Steidlville

Growing up in Ohio in the 1970s, photographer Marc Joseph was first exposed to art, writing and music in the eccentric smaller book and record shops of downtown Cleveland. Most Saturday afternoons were spent combing through the stacks in anticipation of a major future purchase — like his first, “London Calling” by The Clash — or studying certain talismanic book covers like George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” or Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”. This was the beginning of Joseph’s permanent fascination with books and records — both as public artworks and as formative private experiences. New and Used is a collection of richly detailed color photographs of hardcovers, paperbacks, LPs, CDs and cassettes, either shelved, piled, boxed and stacked in their natural environments — independent book and record shops — or individually silhouetted like artifacts pinned into shadow boxes. Together with editor Damon Krukowski, the artist has assembled a collection of short fiction, prose, poems and personal essays by writers and musicians including Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, novelists Jonathan Lethem and Lydia Davis, critic and curator Bob Nickas, poets Eileen Myles and Nick Tosches and others, all of whom respond to the New and Used of their own experience.

Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, will show pictures from New and Used at the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery from January 23rd to March 7th, 2007