Jason Fulford – författare

The best way to learn is by doing. The Photographer’s Playbook features photography assignments, as well as ideas, stories, and anecdotes from many of the world’s most talented photographers and photography professionals. Whether you’re looking for exercises to improve your craft—alone or in a group—or you’re interested in learning more about the medium, this playful collection will inspire fresh ways of engaging with photographic process. Inside you will find advice for better shooting and editing, creative ways to start new projects, games and activities, and insight into the practices of those responsible for our most iconic photographs—John Baldessari, Tina Barney, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Jim Goldberg, Miranda July, Susan Meiselas, Stephen Shore, Alec Soth, Tim Walker, and many more. The book also features a Polaroid alphabet by Mike Slack, which divides each chapter, and a handy subject guide. Edited by acclaimed photographers Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern, the assignments and project ideas in this book are indispensable for teachers and students, and great fun for everyone fascinated by taking pictures.

A collection of whimsical mail art sent to and from the late illustrator known for his playful sketches and line drawings, with contributions from Marcel Dzama, Stefan Marx and moreThis volume engages with the broader artistic practice of artist and illustrator Jason Polan, famous for his ink sketches of the city's people and places, as collected in the cult favorite tome Every Person in New York. The Post Office collects a body of materials Polan exchanged through the mail with friends, fans and penpals, as well as the artwork that he in turn received, often whimsical drawings and short text works. In gathering the material, the project reflects on Polan's affinity for the US Postal Service and his commitment to mail art as a means to build networks and make connections—a practice he maintained over many years with both friends and strangers alike. The result is a new perspective on Polan's legacy, highlighted through an exchange that is playful and often touching, the contours of which offer an expanded portrait of the artist.Jason Polan (1982–2020) was a Michigan-born, New York City–based artist and illustrator known for his humorous and prolific output, sketching strangers, art-world figures, celebrities, friends, objects and the things he spotted on his many museum visits. His illustrations have appeared in Metropolis Magazine, the New Yorker and ARTnews and his books have generated wide acclaim. His work also appeared in a regular column in the New York Times, and on apparel in a collaboration with Uniqlo. His books include Every Person in New York and Every Piece of Art in the Museum of Modern Art.

San Francisco Oracle was a countercultural newspaper published in the city’s bustling Haight Ashbury neighborhood from September 1966 to February 1968, bookending the iconic “Summer of Love.” In 12 issues combining poetry, spirituality and speculation with revolutionary rainbow inking effects, the Oracle reached well beyond the Bay Area and spoke to a radical new American ethos.Where to Score presents not the candy-colored prophecies of various gurus, but a quieter, more revealing corner of the paper—its classified section. There, surrounded by advertisements for drummers, carpenters and head shops, are the desperate pleas of parents seeking wayward children. “Will you trust me enough to call collect and let me know you’re alright?” Elsewhere, beat poet Michael McClure needs a harp and the Sexual Freedom League is hungry for recruits. The diminutive entries speak volumes to the times, showcasing an honest, immediate and lesser-known chapter in the era’s history.

Corita Kent’s photographs of vernacular inspiration—from street signs and folk art to kites, parades and fairsCorita Kent, formerly Sister Mary Corita, is known for her exuberant, colorful serigraphs and her teaching, as evidenced in her lively art classes. As a Catholic nun from 1936 until 1968, Corita lived and worked in the Immaculate Heart of Mary community in Los Angeles. She taught lettering and layout, image finding, and art structure for 20 years in Immaculate Heart College’s art department. There, she screened multiple films simultaneously, hosted guest thinkers including Saul Bass, Buckminster Fuller and John Cage, and guided the making of large-scale collaborative projects with students.Corita regularly took her students out for looking sessions at a used car lot or an art exhibition. While constantly looking and discovering visually, Corita shot thousands of 35 mm slides documenting references, the IHC milieu and the art department processes. For Corita, the vernacular environs of advertising, supermarkets and the city’s media landscape were a source of inspiration and raw material. Her slide collection encompasses a wide range of subjects: cookies, coke bottles, toys, presents, experiments, projects, Mary’s Day celebrations stemming from Corita’s classroom, flowers, magazines, seeds, puppets, visits with Charles and Ray Eames, street signs, trade fairs, folk art, boxes, billboards and kites. Drawing from the Corita Art Center’s vast slide collection, Ordinary Things Will Be Signs for Us embodies Corita’s philosophy of looking.Corita Kent (1918–86) was known for her iconic art, innovative teaching methods and messages of social justice. Born Frances Elizabeth Kent in Fort Dodge, Iowa, she entered the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Hollywood at age 18. As a professor and later chair of the art department, she helped establish its reputation as a hub of creativity and liberal thinking. By 1968, her art was enormously popular, showing in more than 230 exhibitions and held in public and private collections around the world. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986.

Viking’s curated family photos take on a nostalgic, foreboding tone under the specter of his father’s imprisonmentWhen Danish artist André Viking (born 1989) was a child, his father, an amateur bodybuilder, was imprisoned. In his absence, family photo albums took on a tender and heartbreaking role. Hello "Soul Mate" presents a selection of these photographs, accompanied by love letters written from prison by his father.

At turns humorous and absurd, heartfelt and searching, Photo No-Nos is for photographers of all levels wishing to avoid easy metaphors and to sharpen their visual communication skills.Photographers often have unwritten lists of subjects they tell themselves not to shoot—things that are cliché, exploitative, derivative, sometimes even arbitrary. Photo No-Nos features ideas, stories, and anecdotes from many of the world’s most talented photographers and photography professionals on what not to photograph, along with an encyclopedic list of taboo subjects compiled from and illustrated by contributors.Not a strict guide, but a series of meditations on “bad” pictures, Photo No-Nos covers a wide range of topics, from mannequins and TVs in motel rooms to issues of colonialism, stereotypes, and social responsibility. At a time when societies are reckoning with what and how to communicate through media and who has the right to do so, this book is a timely and thoughtful resource on what photographers consider to be off-limits and how they have contended with their own self-imposed rules without being paralyzed by them.

A riotous photographic romp celebrating sociality and everyday clutterA glorious photobook in which people, places and things casually tangle up into beautifully baffling configurations, Jordan Weitzman’s (born 1984) Participation captures the world at a slant where naked bodies form sultry architecture and everyday clutter assembles into art. With a Louis Fratino dust jacket featuring half-etched figures and mysterious symbols, the book’s sequence is intimate and playful while never spelling itself out. Its title expresses the photographer’s immersion in his milieu, as he locates with an exacting compositional eye where the goofiness and boredom of everyday life drift into formal complexity and undefinable emotional states; it is an invitation as much as it is a challenge, not only descriptive of Weitzman’s willingness to get in and meet his subjects head, waist or side-on but for the viewer to crane their neck and pick apart his gorgeously twisted poetry of the strange ways people come together.

Aimed at children aged five and up, this clever and surprising picture book by artists and collaborators, Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin, take young viewers on a whimsical journey while teaching them associative thinking and visual language, as well as colors, shapes, and numbers. Through a simple narrative and rhythmic sequence of photographs, the book raises multiple meanings, making the experience of reading the book interactive—parent and child must ask questions and come up with their own answers, drawing on the child’s imagination. Each spread presents a new relationship that changes and shifts as the book unfolds, with the last picture relating again to the first, forming a circle. Through playful and inspired sequencing, everyday scenes are transformed into a game of pairs, enjoyable for adults and children alike.