Woodstock '69 to '19: Celebrating Fifty Years with Michael Lang

The legend of Woodstock comes full circle! Curated by Michael Lang, one of the original co-founders and promoters for the immortal festival that took place from August 15-18 in 1969 (attended by nearly half a million people), Real Art Press's Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music is the quintessential guide for fans both young and old. Set to release just in time for the anniversary in July 2019, the book includes many never-before-seen photographs, artist setlists and correspondences, along with contracts and design plans for the event. From Hendrix to the Who, Santana to Jefferson Airplane, and Creedence Clearwater Revival to Janis Joplin, all performances live on, thanks to Michael Lang!

Want to explore some more titles by Real Art Press? Visit their website.

Also, check out a sweet promo vid that Real Art Press put together for the book!

Brandon Stanton on Ellen!

Ellen chats with Brandon Stanton, the man behind the Humans of New York blog and author of Humans of New York and Little Humans. Very moving!

Behind the Humans of New York

You might remember my previous post about the book, Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton. Since the book's October release, the media has flocked toward Stanton, photographer and creator of this blog-based phenomenon and I wanted to share it again. Stanton's goal is simple: ask someone if he can photograph them and then conduct a short interview. This approach has created over 300 stunning photographs and countless stories of human confessions, fears, hopes and sorrow now featured in print.

Stanton shared his most memorable moment with an 80-year-old woman, one that left him crying (and me tearful!) in the streets of New York City, on CBC Radio Q with Jian Ghomeshi. I highly recommend listening to this interview as Stanton shares more of his inspiration for Humans of New York.

Humans of New York

Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton is a forthcoming book from St. Martin's Press that aims to capture the individuality and spirit of the city that never sleeps. The hardbound book, which is inspired by the very popular blog of the same name, boasts 304 pages of full-colour portraits and images of New York's inhabitants. Stanton began the Humans of New York project in the summer of 2010 in an attempt to capture the personalities and individual stories of New Yorkers. Since its launch, the blog has amassed over one million followers and Stanton's photographs have appeared in Vogue.com and TheAtlantic.com.

Humans of New York will be available October 2013. In the meantime, I'd encourage you to check out the Humans of New York blog and Instagram! 

Anna Sui

Releasing in November, Chronicle Books will be publishing a retrospective on Fashion Icon Anna Sui. It is pretty spectacular; the book will have over 400 photographs. Sui has had an incredible influence on fashion and this book is a true celebration of her reach.

In this video, Sui talks about creating the book. Not only does it look at her work but also provides a sense of the history of fashion

over the past twenty years.

Henri Cartier-Bresson at the AIC

While in Chicago we went to the Art Institute of Chicago where we saw the exhibit Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century. We are very fortunate to represent an amazing distributor, D.A.P who represent some of the finest art publishers in the world including the MOMA who produced the book for show. Cartier-Bresson was instrumental in bringing photography to the masses and travelled all over the world honing his craft. The book and the exhibit showcase for the first time, the incredible reach he had. At the show, there was an amazing map and timeline showing how broad his travels were...very cool.

Promoting Humanity Through Art. . .

Rosalyn and I have just returned from working the bookfair at the Congress for Social Sciences and Humanities - Canada's largest annual academic conference. This year it was held at Concordia University in wonderful Montreal (and trust me, if you have to spend 9 days in a row at a conference, Montreal is THE city to do it in!). While the show can be fairly exhausting at times, I have always found Congress quite exhilarating, and intellectually stimulating; I have great conversations about books with professors, grad students and other publishers, and I was delighted to find many NYRB groupies among them. For that week the bookfair also becomes Canada's largest bookstore, showcasing not only academic books (many of which would appeal to a broad reading public) but many from the smaller literary presses as well. I love to visit the booths, browse through catalogues and yes, I can never resist picking up a few books for myself. I'll blog about some of my discoveries and upcoming books in a few days, but first a nod to the other thing I love about Congress - the talks by influential thinkers, writers and artists.

Reza is an Iranian photographer, now living in Paris, who has worked as a journalist for the last thirty years covering Afghanistan, Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East. His talk which was part of a day devoted to Human Rights, was very inspiring. Not only did he relate the stories behind his incredible photographs - all included in this stunning collection War + Peace - but talked about the importance of bringing humanity to areas of the world devasted by war or famine. As an example, he talked about a four month project in which he and some volunteers took photographs of 12,000 African children who were displaced orphans, in the hopes of connecting them with perhaps an uncle or a grandmother. The photos were exhibited in refugee camps and the project reunited 3,500 children with a member of their extended family. He's helped Afghani women start up their own radio station, and Afghani children their own magazine written by, and for, themselves. He talked about the importance of bringing education into the home and said that he judges a country's level of civilization by the percentage of their gross national product that governments spend on education. The book has an introduction by his friend Sebastian Junger and it would make a perfect visual companion to Junger's recently published War.