What characteristics define a contemporary American? Amid an increasingly polarized political and cultural landscape, photographer Richard Sharum traveled across America’s “spine” to suss out the common threads and seemingly insurmountable disparities of a fractured nation.

For three years, Sharum traversed a lengthy stretch between the Canadian and Mexican borders. From North Dakota to Kansas to Texas, he documented the lives of more than 4,000 people in 14,000-plus images, creating a snapshot of a region that’s historically been overlooked. “I knew that in order for me to find out what America is, I needed to travel its central corridor and see it for myself,” he said.

In his new book, Spina Americana, a portrait of a nation emerges in bold black and white. On frozen water in Hemand, North Dakota, a fisherman shows off his recently speared Nothern Pike. In O’Neill, Nebraska, an older woman cradles a bowling ball in front of wood paneling, and two teenagers steel away from baseball practice in Tolar, Texas, to pose for Sharum.

Delineated by location and an area often described as “flyover country,” the photos focus largely on the working class. Manual labor is prominent throughout the series, which features migrant workers picking oregano, a firefighter, and a cotton candy vendor. Whereas the working class in this region is often omitted from or patronized within pop culture and political conversations, Sharum portrays each person with reverence and a desire to emphasize a shared humanity. The lack of color similarly draws attention to the material conditions and expressions of the subjects. He adds:

This term, flyover country, was one I’d heard my entire life but had never really thought about when it came to the condescension it implied. I felt that this part of our country had been ignored politically, socially, and culturally for decades, with its obscurity creating a subtle but consequential vacuum that had implicitly added fuel to our national divisions.

Raised in Corpus Christi, Sharum is now based in Corning, New York. Spina Americana is published by GOST Books and available on Bookshop. Find more of his work on his website. (via PetaPixel)

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Born in Morocco and raised in Belgium, Mous Lamrabat has long been fascinated by diasporic experience and the surprising parallels, contradictions, and intersections between cultures. Through fashion photography and vibrant personal work, the photographer celebrates love, freedom, and unity.

Five years in the making, Lamrabat’s new book Mousganistan is a dive into “an in-between territory in which opposites collide and create beauty and abundance, new connections, and dialogues in a visually thought-provoking and at times confronting way,” says a statement.

Published by Lannoo, Mousganistan leads us on a journey through portraiture and Lamrabat’s creative process, highlighting the spaces where cultures, symbols, capitalism, spirituality, and survival meet. He often focuses on diasporic communities, tracing connections between global geography, cultures, and identity.

Lamrabat often focuses up-close on an individual or a pair sporting unique garments or abstract coverings, accessorizing with brand logos or pop culture symbols. His images nearly glow with bold contrasts, vivid color, and remarkable backdrops. Beauty, interconnectedness, and youthful energy challenge our notions of “traditional” culture and open our minds to imagine a future fueled by compassion and understanding.

Explore more on Lamrabat’s website, and grab your copy of Mousganistan on Bookshop.

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Raised in the Alaska community of Nome, which sits on the coast of the Bering Sea, Sonya Kelliher-Combs traces her family lineage to the northernmost reaches in Utqiaġvik and the central inland city of Nulato. Now based in Anchorage, her Iñupiaq and Athabascan ancestry, cultural heritage, and relationship to the land constitute the nucleus around which her multidisciplinary work revolves.

Growing up in a rural community, Kelliher-Combs observed and learned “time-honored traditional women’s and collective labor—skin sewing, beading, and food preparation—that taught her to appreciate the intimacy of intergenerational knowledge and material histories,” says an artist statement in the foreword of the artist’s new monograph, Mark.

Published by Hirmer Verlag, the volume explores the breadth of Kelliher-Combs’s practice, from paintings, sculptures, and installations to her curatorial and community advocacy work.

Drawing on the materials and symbolism of ancestral, Indigenous knowledge, Kelliher-Combs addresses what she describes as “the ongoing struggle for self-definition and identity in the Alaskan context,” delving into history, culture, family, and long-held customs.

