Exhibit Website

My collection of photobooks, graphic novels, and zines tells a story of my growth as an artist. The various themes and formal strategies that characterize these books, every one of which is an artwork unto itself, have influenced my photography practice greatly; I have collected books that inspire me, and that act as roadmaps for my own work. But perhaps more importantly, each object in the collection references or commemorates other works, exhibitions, institutions, mentors and friends, classes, and communities. I collect books in order to have a physical representation of this web that makes up my world of photography and art.

that I am passionate about supporting

These include Printed Matter, Mercer Street Books, and The Strand in New York City and Brattle Book Shop, Raven Used Books, and Rodney’s Bookstore in Cambridge/ Boston.

Having community around my practice keeps me grounded in the intention of making work as a way of connecting with others. Collecting my friends’ work is an intimate way to celebrate our relationships, and to support their artistic practices.

Selected works under Beginnings, Gifts below are connected to my experiences with photography in high school: taking classes at the International Center of Photography (ICP)—where I first found a community of image-makers—and meeting my first mentors.

Selected works under Zines, Self-Publishing, and Community below represent community to me, whether it’s my community at ICP, or the New York Art Book Fair, or a broader community around the intersection of queerness and photography. Particularly important to me right now is Kavana, a book that anchors a community that I am just beginning to build, around the intersection of Judaism and photography.

As I look toward publishing my work, I am particularly inspired by my subcollection of self-published works, and by the small publishers that are represented in my collection that aim to support emerging artists, such as Booklyn and Kris Graves Projects.

Vivian Maier: A Photographer Found by John Maloof.

• New York: Harper Design
• 2014

After being introduced to photobooks through my dad’s small collection, which included monographs and catalogues from Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and Helen Levitt, this was the first photobook I really called my own. It was a Hannukkah gift from my parents when I was fourteen. At that time, I was starting to make my own photographs, and I aspired to see the world the way that Vivian Maier did. Shooting on the street, I observed myself drawn to things that reminded me of her images. Every time I sit down and return to this book, the images that I’ve saved in my mind turn out to be slightly different from how I thought they were. Through these slippages I can see how her images have lived with me and shaped my work.

Pictured below from Vivian Maier: A Photographer Found by John Maloof:

Image 1: Front cover. Image 2: Florida. April 7, 1960. Image 3: Chicago. May 16, 1957.

Building Stories by Chris Ware.

• New York: Pantheon Books
• 2012

This unique book was a birthday gift from my friend Olivia for my 18th birthday. Olivia and I have been friends for 10 years and they are one of my favorite people to talk to about art. The “book” comes in the form of a box filled with comics in various forms—a long and skinny booklet with one row of panels that resembles a film strip, a collapsable board that references a board game, and other eclectic works. The works follow different characters within one apartment building. Each work, and their combination, offer me inspiration for breaking form.

Portraits by Inge Morath.

• New York: Aperture
• 1986

This is the first used photobook I remember buying for myself. A stamp on the inside states that it was once in circulation at the Chappaqua Public Library. This is the oldest book I own that was published by Aperture. Tracing the changes in Aperture’s output over time allows us a window into broader changes in the world of photography and photobooks.

Stems by Lee Friedlander.

• New York: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
• 2003

I saw this book one day in the window of Mercer Street Books, a used bookstore by my house that I had never been inside of before. Having already borrowed Stems from the NYU Bobst library and become enamored with it, I went in and purchased the book on a whim. Since 16, I’ve grown to appreciate the strategy of making a photobook about one subject. The similarity of the images in Stems brings our attention to the nuances that make each one unique.

The Valley by Larry Sultan.

• Zurich: Scalo
• 2004

I first encountered a photograph from this project by Larry Sultan at an exhibit at ICP in 2016 called “Public, Private, Secret.” I was struck by the gaze of the subject of the photo, and when I got home I immediately went to Sultan’s website to see more pictures from the project. The Valley has been one of my favorite bodies of work ever since, and I hadn’t realized it existed in book form—though I had looked through Sultan’s other books, Evidence and Pictures from Home, more than once—until one day at The Strand this past December. I was thrilled to discover new images as I turned its pages; they recontextualized the ones that were familiar to me.

American Places by Eliot Porter.

• New York: Greenwich House
• 1983

In my Introduction to Still Photography class at Harvard—my first art class at Harvard and by far my favorite class of my freshman fall—we learned about Eliot Porter’s photographs during our first week of shooting in color. In the same week I went to (the now-closed) Rodney’s Bookstore near Central Square and found this volume of lush color prints. An inscription inside reads “Jim, Congratulations on passing the bar. You’ve come a long way. Love, Bill.”

Pictured below from American Places by Eliot Porter:

Image 1: Front cover. Image 2: Back Cover. Image 3: Badlands, South Dakota. Image 4: Outer ocean on a beach. Image 5: Cathedral in the Desert, Escalante Canyon, Utah. Image 6: Kelp. Big Sur, California.

Portraits by Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Berlin: Deutsche Guggenheim
• 2000

I purchased this catalogue at Raven Bookstore, soon after it reopened mid-pandemic. I was already smitten with Sugimoto’s photographs of architecture, which I had looked through in a glossy photobook at the ICP Museum Bookstore. I had also written about one of his seascapes for my Introduction to Still Photography class. I remembered the uncanniness of his portraits, which I had seen once at an exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, when I pulled this off the shelf.

Propaganda by Joana Estrela.

• Porto: Self-published
• 2017

This is a self-published comic about finding queer community in a new city. At the time, I was traveling alone in Porto, Portugal, and trying to do the exact same thing. I found it in a combination art gallery and bookstore that quickly became a home base for me there, and reading it made me feel as though I had a community of my own in the foreign country.

Kavana by Hannah Altman.

• 1st ed.
• Queens, New York: Kris Graves Projects
• 2020

I encountered Hannah’s photographs online about a year ago, and it was the first time I had seen Jewish identity and photography intersect in a way that resonated with me. I wrote her a fan letter (by email), which she responded to graciously, and she connected me with Anne Vetter, another queer Jewish photographer. I bought this book at a fair last summer where I got to meet Hannah in person. I continue to return to the photographs themselves, and Hannah’s use of light, as inspiration for my own work. The book has also come to symbolize my budding sense of community among Jewish photographers.

First Flight by Dawn Kim.

• New York: Outlaw Books
• 2017

I heard Dawn Kim give a memorable artist talk in Dannielle Bowman’s Intermediate Photography class at Harvard last semester and was inspired by her storytelling and sense of humor. I bought the book from Printed Matter a few weeks ago, which has revealed a completely new side of her work to me.

Liner Notes by Alex Nelson.

• New Haven: Quickbooks
• 2021

In the spring of 2021, Alex and I began working together, through one of her classes at the Yale MFA program in which students were matched with undergraduate photographers and told to give them assignments. Alex’s assignment for me was to make a book dummy. Alex has been an incredible mentor to me, and it meant a lot when she mailed me a copy of this zine she had been working on. We had spent months looking at my work together, and now she was offering me something of her own.

Pictured below:

Image 1: Liner Notes by Alex Nelson. Listing on Quickbooks website. Image 2: Alex Nelson: Lopin' Along Through The Cosmos |  alexmvnelson.com