Stitched and Glued

The Handmade Photo Book
January 25 – February 23, 2013
Public Reception: Sunday, February 3, 3 – 6pm
Curated by Paul D’Amato

Participating Artists: Matthew Austin, Matt Avignone, Even Baden, Shawn Bush, Timothy Campos, Craig Cotsones, Barbara Diener, Jordan Fuller, Lenny Gilmore, Mike Killion, Kelsey Lindsey, Colleen Plumb, Marne Provost, Justin Schmitz, Jay Seawell, Daniel Shea, Brandon Sorg, Stephanie Tanner,Terttu Uibopuu, Victor Yanez‐Lazcano, and more.

RAC is pleased to present Stitched and Glued. This exhibition showcases a selection of handmade artists’ photo books produced by young photographers over the last five years. With the advent of e‐books and the disappearance of the bookstore, the book as an object has become an endangered species. Within a generation, this symbol of learning and human intellectual growth has virtually vanished from the cultural landscape. At the same time, however, the technology that has caused the extinction of the book as an object of cultural consumption has fostered a kind of re‐birth: the hand made artist book. With desktop publishing software and affordable high quality digital printers, artists are now able to marry technologies as old as monasteries with the latest digital innovations to produce unique hand made books with unprecedented ease. Photographers are experimenting with book design, narrative structures and materials and then printing, stitching and gluing books on basement ping pong tables everywhere.

About the curator: Paul D’Amato is an internationally recognized photographer. His work is in collections including the Metropolitan Museum Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Life Magazine, and Harpers Magazine. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, D’Amato’s first book, Barrio, was published in 2005 by The University of Chicago Press. He is represented by the Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago.