David Goldes: Unpredictable Drawings

Drink wine and look at the moon and think of all
the civilizations the moon has seen passing by…
— Omar Khayyam, 11th-century mathematician and poet

Thirty-Six Views of the Moon is a meditative collection of nighttime exposures. For this project, Ebtekar found and tore out pages from volumes spanning the last thousand years—ranging from poetry and science fiction to religious texts and philosophy—that reference the moon and night sky. He then worked with a photographic glass plate negative of the moon from the Lick Observatory archives in Northern California, treating each book page with Potassium ferricyanide and Ammonium ferric citrate to make their surfaces light-sensitive. Finally, Ebtekar would leave the sheets outside from dusk until dawn, using the UV-light emitted by the moon to create a contact cyanotype print layered with the cosmological texts on the found book pages.

In addition to the thirty-six cyanotypes, this volume features essays by Kim Beil, Alexander Nemerov, and Ladan Akbarnia, as well as an annotated index for this selection of images and a comprehensive bibliography of sources Ebtekar has used throughout the various iterations of this project.

Religious devotion, revolutionary zeal, power-hungry imperialism, the spread of mass consumerism—all of these historical trends are recorded in how Notre Dame has been depicted and its image reproduced.

— Tomas van Houtryve

On April 15, 2019, fire devastated the iconic Notre Dame cathedral of Paris. In 36 Views of Notre Dame, the viewer accompanies Tomas van Houtryve on his fourteen-year journey photographing the Paris icon before and after the fire. Van Houtryve obtained remarkable access to the cathedral to document the devastation of the fire and the reconstruction. Drawing inspiration from Hokusai’s series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the artist explores the monument in different contexts, seasons and using a wide range of photographic techniques—from 19th-century wet collodion to aerial drones. Accompanying the artist’s works is a multilayered archive of the cathedral, including historic photographs, vernacular images, and text by Victor Hugo.

This book is bilingual in English and French.

… pure, seductive standalone images that eliminate the photographed subject.

– Nadia Vellam, T Magazine

“In honor of Anna Atkins who was the first person to illustrate a book with photographs, I have produced Compendium 1898–1919, a chronology of twelve assemblages made from the earliest expired photographic papers in my collection. The exact expiration dates of these papers pinpoint their location on a timeline and coexist with events in world history. No matter what the light-sensitive materials have endured through dormant years, they still respond to chemical development, and the resulting photographic tones are evidence of experience. Physical damage, moisture, and mold produce tonal changes when developed, and I consider these effects to be subject matter.” – Alison Rossiter

This book, a co-publication with the New York Public Library and Yossi Milo, includes all twelve works from the series at actual scale, along with close-up details, photographed by Peter Riesett, Head Photographer, Digital Imaging Unit, New York Public Library. The reference dates, which cover world events such as World War II and the sinking of the Titanic, and art-historical references such as the founding of the Bauhaus, are included as a reference key in the back of the book.

The definitive survey of Charles Ross’s career.

– Khristaan D. Vilela, New Mexico Magazine

Charles Ross’s fascination with light, time, and the space of the stars has given life to a rich artistic career that includes a major earthwork, large-scale prism installations, sculpture, and painting with dynamite. From Star Axis, a vast architectonic earth/star work in the New Mexican desert, to his Solar Burns series made by burning wood panel monochromes with focused rays of the sun, Ross allows the natural patterns and forces of the cosmos to inform his work. 

This significant monograph includes major essays by Thomas McEvilley and Klaus Ottmann, an extensive interview with Loïc Malle, which profiles Ross’s life and art up to the present, as well as historical texts by Virginia Dwan, Anna Halprin, Michael Heizer, Steve Katz, Donald Kuspit, Ed Ranney, and Jean-Hubert Martin.