July 31, 2024
Aperture New Releases Fall 2024
New York, July 31, 2024—Aperture has long brought together artists, images, and ideas that embrace the democratic spirit of photography. Central to this mission, Aperture announces an exciting list of publications to be released this fall—including the centennial edition of Robert Frank’s enduring classic, The Americans; a reissue of the groundbreaking At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women by Sally Mann; Race Stories, inaugurating the Vision & Justice Book Series; the debut title by fashion and art photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis; and Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s most comprehensive monograph to date. An illuminating new survey of Tina Barney offers a look into a rarified world of family rituals, and Diana Markosian traces a personal voyage through the loss and rediscovery of a parent. The much-anticipated I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now transforms the way we tell the history of the medium.
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This edition of Robert Frank: The Americans, one of the most influential and enduring photobooks of all time, is released on the centennial of the artist’s birth. Through eighty-three photographs, Frank unveiled an America that confronted racial inequality, corruption, injustice, and the stark reality of the American Dream. This new release, along with a limited slipcased edition, is a celebrated return of an iconic title to Aperture’s catalog and coincides with an exhibition opening in September at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now
I’m So Happy You Are Here presents a much-needed counterpoint, complement, and challenge to historical precedents and the established canon of Japanese photography. Featuring twenty-five portfolios from an intergenerational range of artists, with more than five hundred images, I’m So Happy You Are Here includes contributions from a range of writers, historians, and artists, further contextualizing the photographers’ meaningful place within the history of the medium. The book is edited by Pauline Vermare and Lesley A. Martin in collaboration with the curator and writer Takeuchi Mariko and photo-historians Carrie Cushman and Kelly Midori McCormick.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Dark Room A–Z
The artist’s most comprehensive monograph to date, this volume unpacks Sepuya’s image-making over the past two decades and homes in on his Dark Room series (2016–21), offering a deep dive into the thick network of references and the interconnected community of artists and subjects that Sepuya has interwoven throughout his work. Photographs are accompanied by new texts by the curator and scholar Gökcan Demirkazik; selections from previously published texts on Sepuya by critics, colleagues, and friends; quotations of other writers’ work that inspire the artist; and writings by the artist on thematic preoccupations as they reappear throughout his work.
Arielle Bobb-Willis: Keep the Kid Alive
Keep the Kid Alive, Arielle Bobb-Willis’s first book, invites audiences into a brightly imaginative world filled with dynamic colors, gestures, and unusual poses of the artist’s own creation. Transforming the streets of New Orleans, New York, and Los Angeles into lush backdrops for her wonderfully surreal tableaus, Bobb-Willis makes unforgettable images that expand the genres of fashion and art photography. Featuring conversations with a range of artists, stylists, and creatives who speak about keeping their inner kid alive, this book is a vivid statement about beauty, exuberance, and cathartic expression.
Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images
The Vision & Justice Book Series, created and coedited by Drs. Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Leigh Raiford, and Deborah Willis and published by Aperture, is a groundbreaking endeavor designed to address past omissions and contribute to the ongoing work of building a richer, more racially inclusive story of lens-based practices. The inaugural title, Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images, copublished with the New York Times, presents writing by Maurice Berger that examines the transformational role photography plays in shaping ideas and attitudes about race and how photographic images have been instrumental in both perpetuating and combating racial stereotypes.
At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women
First published by Aperture in 1988, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women is a long-sought-after reissue of an American classic. At Twelve is Sally Mann’s revealing, collective portrait of twelve-year-old girls on the verge of adulthood. To be young and female in America is a time of tremendous excitement and social possibilities; it is also a trying time, when one is caught between childhood and adulthood, and the difference is not entirely understood. This reissue of At Twelve has been printed using new scans and separations from Mann’s prints, which were taken with an 8-by-10-inch view camera, rendering them with a freshness true to the original edition.
This survey collects sixty portraits taken by Tina Barney throughout her decades-long career, exploring the everyday but often hidden lives of the New England upper class, including her own family. Accompanying the first retrospective of the artist in Europe at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, the book includes texts by Quentin Bajac, the exhibition’s commissioner and director; Sarah Meister, the executive director of Aperture; and the artist James Welling. Family Ties illuminates Barney’s approach to large-format photography, her ongoing interest in the rituals of families, and her ideas on composition, color, and the relationship between photography and painting.
This intimate and diaristic portrayal of the award-winning photographer’s history, recounted through family snapshots, text, and visual ephemera, follows Markosian’s travels to find her father in Armenia two decades after she, her brother, and her mother fled their Moscow apartment and left him behind. The monograph is presented alongside a traveling exhibition that debuts in November at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
About Aperture
Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From our base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through our acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.
Aperture’s programs and operations are made possible by the generosity of our board of trustees, our members, and other individuals, and with major support from 7G Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, Documentary Arts, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Ishibashi Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, Henry Luce Foundation, Mailman Foundation, MurthyNAYAK Foundation, Grace Jones Richardson Trust, San Francisco Foundation, Thomas R. Schiff Foundation, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Stuart B. Cooper and R. L. Besson, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, Thomas and Susan Dunn, Michael Sonnenfeldt, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts, with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
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For press images, review copies, or to request interviews with artists or editors, contact Lauren Van Natten at publicity@aperture.org.