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Over a decade in the making, Sugimoto's masterpiece observatory building at his art foundation in Odawara, Japan, is the culmination of his architectural practiceApart from photography, Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto has been working in sculpture, performing arts and architecture for more than 20 years. Since the early 2010s, he has been constructing the Enoura Observatory, and with his singular vision he has brought together ancient and contemporary Japanese traditions in one art and architectural complex. This book provides an account of this stunning multidisciplinary project.The Observatory, part of the artist's Odawara Art Foundation, is sited on a hilly area covered with citrus trees in Odawara, nestled against the outer rim of the Hakone Mountains and overlooking Sagami Bay. Odawara is home to groups of artisans with mastery of sophisticated techniques that have been handed down for centuries. Sugimoto has constructed the Enoura Observatory using these techniques, which are growing increasingly difficult to preserve. He envisions it as a forum for disseminating art and culture both within Japan and to the rest of the world. The stunning photographs in Enoura Observatory: Land of Distant Memories reveal Sugimoto's poetic vision for this total work of art that is the culmination of his art practice.Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo in 1948. A photographer since the 1970s, his work deals with history and temporal existence by investigating themes of time, empiricism and metaphysics. Sugimoto has received numerous grants and fellowships, and his work is held in the collections of Tate Gallery, London, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others. Sugimoto lives between Tokyo and New York City.

“In book form, Kitchen Table is more intimate…. Unlike the experience of meandering through a museum, stepping back to appreciate the images and nearing the text panels to skim them, the pace of exploration is now in a person’s hands.” –Hilary Moss, New York TimesThis publication is dedicated solely to the early and canonical body of work by American artist Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953). The 20 photographs and 14 text panels that make up Kitchen Table Series tell a story of one woman’s life, as conducted in the intimate setting of her kitchen. The kitchen, one of the primary spaces of domesticity and the traditional domain of women, frames her story, revealing to us her relationships—with lovers, children, friends—and her own sense of self, in her varying projections of strength, vulnerability, aloofness, tenderness and solitude.As Weems describes it, this work of art depicts “the battle around the family ... monogamy ... and between the sexes. Weems herself is the protagonist of the series, though the woman she depicts is an archetype. Kitchen Table Series seeks to reposition and reimagine the possibility of women and the possibility of people of color, and has to do with, in the artist’s words, “unrequited love.”

Madagascar presents 30 black-and-white photographs by Spanish photographer Pancho Saula that capture the light and contours of this unique island. Madagascar is one of the most remote and beautiful countries in the world, and one of the very few places that has not yet been transformed by the deracinations of globalization: some areas are still untouched by tourism, and some ethnic groups, such as the Vezo, live in isolation in primitive conditions. Time stops in Madagascar, and nature is rich and intact: the vast majority of the island's abundant flora and fauna exist nowhere else on earth. Ancient baobab trees tower above; enormous sand dunes envelop seaside fishing towns. Superbly printed in this handsomely designed volume, Saula's photographs of the island range from the near-abstract to clear-eyed but sensitive portraiture.

In Poorly Watched Girls, New York based artist Suzanne Bocanegra (born 1957) explores the ways that popular entertainment theatricalizes women in trouble. For the immersive video Valley, she recreated Judy Garland's wardrobe test for Valley of the Dolls (1967). Garland was fired from the film but famously kept the clothing from the test. Here, eight notable women wear replicas of the wardrobe: poet Anne Carson, choreographer Deborah Hay, artist Joan Jonas, singer Alicia Hall Moran, author and actor Tanya Selvaratnam, actor Kate Valk, artist Carrie Mae Weems and ballerina Wendy Whelan. Dialogue of the Carmelites, inspired by Poulenc's 1956 opera based on the true story of a convent of nuns executed during the French Revolution, incorporates music by composer David Lang, performed by Caroline Shaw. In La Fille, Bocanegra uses theatrical sets, costumes and collage to capture the essence of the 18th-century ballet La Fille mal Gardee (The Poorly Guarded Girl), a comic portrayal of young love between two peasants.

