| | BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 11.75 x 11.5 in. / 228 pgs / 105 bw. PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 1/24/2017
Out of stock indefinitely DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2017 p. 122 PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783958292758 TRADE
List Price: $75.00 CAD $99.00 AVAILABILITY
Not available | TERRITORY
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| | | Henry Wessel: Traffic/Sunset Park/Continental Divide
 This book presents three independent bodies of work by Henry Wessel (born 1942), each being a precise sequence arranged to give the viewer the experience of what it felt like to pass through the territory described.
The first series, Traffic, shows Wessel’s photos of drivers stuck in traffic as he commuted in the early 1980s from Richmond, California, to San Francisco in the morning rush hour. Wessel records the determination, impatience and blank boredom of his fellow drivers as they navigate a daily drill that seems at times daunting and hopeless. Sunset Park is Wessel’s series of night photos of the modest working-class neighborhood of Sunset Park in Santa Monica. Over four years in the mid-1990s, Wessel captured the nocturnal transformation of suburbia into a strange, sometimes eerie, landscape. In his words, “you can’t help but notice how the world is reconfigured by the lights at night. The spot lighting of particular areas, the lack of ambient light, the unnatural way that shadows are cast, all take us to an unfamiliar place….” Wessel’s final series, Continental Divide, takes the viewer on a ride from the dense, suburban flatlands of the Midwest, up across the Rocky Mountains, and down into the sparse desert landscape of the American West. Wessel depicts its houses, shacks, street corners and the highway, reminding us of the inherent aesthetics of the everyday.
Featured image, from the Sunset Park series, is reproduced from 'Henry Wessel: Traffic/Sunset Park/Continental Divide.'PRAISE AND REVIEWSCollector Daily Richard Woodward Wessel’s photographs have in the past shown an acceptance of the world as it is, for all its shortcomings. This book has a sharper political edge of the sort more familiar at certain times in the work of Lewis Baltz and Adams. The emotional arc—beginning with the on-the-road democratic laughter of Traffic and ending in the entropy of Continental Divide—is unexpected but convincing. The despair feels earned, not forced. The New York Journal of Books Richard Rivera …[A] masterly printing by Steidl with black and white images on luxurious heavyweight paper and rich gray tones on the 12 x 11.5 inch sheets. The New York Journal of Books Richard Rivera Many of the nighttime images in Sunset Park are low-contrast, but Steidl has achieved an impeccable level of quality at differentiating and maximizing the impact of the rich gray tones in the shadow values. The New York Journal of Books Richard Rivera What is most intriguing about these images is the interplay of gray tones, the off-kilter framing through the window, the Mondrian-like fitted shapes of the compositions as well as how much they reveal of the driver’s appearance and attitude, which is also reflected in their choice of vehicles. The viewer does not engage with any of these people. They remain objective and distant in their own worlds. aPhotoEditor Jonathan Blaustein Frankly, these pictures are great. They’re just so damn Californian. And all the period cars and outfits? What more do I have to say? |
|  | STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely. | |
| | FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/6/2017 Featured photograph, from Steidl's gorgeously produced new release—one of the first from our Spring 2017 list—is from Henry Wessel's early '80s Traffic series, in which Wessel photographed Northern California commuters stuck in San Francisco rush hour traffic. ARTFORUM's Sarah Moroz writes, "The people behind the wheel, rolling along in Mustangs, Chevrolets and Bertones, are both vague prototypes and unknowable: a woman in a head scarf, a man in a bow tie. There is something intimate and voyeuristic about fixedly watching these partially visible figures—who are mostly unaware of our gaze—even though they’re circulating in public space. The images have been sequenced so that the cars all face the same direction, simulating traffic’s continuity. Beyond the vehicles, background snippets—a Wells Fargo bank, an advertisement for Yakima sweet corn at Thriftway, a Church’s Chicken sign—are all tokens of Americana: a landscape of commerce and appetite through which the automobile glides." continue to blog | |  | La FábricaISBN: 9788418934070
USD $45.00 | CAD $63 UK £ 38Pub Date: 10/18/2022
Active | Out of stock
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|  | SteidlISBN: 9783958295698
USD $50.00 | CAD $69.95Pub Date: 6/24/2025
Forthcoming
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|  | SteidlISBN: 9783958295704
USD $75.00 | CAD $105Pub Date: 6/24/2025
Forthcoming
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|  | SteidlISBN: 9783869303000
USD $50.00 | CAD $67.5Pub Date: 7/20/2011
Active | Out of stock
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