5 CANADIAN PHOTO BOOKS TO INVEST IN — NOW Photography books are a great example of collaborative work. The art of the book takes many eyes of review and critique, and many hours of revisions and research. Check out some Canadian photographers whose series work over the course of YEARS has culminated into these results. For these artists, the presentation quality of their images is paramount. The stories they tell in this compact, high-quality form are worth every penny.
Bathers by Ruth Kaplan, $65 Text by Marni Jackson and Larry Fink. Bathers, by Toronto-based photographer Ruth Kaplan, explores the social theatre of communal bathing. Ruth’s journey began in the nudist hot springs of California in 1991. She then travelled to Eastern Europe, seeking a more traditional form of the practice in the bath towns of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. The unique display of individual body types and ages became a component of the work, as did the decaying architecture of the interiors. Later, she travelled to highertech spas in Germany, France, Italy, and Denmark, completing the series in 2002 in Moroccan hammams and Icelandic hot springs. Hedonism, sensuality, innocence, and social bonding are some of the underlying themes that have emerged.
ruthkaplanphoto.com 8 photo ED
REGISTERED The Japanese Canadian
Experience During World War II
Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan
by Leslie Hossack, $125
by Rita Leistner, $43
Leslie Hossack’s images in Registered are accompanied by her thoroughly researched and carefully crafted observations about the experience of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia during World War II when they were registered, rounded up, and removed. Registered consists of three installations: Vancouver newspaper clippings from the 1940s; individual registration cards issued by the RCMP; and interpretive photographs of buildings in British Columbia where the story played out.
In 2011, conflict photographer and critical theorist Rita Leistner embedded with U.S. Marines in Afghanistan as a team member of the experimental social media initiative Basetrack. What resulted is Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan. Rita uses iPhone photographs she took during a military embed to apply the pioneering Canadian media theorist’s ideas on language and technology to contemporary warfare. An homage to McLuhan, this is a new kind of photo book.
lesliehossack.com
lookingformarshallmcluhan.com ritaleistner.com