In the spring of 1865, a seemingly unremarkable dishcloth played a crucial role in ending the Civil War as the South's flag of surrender at Appomattox. A Confederate horseman carried a humble white linen towel into the lines of General George Custer, near the courthouse at Appomattox. The horseman was sent on behalf of General Robert E. Lee, who was requesting a suspension of hostilities while General Ulysses S. Grant proposed terms of surrender.Focusing on this Confederate Flag of Truce, Afro-Caribbean American artist (and professor at Amherst College) Sonya Clark (born 1967) explores the legacy of symbols and challenges the power of propaganda, erasures and omissions through her works. By making the Truce Flag a cloth that brokered peace and represented the promise of reconciliation into a monumental alternative to the infamous Confederate Battle Flag and its pervasive divisiveness, Clark instigates a role reversal and aims to correct a historical imbalance.

A multifaceted meditation on a pioneer of American suffrage, through photography, writing and ephemeraIn 1916, Inez Milholland Boissevain (1886–1916) embarked on a grueling campaign across the Western US on behalf of the National Women’s Party appealing for women’s suffrage ahead of the 1916 presidential election. Standing Together, by artist Jeanine Michna-Bales (born 1971), retraces Milholland’s journey. The 30-year-old suffragist delivered some 50 speeches to standing-room-only crowds in eight states in 21 days: Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada and California. She battled chronic illness and lack of sleep during her travels and died a month after her last speech in Los Angeles, where her final public words were, “Mr. President, how long must this go on, no liberty?”Through her photographs, combining dramatic landscapes and historical reenactments of important vignettes of Milholland on her journey with archival materials, Michna-Bales captures a glimpse of the monumental effort required to pass the 19th Amendment.

A breathtaking panoramic portrayal of the iconic California roadway, in a horizontal format that enhances the drama of the landscapeAmerican photographer Karen Halverson (born 1949) first fell in love with Mulholland Drive while on the very opposite coast from the iconic California roadway—during a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There, Halverson encountered David Hockney’s 20-foot painting Mullholland Drive: The Road to the Studio. A few years later, she moved to Los Angeles and found herself frequently driving along the 52-mile street that Hockney depicted as a colorful path to a fantastical world. Soon Halverson developed her own dynamic relationship with Mulholland Drive, likening the route along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains to “watching a movie full of jump cuts” with its ever-changing scenery.Halverson’s panoramic photographs capture the allure of the street that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to Hollywood, a unique juncture between the area’s natural landscape and the manmade infrastructure that has come to define Los Angeles. The images speak to the grandness of the environment and its Hollywood legacy, presented horizontally so as to emphasize their sweeping breadth. With a soft, sun-dried quality that is quintessentially Californian, Halverson’s photographs capture the magic that pulses through the City of Angels.

How art has addressed and transmuted trauma over the past half-century, from Louise Bourgeois to Glenn LigonTrauma in all its forms—internal and external, individual and collective—has been an enduring theme in 20th- and 21st-century art. The proliferation of violent imagery, particularly since the expansion of mass media during and after World War II, has led to artworks that marshal consciousness of traumatic events and their cultural processing. These developments in art run parallel with the emergence of trauma studies, which confront the repercussions of traumatic events: the Holocaust, global conflict, sexual violence, systemic racism and gender discrimination. Psychic Wounds brings together artists from the mid-20th century to the present who have addressed trauma in their work. The book also contains an anthology of critical writings on trauma by curators, art historians and theorists, among them Robert Storr, Griselda Pollock, Huey Copeland and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.Artists include: Gerhard Richter, Kazuo Shiraga, Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Glenn Ligon, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Carrie Mae Weems, Cindy Sherman, Bruce Nauman and Anicka Yi.

Portraits of women and girls intertwined with the photographer’s gaze, in a rare subversion of photography’s power relationsThis volume presents award-winning Pennsylvania-based photographer Lydia Panas’ (born 1958) much-praised series of mesmerizing color portraits of reclining women and girls. In an interesting reversal of roles, the artist's and models' gazes are intertwined, incorporating the viewer as participant in an often uncomfortable connection. Critics and curators have praised the work for Panas’ artistic and technical mastery, and all have noted and examined the powerfully affecting gaze of her subjects. Panas notes: “While my subjects do in actuality turn their gaze towards me, it’s as if at times I turn the camera onto myself, both in the present and back in time.” In Sleeping Beauty, her subjects lie down, a metaphor for the position girls and women have been placed in historically. But they look out with self-awareness, in a way that implies a lack of complicity.

