David Maisel
Library of Dust Essays by Geoff Manaugh, Terry Toedtemeier, and Michael Roth
13-1/4 x 17 in; 108 pp ; 80 color photographs
Hardcover
Published in August, 2008
David Maisel
The Lake Project Hardcover, 9 3/4 x 14 1/4 x 15, 60 pages, 36 four-color plates.
"Out of print. Extremely limited availability. For more than two decades, David Maisel has photographed civilization's aggressive advance across the American landscape. The sites he has pursued, the subjects he has discovered, and the abstract beauty he has confronted are all the more unfamiliar and disarming because of their aerial perspectives. Looking down from low-flying aircraft banking steeply over the terrain, Maisel constructs skewed landscapes that seem at times to have no horizons, no up or down, no near or far. The Lake Project documents Maisel's work around Owens Lake. This arid expanse, located just east of the Sierra Nevadas, is for the most part a desiccated bed of mineral deposits. Drained for the water needs of Southern California, it now contributes carcinogenic particles to the atmosphere during "dust events." These are not normal landscapes; there is no foreground, middle ground, or background but only the ground itself, teeming with malignant colors. David Maisel lives and works in California. This oversized book, superbly printed in color on matte Japanese art paper, is his first monograph." Nazarelli Press
David Maisel
OBLIVION
Hardcover, 12 x 12, 48 pages, 15 duotone plates.
“In his book Warped Space, the architectural theorist Anthony Vidler speaks of the “paranoiac space of modernism,” a space which is “mutated into a realm of panic, where all the limits and boundaries become blurred.” These words come to mind when considering the urban aerial images of Los Angeles and its periphery. Certain spacial fears seem endemic to the modern metropolis, and Los Angeles defines this term in ways that no other American city can approximate. This amorphous skein of strip malls and gated developments, highway entrance and exit ramps, lays unfurled over the landscape like a sheet over a cadaver. . . As we cast a critical eye upon the megalopolis of Southern California, it is necessary to remind ourselves that there is still a heart beating within it. Indeed, 15 million hearts, with all the souls and dreams of the bodies powered by those hearts: the city as living, breathing organism, constantly breaking down and constantly replicating.” — David Maisel. The 15 aerial photographs of Los Angeles that make up Oblivion are distressingly beautiful, their post-apocalyptic feeling enhanced by reversed-out tones. Maisel shares with us his “shadowland,” a place previously unobserved that coexists with its sunstruck version. Introduction by William L. Fox." Nazarelli Press
David Maisel
One Picture Book #49: Cascade Effect
One Picture Book #49: Cascade Effect
Hardcover, 5 1/2 x 7 1/4, 16 pages, 8 duotone plates, one original print.
"In this elegant volume, David Maisel first publishes images made more than 20 years ago, of clearcut logging sites in northern Maine. The title refers to a series of environmental crises triggered by extinctions within an ecosystem. Accompanied by an excerpt from Susan Stewart’s poem The Forest, the images and words together limn an elegy for that which has incontrovertibly vanished."
Trouble in Paradise: Examining Discord between Nature and Society
Casebound exhibition catalogue. Published by Tucson Museum of Art
Casebound exhibition catalogue. Published by Tucson Museum of Art
"Artists are looking at the beauty and the terror in the forces of nature through their honest and emotional portrayals, while sending urgent messages to pay attention to the ravages society inflicts on the land through war and waste. This exhibition will examine a range of art in a variety of media that addresses extreme forces of nature in two basic categories: nature-based discord, such as lightning, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and fire; and human-caused environmental discord such as pollution, over-population, global warming, oil field fires, atomic fallout, and destruction of land. The debate about how much of nature’s wrath is the result of human impact and interference is ongoing, but questions are posed through stunning visuals about the seemingly unstoppable cycle of cause and effect.
Many of the artists in this exhibition, including Edward Burtynsky, Richard Misrach, William T. Wiley, Mark Dion, and Joel Peter Witkin, imbue their work with haunting messages while objectively documenting the reality before them. Others exalt in the awesome beauty of the power of nature without judgment of its genesis or its conclusion. While offering a selected survey of powerful works that address the forces of nature, this exhibition is far from a “doom and gloom” portrayal of earth’s and society’s current situation, nor does it attempt to solve environmental problems. What emerges from these works is not only a revelation of the pressing environmental problems of our times, but how artists see the world and share that message with stunning beauty and poetic resonance."
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