The works “also speak of abuse, marginalization, and the historical and contemporary struggles of Indigenous peoples in the North and worldwide,” her statement continues. In “Goodbye,” for example, 52 gloves and mittens are gathered together as if waving a collective farewell.

The poignant installation aimed to open the dialogue about the sensitive subject of suicide, the rate of which at the time Kelliher-Combs made the piece was nearly 52 Native Alaskans per 100,000—more than triple the age-adjusted rate among Americans in general. The mitts were all handmade and lent by local community members.

Through delicate, tactile sculptures and atmospheric paintings, the artist venerates ancient ancestral practices, like animal hide preparation, while exploring the way contemporary materials like plastic and fossil fuels are transforming the landscape. She often incorporates maps, thread, beads, hair, and fabric.

Kelliher-Combs also combines organic and synthetic materials, merging the traditional with the new; the local with the imported. She describes how she pushes “beyond the binary divisions of Western and Indigenous cultures, self and other, and man and nature, to examine the interrelationships and interdependence of these concepts.”

See more of the artist’s work on her website, and find your copy of Mark on Bookshop.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Sonya Kelliher-Combs Merges Collective Knowledge and Native Alaskan Heritage in Mixed Media appeared first on Colossal.

Have you ever thought about how your bacon, almond milk, or fish ends up on your table? In our globalized economy, fresh fruit can be shipped from one hemisphere to another to stock grocery store shelves regardless of the season, and many of us enjoy nearly endless choices of cereals, vegetables, meats, and snacks. But a striking number of young children don’t realize that processed foods like chicken nuggets and cheese don’t come from plants. How does a hot dog come to be? Where does our food come from?

Photographer George Steinmetz offers a remarkable look at landscapes, initiatives, and customs that shape how the world eats. His new book, Feed the Planet, chronicles a decade spent documenting food production in more than three dozen countries on six continents, including 24 U.S. states.

More than 40 percent of our planet’s surface has been molded and tended to produce crops and livestock. From idiosyncratic 16th-century farm plots in rural Poland to Texas cattle feed lots to a large-scale shrimp processing operation in India, food production is rarely observed on this scale. “He takes us places that most of us never see, although our very lives depend on them,” says a statement for the book.

Studies have shown that large-scale agriculture and factory farming send greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in an amount constituting nearly one-third of all human-caused emissions. The ongoing climate crisis can be traced in large part to fertilizers that release nitrous oxide; deforestation caused by farm expansion that adds more carbon dioxide into the air; and emissions from manure management, burning, fuel use, and more.

From a striking aerial vantage point, Steinmetz captures the beauty, ingenuity, and stark reality of factories, aquaculture, family farms, food pantries, and sprawling agricultural operations. He elucidates how staples like wheat, rice, vegetables, fruits, meat, and fish reach both domestic and international tables, tapping into “one of humanity’s deepest needs, greatest pleasures, and most pressing challenges.”

Purchase a signed copy on the photographer’s website, or grab one on Bookshop.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article George Steinmetz Journeys Around the World to Illuminate Where Food Comes From appeared first on Colossal.

“Love hotels are a unique and deeply ingrained part of Japanese culture,” says photographer François Prost. “These venues have a very ‘talkative’ quality visually—they’re expressive in their design, reflecting aspects of local culture, values, and even fantasies.”

During a trip to Japan in 2023, when Prost was exhibiting an earlier series of works called Gentlemen’s Club at a gallery in Tokyo, he embarked on a road trip from the capital city to Shikoku Island in the southeast of the country. With the gallery’s urging, he undertook a new project while visiting, documenting the facades of love hotels—also sometimes called “boutique” or “fashion” hotels—that offer rooms at cheap rates for brief stays.