Poignant, multilayered portraits of America’s future farmersA new book by award-winning Minneapolis-based photographer R.J. Kern (born 1978), The Unchosen Ones features portraits of future farmers in America’s heartland. Kern’s subjects are Minnesota 4-H members posing with their farm animals. Each one spent a year raising an animal, which they then entered into a 4-H competition. Kern first photographed them in 2016, and none of the children who sat for him succeeded in winning an award, despite the obvious care they had given to their animals. The formal qualities of Kern’s lighting and setting endow these young people with a gravitas beyond their years, revealing self-directed dedication in some, and in others, perhaps, the pressures of traditions imposed upon them. These beautiful portraits capture a certain America, a rural world and a time in life when the layered emotions of youth are laid bare. Four years later, in 2020, Kern returned to photograph and interview his young subjects. The new images are poignant when juxtaposed with the originals, tapping into the mindset of America’s agricultural youth. The diptychs of the children are punctuated by lush landscapes of the farms where these children have grown up.As he took the second group of photographs, Kern inquired about what his young subjects had carried forward from their previous experience. What were their thoughts, their advice, their dreams and their goals for the future? How do they fit in future agricultural America?

Play as personal and social therapy: portraits of the resilience of childrenIn 2017, award-winning Boston- and San Francisco–based photographer Nancy Farese visited Bangladesh to photograph the Rohingya refugee crisis. While she saw firsthand the most violent tendencies of humankind, she also bore witness to endless displays of perseverance from the youngest members of these communities. On the edge of every frame she saw children at play, adapting to their circumstances to socialize and heal with one another.This photobook documents children’s play across 14 countries, including Haiti, Cuba, Burkina Faso, Jordan and the US, in full-color photographs. Farese invites us to consider how this universal activity is threatened by the unrelenting forces of technology, consumerism and even overparenting. Featuring a foreword by New York Times staff photographer James Estrin, Potential Space offers a global view of a mundane activity that powerfully shapes who we are, both as individuals and as a society.

On Matsubara's ephemeral multimedia interrogations of memory and time from the past decadeJapanese artist Ken Matsubara (born 1949) makes multimedia works that incorporate video, photographs and found objects to investigate the memories that reside deep within our consciousness. His flickering video images projected onto surfaces of objects—shallow bowls filled with liquid, broken mirrors, reflective vitrines—are dreamlike and ephemeral. Memories are often embodied in images, and can contain knowledge from the far-reaching past, extending beyond individual experience and recollection. Though his works are often site-specific, Matsubara often creates variations on a core idea, as in his Repetition–Book series, in which he uses found photographs from various locations and makes new photographs and videos in those same locations. By incorporating the found antique photographs with his own new images, he reveals a dialogue between past and present, poetically capturing moments in the passage of time. This monograph offers an overview of his work from the last decade.

A beautifully somber photographic meditation on an ancient Jewish ritualThe Jewish tradition of leaving a stone or pebble at the gravesite of a loved one is an ancient custom of remembering the departed by means of a humble natural object. Minneapolis-based photographer Vince Leo (born 1949) began taking photographs of these “visitation stones” after several people close to him died in quick succession, and he found himself enacting the ritual of grief over and over. Placing a stone is a simple but powerful gesture that connects the living to the dead.Remembered as a Blessing contains 30 of Leo’s black-and-white photographs, which honor these stones as the complex objects they are: simultaneously hard, durable pieces of matter and embodiments of ineffable spiritual relationships, often among many generations. Each of Leo’s photographs fuses light, focus, viewpoint, reflection and magnification into a moment in which the ordinary and the symbolic coexist. Daniel Mendelsohn, acclaimed author of The Lost, contributes an essay.

A grand panorama of race and civil unrest in America’s past and presentCarrie Mae Weems has often confronted the uncomfortable truths of racism and race relations over the course of her nearly 40-year career. In The Shape of Things she focuses her unflinching gaze at what she describes as the circuslike quality of contemporary American political life. For this new work, Weems created a seven-part film projected onto a Cyclorama—a panoramic-style cylindrical screen that dates to the 19th century—where she addresses the turmoil of current events in the United States and the “long march forward.”Drawing on news and TV footage from the civil rights era to today, elements of previous films such as The Madding Crowd (2017) and new film projects that bring us into our tumultuous present, the films in The Shape of Things combine documentary directness with poetic rhythm to create an enveloping experience. The films are narrated by Weems, and the layering of her resonant voice with these images articulates the dangerous mounting resistance to the “browning of America.” As Weems shows in these powerful works, America is irreversibly changed and changing.Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953) has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships, and is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Weems lives in Brooklyn and Syracuse, New York.

