by Alfred Brown IV
foreword by Aimee Bender
September 2017
92 pages
9x9 inches
hardcover with debossed black foil and tip-in photograph
Cultural Materials 001
ISBN: 978-0-692-91558-5
HOME LESS collects in one hardbound monograph over ten years of medium format film photography made by Alfred Brown IV. Known, too, for both his skeptical prose and musical output with the band DANGERS, he presents here in 82 images his signature at-arm's-length vision of our modern world which, through his lens, toes the line between rapt fascination and abject disgust. His lens makes seamless bedfellows of distant, disparate locales and the motley individuals that inhabit them, suggesting that "home" may be less a particular place than a particular way of seeing all places. As the noted writer Aimee Bender suggests in her foreword, these are "serious, quiet, stark, and clear-eyed" photographs that illustrate "a deeper understanding of how an eye, his eye, works to make links in the world."
- Standard Edition of 175
- Limited Edition of 25 comes signed with additional hand-numbered, 8x8-inch print of "Monument Valley"
Pre-orders are now being accepted for Cultural Materials #001, our inaugural publication. HOME LESS is a hardbound monograph containing 82 full-color, medium format photographs made by Alfred Brown IV over more than a decade of travel around the globe. Flung far and wide, this work moves well beyond simple documentation to make a strong argument for a slower, more considered approach to image making at a time when modern technologies have created would-be photographers of us all. His is an interrogative lens, searching repeatedly for those quiet moments that suggest unexpected parallels between places as disparate as Kuala Lumpur, rural Georgia, and the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon in Iceland. The recurrent composition of these photographs—through windows, for instance, or by framing that creates strict horizontal thirds—creates intuitive connections from one image to the next, and suggests the gentle awe of a man trying to make sense of the turbulent world he's inherited. Ultimately, it is an attempt to redefine "home" not by a static physical geography but, rather, as an incessant, endless metaphysical state of wonder.
We are proud to begin our imprint's own larger investigation of contemporary culture and its numerous (perhaps less celebrated) spoils with this book. In many ways, HOME LESS embodies the spirit of our operation writ large: curious, rigorous, and consummately skeptical. Cultural Materials will forgo a rote, predictable response to the uneasy times in which it was conceived and, instead, hopes to ask both of its artists and audience the sort of open-ended questions that make being alive more interesting and worthwhile. While we begin here with a traditional monograph, future projects include vinyl recordings, tattoo sessions, and one-off pre-fixe meals. We hope to document work that challenges, to publish imperfect art by unsung artists, and to consistently wonder how else culture might be defined. HOME LESS represents the first iteration of a continuing experiment in both form and content, and one we are excited, with its publication, to begin.