Prost, who is based in Lyon, France, approaches his subjects as features of the landscape that characterize a specific vernacular and highlight quirky or taboo facets of local culture. Gentleman’s Club, for example, documented American strip clubs along a southerly route from Miami to Los Angeles in 2019. He has also sought out Ivorian, French, and Spanish nightclubs in series like After Party and discoteca.

“I choose specific types of venues in each country—those with distinct, often kitschy or roadside architecture—and photograph them across the region with a consistent framing style,” Prost says. “I’m drawn to the aesthetic of these places, and how their facades reveal something about the people who inhabit or frequent them.”

His latest series, Love Hotel, captures the unmissably colorful designs of roadside lodging, ranging from ships and castles to flowers and a pink whale. “The venues aim to evoke a sense of romance, escape, and fantasy, yet they also need to feel safe and inviting—not tacky or sordid,” Prost says. “It’s why some of these places have an almost ‘Disney-like’ aesthetic, playful yet carefully curated.” Estimates of how many love hotels dot Japan range from 10,000 to 40,000.

Prost has launched a new book for the series on Kickstarter that highlights the creativity and occasional hilarity of these infamous destinations. “I hope viewers are struck by the incredible attention to detail and devotion to design that defines these spaces in Japan,” Prost says.

You can support the book on Kickstarter until January 10, and stay updated by following Prost on Instagram. Explore all of his projects, including more books, on his website.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Quirky Facades of Japan’s Love Hotels Feature in François Prost’s Vibrant Portraits appeared first on Colossal.

As we get ready to say goodbye to 2024, we’re celebrating some of our favorite books shared on Colossal throughout the year. We published dozens of articles about spectacular new monographs, photography, architecture, painting, science, history, and more. Peruse our top 10 below, and find many more in the Colossal Shop and on Bookshop.

The Women Who Changed Photography: And How to Master Their Techniques

From bold black-and-white visages to masters of disguise, identity plays a vital role in many of the practices featured in The Women Who Changed Photography. The tome investigates the trailblazing practices of Lee Miller, Shirin Neshat, and many more, chronicling the individuals, aesthetics, and approaches that have shaped the field.

Available in the Colossal Shop

Color Charts: A History

From chemists’ plant-derived dyes to consumer paint swatches displayed at the hardware store, the history of color charts reflects a varied relationship between pigments, science, culture, and commerce. Anne Varichon explores the entwined evolution of this categorization through nearly 200 vibrant samples from the 15th century to modern day.

Available in the Colossal Shop

The Art Book for Children

Two decades ago, Phaidon published the first volume in The Art Book for Children series, which quickly became beloved by children and parents the world over. To share its legacy with a new generation of readers, this edition pairs a selection of “best of” artists from the original series with 30 brand-new contemporary entries.

This year was a plentiful time for children’s art books, and we also enjoyed the informative narrative, I Am an Artist.

Available in the Colossal Shop

Sacred Sites (Library of Esoterica)

From ancient pyramids to subterranean labyrinths to mountaintop meccas, we have always been drawn to visiting or building sites that inspire reverence and awe. Sacred Sites celebrates how we traverse and transform the world around us through ritual and art. Compiled by Jessica Hundley, the volume surveys a remarkable array of places and artworks through more than 400 images centered around pilgrimage, performance, and devotion.

Available in the Colossal Shop

Tree: Exploring the Arboreal World

Spanning 3,500 years of art, science, culture, and history, Tree: Exploring the Arboreal World surveys the awe-inspiring beauty and romance of trees. The volume includes more than 300 illustrations ranging from ancient wall paintings and botanical illustrations to captivating photography and multimedia work by today’s leading artists.

Available in the Colossal Shop

Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture

Eight Seconds comprises 118 images by Ivan McClellan, a Portland, Oregon-based photographer who’s spent nearly a decade documenting the lives, wins, and losses of the Black rodeo community from Alabama to Los Angeles. He offers an insider’s view, capturing the addictive energy of the sport and the rich sense of camaraderie it fosters.

