Literary/I Want My DVDs

Confidence Games

Thatcher Keats

Charta Books

There was a time I was way over black-and-white photography. Now I seek it out and feel relieved when I am looking at it, like, “Ah, that’s nice.” Color photos were starting to burn my eyes.

Thatcher Keats has put together a great book of B&W work. A lot of it has a doing-LSD-in-the-woods-listening-to-the-Melvins feel, which is rad. You can smell the bongwater, taste the strychnine, and feel the crust in your eyes. Then there’s the comedown, years later, when things get calmer. This book is like a journal of that.

ARNOLD LAINE

Sex Advice From…

Chronicle Books

I really liked this book and thought it was interesting.

LYING LIAR

Enero

American Apparel

This is the first issue of American Apparel’s newspaper, published straight from Mexico City, and you know what? It is totally substantive, understated, smart, and lovely. Swear to god! Nice work.

CHRISTY MACKSON

Second House

Richard Prince

Gladstone Gallery

After the

Man

and

Woman

books, now Dick Prince is building a house for them! Ha ha ha. OK, just kidding. But you can sort of look at it that way. Prince has a “project house” (my quotes, I think) going on in upstate New York. It’s a fixer-upper that he does goofy shit to and inside of. This is a book of photos taken in and around it. I wish I were a famous artist who lived upstate. It looks like so much fun. I will put this awesome book under my pillow tonight and dream of it, and if I don’t get what I want within one week, I will kill myself.

FRANK BLANK

Apples and Olives

Lee Friedlander

Fraenkel Gallery

Lee Friedlander is the god of black-and-white photography. These are his photos of apple and olive trees, that’s it, and they have so much visual and emotional depth that looking at them makes the back of my head feel numb. I am not even stoned while saying this, and I am also of sound mind and body. It is a fact of life: Friedlander makes spiritually transcendent photos. Fuck off for thinking I am a hippie.

DENISE DENISE

Even the president of the United States sometimes has got to stand naked.

Ari Marcopoulos

jrp | ringier

I am going to be the first to admit that I am fucking ignorant. I always had some weird preconceived notion that Marcopoulos was just some skater pretending to be an artist. I repeat: I am an asshole. This guy is a fucking great photographer! Autobiographical, with a permeating sense of tragedy and/or pathos. I love it! Sorry for being stupid—for real.

EVEN STEVEN

African American Vernacular Photography: Archive

ICP/Steidl

Portrait-studio and roving-photographer works showing scenes from African American life from the Civil War era on until the mid-1930s. These are deep little slices of life; each picture in here makes you want to know more about the story behind it.

GARY HUCKLEBUCK

Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power

Richard Carwardine

Knopf

There was way more to this homo than the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address. This heavy, definitive bio has it all. Do yourself a favor and make this the book that you may take a while to get through, but you at least finish after a few months. Put it on the back of your toilet and set a goal of half a chapter per shit, even if your legs fall asleep. You will be a better American for it. (PS: You also want to polish this off before the Spielberg biopic starring Liam Neeson that is in preproduction comes out. You will look really smart.)

HANNIBAL COMBS