Michael Stipe

Before his wildly successful foray into music—as frontman of the 1990s international sensation R.E.M.—Michael Stipe was a visual arts student at the University of Georgia in Athens. After the band dissolved in 2011, Stipe returned to his first love: generating illustrations, photography and sculptures. His diaristic photographs are perhaps his best known works, and he has previously published three photobooks with Damiani that largely consisted of portraits.
In this fourth publication, portraiture once again takes focus. This time, however, Stipe articulates the form through a plethora of mediums: including plaster, concrete, rotocast plastics, bookmaking, ceramics, video and darkroom photographic printing. The book privileges process over product, displaying a series of works in progress that continue an exploration of contemporary portraiture, instinct and abstraction. Classical and conceptual forms create a cohesive whole from seemingly disparate elements, culminating in an inclusive and complete vision, in which the familiar and unfamiliar are granted equal grounding. The volume is published in conjunction with Stipe’s solo exhibition of his artwork at the ICA Milano, which opened in December 2023 and will be up through March 2024.
The New York City–based artist Michael Stipe (born 1960) studied photography and painting before leaving school upon the formation of R.E.M. The sensibility that he began to develop during his time as an art student transferred to the spectrum of his work for R.E.M., from art directing all graphic, video and stage designs, to writing, composing and performance, and his iconoclastic personal style.

In this third, photo-based chapter of the Damiani series, Michael Stipe explores strength, courage and vulnerability, pausing the project abruptly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. What follows is a lockdown interpretation of a 21st-century portrait, with a resolute desire to show our resilience, our humor, our collective fortitude and our adaptability.

The book is enriched by free audio content which deepens and enhances the discovery of the images. Scanning the QR code opens access to the “making-of” anecdotes and the intention behind the book, as told by Stipe.

As an undergraduate studio art major at the University of Georgia, Michael Stipe (born 1960) studied photography and painting before leaving school upon the formation of R.E.M., the band for which he served as frontman and singer/songwriter until its dissolution in 2011. The sensibility that he began to develop during his time as an art student transferred to the spectrum of his work for R.E.M., from art directing all graphic, video and stage design, to writing, composing and performance, and his iconoclastic personal style. Stipe’s visibility as a media figure in the popular culture of the 1980s and ’90s left an indelible mark on the aesthetic trends of the time, many of which have trickled down to contemporary culture.

For this second book in an ongoing exploratory series, multifaceted artist Michael Stipe has collaborated with the writer and artist Douglas Coupland on an investigation of how analog imagery is crashing on the shores of our digital future. For Stipe the signature mark of this phenomenon is the moiré pattern. Culled from Stipe’s vast archive of personal images, the book is a contemplation on the tug-of-war between pixels and halftone, between past memory and new memory and their vagaries of representation.

As an undergraduate studio art major at the University of Georgia, Michael Stipe (born 1960) studied photography and painting before leaving school upon the formation of R.E.M., the band for which he served as frontman and singer/songwriter until its dissolution in 2011. The sensibility that he began to develop during his time as an art student transferred to his spectrum of work for R.E.M., from art directing all graphic, video and stage design, to writing, composing and performance, and his iconoclastic personal style. Stipe’s visibility as a media figure in the popular culture of the 1980s and ’90s left an indelible mark on the aesthetic trends of the time, many of which have trickled down to contemporary culture.

This limited edition of 30 copies comes with a signed and numbered print by Michael Stipe.

Volume 1 is the first in a series of publications presenting different aspects of Michael Stipe’s multifaceted artistic practice.

Volume 1 includes a focused presentation of 35 images, bringing together 37 years of Stipe’s practice of creating and collecting photographic materials, in addition to posing as a subject in the photographs of others. The book centers around his unconventional and deeply personal understanding of queerness, conflating figures in his own life with those in American history and popular culture. Throughout the book, the formal qualities of images often relate in a poetic or lyrical way, allowing for unlikely juxtapositions and connections to emerge between subjects. These relationships transcend logical associations between time, place and social structures.

Volume 1 is produced in collaboration with artist Jonathan Berger and designer Julian Bittiner.

As an undergraduate studio art major at the University of Georgia, Michael Stipe (born 1960) studied photography and painting before leaving school upon the formation of R.E.M., the band for which he served as frontman and singer/songwriter until its dissolution in 2011. The sensibility that he began to develop during his time as an art student transferred to the spectrum of his work for R.E.M., from art directing all graphic, video and stage design, to writing, composing and performance, and his iconoclastic personal style. Stipe’s visibility as a media figure in the popular culture of the 1980s and ‘90s left an indelible mark on the aesthetic trends of the time, many of which have trickled down to contemporary culture.

Published in a run of 20 signed copies, this limited edition of Michael Stipe's (born 1960) Volume 1 includes the 19 x 12¾" print The Last Time I Saw River—a photograph that Stipe shot while driving away from the set of the last movie that his friend River Phoenix made. The image is unique within the book insofar as it is the only picture lacking people.

Volume 1 is a focused presentation of 35 images, bringing together 37 years of Stipe's practice of creating and collecting photographic materials, in addition to posing as a subject in the photographs of others.