Available on Bookshop

Camo

Camo is the first publication to chronicle the work of Thandiwe Muriu, celebrating her vibrant portraits that combine cultural textiles and beauty ideologies. Muriu takes us on a colorful, reflective journey through her world as a woman living in modern Kenya as she reinterprets contemporary African portraiture.

Available in the Colossal Shop

Hidden Portraits: Old Masters Reimagined

This monograph gathers a quintessential selection of Volker Hermes’s works into one volume. Highlighting the artist’s wry commentary on luxury, social status, and fame, the selection delves into the history of portraiture through a humorous lens.

Available on Bookshop

Great Women Sculptors

Presenting a more expansive and inclusive history of sculpture, Great Women Sculptors surveys the work of more than 300 trailblazing artists from more than 60 countries, spanning 500 years from the Renaissance to the present day.

Available in the Colossal Shop

Art Is Art: Collaborating with Neurodiverse Artists at Creativity Explored

Spurred by the belief that art changes lives, Florence and Elias Katz founded Creativity Explored in 1983, a San Francisco-based nonprofit studio and gallery designed for disabled, neurodivergent artists. More than 135 people currently participate in its programming, learning techniques across painting, drawing, clay, textiles, and more. In Art Is Art, Ann Kappes, Creativity Explored’s director of artist partnerships, celebrates the organization’s 40th anniversary through hundreds of artworks.

Available on Bookshop

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The season of giving has somehow officially arrived, and we’ve got you covered.

The Colossal Gift Guide features a curated selection of gifts for all the unique individuals in your life. From dozens of art books and quirky puzzles to snack-shaped candles and a slew of crafting kits, there’s something perfect for everyone, from beloved grandkids to weird uncles and that co-worker whose name is definitely Shelly. No, Sarah.

Grab a cup of tea and get cozy, because holiday shopping is about to get way more fun! 

For the Earth Explorer

We all know someone who has the adventure bug, dreaming of wandering the world while connecting with nature. Perhaps they’d enjoy Field Notes to record those mid-hike epiphanies, mini botanical puzzles to take along for the journey, or books celebrating the fleeting beauty of land art.

For the Art Book Lover

Give that artistic bibliophile in your life the ability to appreciate art in their own home. You can never go wrong with a great art book, and with our wide range from contemporary painting and activism to Keith Haring and Thandiwe Muriu, this selection is a solid place to start.

For the Budding Artist

For those just beginning to explore their creative side, one of the most important things they can receive is encouragement. Whether that be in the form of beginner-friendly projects, one-of-a-kind crayons, or inspiring books, there’s something here to kindle your young one’s artistic spark.

For the Master Strategist

Chances are, you know someone that thrives on strategic thinking, competition, and finding solutions. Our collection of meticulously-designed puzzles, themed playing cards, and game night essentials are great for those looking for a fun (and aesthetically pleasing) challenge.

For the Homebody

Cozy corners aren’t complete without the glow of a warm candle, a whiff of calming incense, and charming matchboxes to light them. As it cools down, these picks are perfect for those who love celebrating the joys of staying in.

For the Stationery Geek

Do you have someone in your life who gets over-enthusiastic about finding the perfect pen, excited about paper weight, and obsessive over workspace accessories? I do (it’s me). Our hand-picked stationery must-haves are perfect for daily organizers or office supply fanatics.

Don’t forget: Colossal Members always receive 15% off in the shop, and from now until the holiday season is over, we’re offering free shipping on all U.S. orders over $150.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article The Colossal Gift Guide is Here appeared first on Colossal.

David Hockney famously said that “people tend to forget that play is serious,” but for the artists and designers behind some of the world’s most visionary parks and museums, recreation has never been a trivial matter.

A new book by Emmy Watts travels the globe to highlight more than 80 spectacular environments created purely to foster one of the most primal activities. Published by Hoxton Mini Press, The Art of Play is a vast compendium featuring a range of interactive, immersive, and conceptual spaces for both children and adults.