How one woman sublimated sorrow into regeneration by carrying through her deceased husband's ambitious native garden projectCelebrated American photographer Jane Fulton Alt (born 1951) was never a gardener. That changed overnight when her husband Howard unexpectedly died, leaving behind a partially realized native garden—his response to a deepening concern about climate change. With the help and encouragement of her husband's mentors, she picked up a spade and began to dig, assuming full stewardship of the native garden while finding a new source of creativity and sustenance amid the grieving process.Still Life: A Photographer's Journey through Grief and Gardening is a story of resilience. Alt's keen eye and deep insights instruct us on how personal loss can be a catalyst for transformation. With texts by teacher and founding member of Spirit Rock Meditation Center James Baraz, native plant evangelist Doug Tallamy and photography impresario W.M. Hunt, Still Life is a quiet and moving reflection on loss and renewal.

Spotlighting the subversive San Francisco street installations of the underground cult photographer Michael JangThis volume showcases the San Francisco–based photographer Michael Jang's stylized and self-aware street art from recent years. Early in 2021, when the city was still in the grip of Covid-19 and ugly instances of anti-Asian sentiment were on the rise, Jang clandestinely wheat-pasted some of the images from his black-and-white photographic series The Jangs (1973) over a boarded-up Goodwill storefront on Clement Street, in the heart of San Francisco's unofficial Chinatown. He branded his photographs with a JANG stencil logo—introducing the persona "Chef Jang," a chain-smoking wok master—and interspersed them with hand-designed posters and graphics that parody Asian product packaging and menus. Inserted into the visual landscape of this once bustling neighborhood, Jang's gesture was one of solidarity, belonging and ownership. In JANG, the artist captures his own ephemeral and ever-changing urban interventions in more than 100 new photographs.Throughout the '70s and '80s, American photographer Michael Jang (born 1951) accrued an extensive body of work, capturing family members, art school life and various Californian milieus—ranging from Hollywood high-life parties to the San Francisco punk scene. After 50 years as a commercial and portrait photographer, Jang decided to share these underground shots with the world, quickly garnering a reputation as a hidden gem of social documentary as well as a master of the deadpan self-portrait.

Abstract, lyrical photographs paired with sage, poetic texts call attention to our inextricable relationship to waterIn this evocative photobook, physician-scientist and photographer Bob Farese, Jr. (born 1959) explores the profound connection between water and life. A Perfect Medium invites viewers to rediscover water as the elemental force that sustains existence—a baptism into the medium that makes all living things possible.

Sculptures-as-meditations: Brush rearticulates Monet’s magnificent lightwork in palm-sized objectsEarly in life, American painter, sculptor and jeweler Daniel Brush (born 1947) discounted Monet’s work wholesale—that is, until the pivotal day he saw an 8-by-10 transparency that a collector and friend was considering acquiring. This encounter sparked an obsession with the light Monet so masterfully captured through oil paint. Thinking about Monet contains 60 of the more than 100 steel sculptures Brush created—all of which are meditations on light. The artist hand-carved the same steel for all of his palm-sized pieces, but each one articulates distinct properties of color and light. Mesmerizing in the intricacy and daring of their fabrication, Brush's objects bear comparison with the work of historical masters.This small, jewel-like book is covered in printed silk cloth, and all the sculptures are reproduced at their original size. Nicolas Bos, president of Van Cleef & Arpels, contributes a short foreword to the book.

A magnificent guide to an age-old and rarely seen Tibetan Buddhist practice for anyone interested in mindfulness, well-being and consciousnessThis beautifully illustrated book, with a foreword by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, captures the practice of Tibetan monastic debate, performed by Buddhist monks as a series of dramatic, theatrical gestures. Tibetan debate is a total expression of body, mind and spirit. Its purpose is to establish a viewpoint, conquer misconceptions and understand the nature of reality.With stunning photographs by American photographer Nancy A. Scherl (born 1955), Challenger Defender is a vibrant tapestry of text and images, exploring the practice of monastic debate and allowing the reader entry into the fragile yet thriving Tibetan Buddhist diaspora. This debate tradition shows us how we can think, learn and formulate our own points of view by engaging different opinions and experiences while practicing compassion for one another, in contrast with the Western concept of debating to "win."

