Sultan, Larry & Mandel, Mike
New York, NY
D.A.P./ Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
2003
first edition, first printing
92 p.
hb., blue cloth-like covered boards, with title stamped in gilt on front cover and spine, with dust jacket
with 61 duotone plates, 18 b/w reproductions printed on a 2-page spread entitled 'Outtakes from Evidence, 1977-2003,' and 7 additional b/w reference illustrations
Buch
Photographs from various private and public collections edited by Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan. Includes a list of government agencies, educational institutions and corporations that permitted access to their files. - Before 1977, artists using photography usually made 'fine art photographs.' Museums and galleries, curators and collectors, increasingly embraced photography as an important medium. The contemporary art world was widening and refining its notions of 'art photography.' While practices and movements within the photographic arts were rapidly expanding and crossing into other media during the 60s and 70s, the constant at this time was that the 'art photograph' (or work of art that incorporated photography) was made by an artist. Many important artists at the time, such as Robert Heinecken, used images from the mass media and other sources as key elements in their cutting-edge works. And, artists such as Ed Ruscha were using photographs in a way that minimized the importance of the individual images (i.e., the photographic images were in service to the larger conceptual work). Then, Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan collaborated to publish 'Evidence,' and changed everything! With a brilliant sensibility for the absurd and a keen awareness of the complexity that the single image possesses when viewed outside its original context, Mandel and Sultan selected photographs from thousands of images that previously existed solely within the boundaries of the industrial, scientific, governmental and other institutional sources from which they were mined. Some of the photographs are hilarious, others are perplexing, but it's in their isolation from their original context that these images take on meanings that address the confluence of industry and corporate mischief, ingenuity and pseudo-science. The resulting book, 'Evidence,' strongly influenced our shifting awareness of 'the photograph' and introduced the importance of the 'found image' in art. The finished and provocative collection forever altered how we view images. Of course, we are now much more aware of multiple meanings images can evoke when viewed outside of a proscribed context. Before 'Evidence,' however, this was not well, as evident. This book, unlike collections of "snapshot" photographs, forced the viewer to imagine that the larger world was using the camera to document dubious practices and alarming, amusing, and confusing experiments in the name of government. The 'photograph as art' question took on an entirely new perspective, and the world could never [seriously] looked back. If borrowed from corporate-speak, a caption for 'Evidence' might be 'a paradigm shift' for photography. Although it is not printed nearly as well as the first edition (and loses some of its impact as a result), the re-issue of 'Evidence' is nonetheless a major event. Now, with this 2nd edition, we have an opportunity to own a reprint of one of the most important books in the history of photography. The relevance of 'Evidence' is still pervasive and will be a welcome sight to many who missed it the first time around! [Also included with the book is a copy of the planned introduction by Robert Heinecken, which was subsequently not published in the book, but was printed in the May-June 1977 issue of Afterimage.] (Antiq. Vincent Borrelli, Albuquerque, NM, 04.2005). - From the publisher: "'...a small and simple book that reveals the vast gulf separating what we actually see from what we think we see.' --Shelley Rice. 'Evidential images of the world, throw off your chains and dance!' --David Levi Strauss. 'Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel's enormously influential 1977 volume of found institutional photographs...' --Flash Art. In 1977 photographers Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel sifted through thousands of photographs in the files of the Bechtel Corporation, the Beverly Hills Police Department, the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Stanford Research Institute and a hundred other corporations, American government agencies, and educational, medical and technical institutions. They were looking for photographs that were made and used as transparent documents and purely objective instruments--as evidence, in short. Selecting 50 of the best, they printed these images with the care you would expect to find in a high-quality art photography book, publishing them in a simple, limited-edition volume titled Evidence. The concept for the book was clear: select photographs intended to be used as objective evidence and show that it is never that simple. Now an undisputed classic in the photo world, considered a seminal harbinger of conceptual photography, Evidence is nearly impossible to find. This new edition is being published in recognition of the project's continued relevance, and will contain a facsimile copy of the original book plus a newly commissioned scholarly essay by Sandra Phillips of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Additionally, this edition will include a new spread of images and a group of black-and-white illustrations selected by the artists from an archive of photographs that were not included in the original book."