Included is Mike Hewson’s seemingly perilous design in Melbourne, which perches massive boulders attached to slides, monkey bars, and other equipment on tiny wheels fit for a skateboard (don’t worry: they’re secured with rods).

Others take inspiration from nature, including the colorful bubble architecture of an Istanbul playground and the fantastic characters at an all-ages park in Chongqing, China. Outfitted with typical equipment like sandboxes and tunnels, this space also has tables for checkers and exercise areas specifically geared toward older adults.

Pick up a copy of The Art of Play for a dose of whimsy and perhaps to help plan your next family vacation.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Swing Through the World’s Most Spectacular Artist-Designed Playgrounds appeared first on Colossal.

A new book by Malene Barnett celebrates more than 60 artists, designers, and craftspeople whose work has been shaped by their Caribbean roots.

Published by Artisan, Crafted Kinship: Inside the Creative Practices of Contemporary Black Caribbean Makers peers into a range of multi-faceted practices influenced by the diaspora. Whether drawing on connections to the land and memory or speaking to colonial histories and African origins, each creative shares insight into their practices, histories, and communities through insightful interviews.

Several artists featured previously on Colossal have contributed their stories to the nearly 400-page tome. Firelei Báez, for example, discusses how her work strives to center the Caribbean within a global context by capturing traditions like Carnival or perfectly translating the way sunlight would filter through her grandmother’s backyard in the Dominican Republic.

Similarly, Morel Doucet explains how foregrounding his Haitian identity has allowed him to tell his own story, rather than have others decide who or what his delicate, ceramic sculptures are about.

Also included in the book are April Bey, who illuminates the relationship between opulence and thriving futures, and Sonya Clark, who unravels the Eurocentric distinction between art and craft. Barnett, too, is an artist and maker who shares glimpses into her studio and meticulous ceramic practices.

As a whole, Crafted Kinship focuses on the processes, considerations, and histories that go into a vast range of works, drawing connections between each element, maker, and their ancestral ties.

Find your copy on Bookshop.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Crafted Kinship’ Unravels the Creative Practices of 60 Caribbean Artists, Designers, and Makers appeared first on Colossal.

Color, movement, and sweeping, expertly choreographed gestures permeate the works of Arielle Bobb-Willis. The Los Angeles-based photographer blurs the boundaries between art and fashion imagery, rejecting “the notion that Black expression is limited—or limiting.”

A slim monograph collects 90 of Bobb-Willis’s photos, highlighting her distinctive eye and bold, conceptual compositions. Published by Aperture, Keep the Kid Alive positions observation and imagination as useful tools to inspire awe for the overlooked. Models dressed in bright, color-blocked garments pose in parks or alleyways, their joyful dances and chromatic clothing enriching the nondescript spaces.

Bobb-Willis first picked up a camera at 14 and through moves from New York to Aiken, South Carolina, to New Orleans, found the medium was both cathartic through chronic depression and loss and also an essential tool for developing her taste and confidence.

“Photography is how I keep my inner child alive. Photography has taught me to fall in love with life,” she shares with Nicole Acheampong in an interview in the book, adding:

I love finding unexpected rainbows, and sunshine and a beautiful green park and kids’ chalk drawings on the sidewalk and melted ice cream and butterflies and flowers and Black girls with bright-blue braids and sweet graffiti poetry! I keep my inner child alive by taking pictures of my every day. I’m always finding things that I’m so in love with. …Photography is, and will always be, a daily practice of falling in love with as many things as I can.

Whether captured in a Los Angeles parking lot or against a purple wall in New Jersey, Bobb-Willis’s images are dynamic and vivid, drawing beauty and exuberance from unassuming spaces.

Keep the Kid Alive is available on Bookshop, and you can find more from Bobb-Willis on her website and Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article In ‘Keep the Kid Alive,’ Arielle Bobb-Willis Reaches for Exuberance appeared first on Colossal.