Stunning photographs of Vietnamese cathedrals that eloquently fuse French Gothic and Romanesque styles with Eastern architectural traditionsAmerican photographer Peter Steinhauer (born 1966), a resident of Asia from 1994 to 2014, here vividly documents the majestic cathedrals of northern Vietnam's Red River Delta. Using local materials such as stone, ironwood and brick, these churches were constructed to withstand the tropical Vietnamese climate and environment, symbolizing the merging of cultures and the growing influence of Catholicism in the region. Over time, the cathedrals transcended their colonial roots, organically embedding themselves in Vietnam's political, cultural and religious landscape. This volume unfolds a dramatic narrative of these historic edifices. Steinhauer documents many significant examples of these cathedrals, which display the fusion of French and Vietnamese architectural virtuosity in every stone, arch and spire. These architectural marvels now face neglect, deterioration or intentional dismantlement. Spires seeks to commemorate these remarkable structures—and the complex narratives rooted in their time-tested foundations.

Manhattan-based photographer Anthony spent 10 years charting the rebirth of Troy, New York, through the eyes of its diverse, multigenerational populationOn a winter day in 2013, photographer Susan B. Anthony drove an hour north from her home in Columbia County to Troy, New York, and unexpectedly fell in love with the city. For 10 years, she visited regularly and took photographs with her Hasselblad. Troy, a powerhouse of steel manufacturing and brickmaking in the 19th century, is also known as “Collar City” for the removable collars that were once a commonplace feature of men’s shirts and which were invented and produced here. Like many cities in the American Northeast and Midwest, its industrial power and wealth waned during the latter half of the 20th century.Among Troy’s graffiti-covered factories stand grand houses built of Troy brick that feature stately marble fireplaces and colorful Tiffany windows. The past few decades have seen an influx of newcomers to Troy who are restoring homes and becoming part of the community. Anthony photographed the urban environment in various stages of dilapidation and renewal, along with taking portraits of residents—small children to elders who have lived in the city for decades. The photographs in Collar City create a portrait of a vibrant, diverse and multigenerational community in this historic American town.Susan B. Anthony grew up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. For many years, Anthony worked as a painter and printmaker while teaching art in public schools, after which she joined the publishing world at Art in America and ARTnews. Anthony transitioned to photography when she inherited a Hasselblad camera. Much of her recent work has been made in Upstate New York and downtown Manhattan. Collar City is her first monograph.

The inanimate tableaux of American resale marketplaces illuminate the evils of the past embedded in collectible objectsAmerican photographer David Ricci spent seven years traveling across the US making photographs at antique malls and fairs, curio shops, thrift stores and other sites where consumer goods from the past are offered for resale. The images in Hunter Gatherer expose the hidden underbelly of American resale marketplaces and cast a light on the country’s historical biases and stereotypes, weaving together a tapestry of racism, objectification, beauty standards, Christianity and consumerism. Ricci photographed these objects, displays and scenes as he found them. Some are humorous—a Catholic nun figurine praying over a Batman Pez dispenser—but the juxtapositions of blatantly racist objects including lawn jockeys, Black mammy figurines, and tomahawk-wielding Native Americans with anodyne items like lamps and bicycles call attention to the darker aspects of present-day America as well as its history. Though no people appear in the images, depictions of human figures suggest thoughts, dialogues and narratives that transform lifeless scenes into animated tableaux. The images in Hunter Gatherer provide a critical lens for examining the underlying values and biases that continue to shape contemporary American society.David Ricci is a self-taught American photographer whose work explores human relationships with the environment and physical objects. His images function as both historical document and social mirror, compelling viewers to examine the characteristics of American society and material culture. His monograph, EDGE (2022) received the Foreword Indies gold award in photography. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions and are held in several permanent collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Fogg Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Winnipeg Art Gallery; Hyde Collection, Glans Falls, NY; Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA; and Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA.

In honor of the Fabric Workshop and Museum’s 40th anniversary, Process and Practice tells a story of contemporary art at FWM that highlights process along with product. It documents FWM’s history of collaboration with established and emerging artists-in-residence since the 2002 publication of New Materials as New Media. Some of the over 30 artists featured include Mark Bradford, Ann Hamilton, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Richard Tuttle, Sarah Sze, Nick Cave, Theaster Gates, Joan Jonas and Trisha Brown, among many others. Also featured are essays by Nancy Princenthal, Patterson Sims and Susan Lubowsky Talbott, FWM’s current director.