian photographer Trent Parke has created a breathtakingly rich journey through a dystopian vision of humanity and city life. Pick this exceedingly dense book up and immediately you understand that you are in for something special. Parke uses chiaroscuro effects with rich printing on black paper, to carve caverns of darkness and light, sharply illuminating a city’s inhabitants as they go about their day-to-day lives. The cover design of Monument uses the Voyager spacecraft’s engraved symbolism so that any cosmic interlopers who discover it can see that we are indeed a naturally friendly, peaceful tribe.
Rixon Reed is the founder and director of photo-eye. He was seduced by the power of photobooks upon first seeing Larry Clark's Tulsa in 1973 while visiting a tiny Cooper Union bookstore in New York City. He later managed the Witkin Gallery book department before founding photo-eye in 1979 in Austin, Texas, as a mail order photography book business. He moved photo-eye to Santa Fe in 1991 where it remains today as a bricks and mortar bookstore, gallery and internet business.