Your Heartbreak Lives Here: A New Book of Photography by Kendall Waldman

Photographer Kendall Waldman is selling a small book of images of life in American pandemia and giving all proceeds to The Modest Needs Foundation. This is, of course, a ubiquitous model in this strange time of ours, when any artist with a functioning combination of heart and brain is trying to reconcile the impulse to work and the impulse to help. If you have the means, I encourage you to buy every item that every artist on the whole of the internet is selling to raise money for a good cause. But, if you must be discerning, if you’d like to contribute to an organization that seems to truly understand this unique societal moment and own an art object that does too, I recommend Waldman’s project. 

Simply put, these photographs capture the popular experience of life under COVID-19 lockdown so accurately and efficiently, it hurts a little. I don’t mean that the book offers a representative variety of stories—this isn’t reportage—but that it quietly articulates exactly what these months have felt like. It’s a formal study of an informal tone. Flipping through its pages some years from now just might be the easiest way to access the 2020 sense memories we’ll surely be storing in our marrow for decades to come. text by Gideon Jacobs

Follow Kendall Waldman on Instagram, and DM to buy the book.

Shaniqwa Jarvis West Coast Book Launch And Signing @ Arcana

Shaniqwa Jarvis’ eponymous first book is now available at Arcana Books in Culver City. In this expansive monograph, Jarvis presents one hundred and sixty pages of editorial and personal work spanning two decades drawn from the photographer’s archive. This lovely hardbound volume published by Baque Creative features an introduction by photographer Ryan McGinley accompanied by a meticulous selection of pictures from her favorite personal series such as “Bathroom Portraits” - shot in the toilets of bars in the early 2000s - along with editorial work for clients like The Gap, The New York Times, Supreme, Billboard, and Riposte that includes portraits of SZA, Lee Scratch Perry, George Condo, Cardi B, and a few requisite selfies.
 
Ms. Jarvis’ work is known for blending the aesthetics of modern fashion photography with the sensitive, unfiltered emotion of art portraiture. In some of her best-loved imagery she captures vivid reality across a wide variety of subjects that always appear to be an extension of herself. The images speak to raw, disparate feelings imbued with a deep sparkling optimism. The photos in this collection are an invitation to join Jarvis on a journey to see the world from her vantage point - one that is female, black, tirelessly hardworking, and brimming with raucous, positive vibrations. These are images of celebrities who seem like best friends, vintage shots of downtown New York notables in their heyday, children, loved ones in all colors of the rainbow, and delicate landscapes and travel souvenirs. Here is sorrow and joy commingling in pictures, many of them highly autobiographical, all representing a progressive and optimistic world.