LAX was featured in Amadeus, an arts and culture magazine based in LA, with text by Taylor Wojick. The article includes an interview with photographer John Brian King. Here's a little excerpt.
Observational documentation and archival footage is what allows my generation to gain a better understanding of the past, through an unbiased visual narrative. What sort of impact do you think these photographs will have in 60 or even 100 years?
John Brian King: To my mind, there is no such thing as an “unbiased visual narrative.” Even cameras that are technically “unmanned” – bank surveillance cameras, police dash cams, Google Maps cameras – create their own biased narratives by the very nature of the people who control them.
A hundred years from now, I hope my photographs will be viewed as another tiny blip of aesthetic evidence of humanity’s absurdity and possible decline. I would be haunting someone from my grave if my photographs were curated by a nostalgic academic who was only interested in recontextualizing them into a horrible miasma akin to “Humans of New York” or “The Family of Man.”
Available now. 24 cm x 22 cm softcover, shrink-wrapped, 132 pages (117 black & white photos), limited edition of 750 copies, afterword by the photographer in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian.
LAX was featured in the fabulous AnOther Magazine, with text by Maisie Skidmore and – if we may be so bold – a terrific slideshow of images.
"I don’t want to be nasty," Karl Lagerfeld told Susannah Frankel shortly before the beginning of Chanel’s S/S16 airport extravaganza at Paris Fashion Week, “but of course in an airport, with the bus tours, it’s not the same as an airport as it was in the past, with first class, when travelling was something people dressed for.” It’s an incisive observation, as it is Lagerfeld’s wont to make, but of course he has a point. “We live in another world,” he summarises, and it's this world, in which airports are no longer the domain of the rich and famous, which is the subject of a new book of photographs by John Brian King, entitled LAX: Photographs of Los Angeles 1980-84.
Releasing November 2, 2015. 24 cm x 22 cm softcover, shrink-wrapped, 132 pages (117 black & white photos), limited edition of 750 copies, afterword by the photographer in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian.
LAX was featured in Flavorwire over the weekend, with a terrific write-up by Alison Nastasi and a slideshow of John Brian King’s photographs.
You’re probably already familiar with the work of photographer John Brian King. He’s designed the film titles for dozens of movies, including Boogie Nights, The Ring, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, and Lilo & Stitch. King also directed a movie called Redlands, set in the California city. But it was over 30 years ago that King first had his eye on the Golden State.
His photographs, focused on the harried travelers bustling in and out of the Los Angeles International Airport and the gritty streets of Los Angeles at night, haven’t seen the light of day since the ‘80s. Those black-and-white negatives have finally reemerged in a new book published by Spurl Editions, LAX: Photographs of Los Angeles 1980–84, available on November 2.
The photographer’s monograph tells a parallel story that ushers us from airport to city — the chaos of the LAX lobby to the Sunset Strip, revealing images of a metropolis that has since vanished.
Releasing November 2, 2015. 24 cm x 22 cm softcover, shrink-wrapped, 132 pages (117 black & white photos), limited edition of 750 copies, afterword by the photographer in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian.
KCET’sArtboundfeatures photographs from John Brian King’s LAX, as well as the photographer's afterword.
Releasing November 2, 2015. 24 cm x 22 cm softcover, shrink-wrapped, 132 pages (117 black & white photos), limited edition of 750 copies, afterword by the photographer in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian.
“John Brian King's confrontational style ignites the tension at early '80s LAX…” writes Rob Wilkes ofWe Heart, a journal that combines in-depth stories with design-led news from all areas of contemporary culture. He goes on:
There’s a palpable sensation of restless tension that seems to permeate the atmosphere at airports, and the bigger and busier the terminal, the more that tension is felt. There’s simply too many people all trying to do the same thing in too little space. The stop-start queueing, the frantic dashes for a far-flung gate, or just as often the long, boring wait to be called. Lost baggage, cancelled flights, forgotten passports, screaming kids, travellers both nervous and the exhausted, bursts of joyous excitement — emotion at every step.
Even in the days before the stringent anti-terror security measures, airports were a pretty fraught experience. Back in the early ’80s, brash young photographer John Brian King threw himself into the potential powder keg that was Los Angeles International Airport with flash blazing — deliberately intrusive and often unwelcome — to see what might combust. Aside from the human drama, King was also drawn to the fabric of the building itself, and the detritus and damage left behind by the transit of so many people. Born and raised near LAX, King was fascinated by flight from a young age; his childhood home was on a street called Flight, he went to a school named after Orville Wright, and his father was an engineer on both the B-52 bomber and the space programme. He shot his airport images while a teenager before leaving for art school, later returning to take up a night-time survey of Los Angeles’ streets for a second series.
The negatives remained in a box for 30 years as King abandoned photography for writing and filmmaking, but the two series are now seeing the light of day together in this photobook. LAX: Photographs of Los Angeles 1980-84 by John Brian King is published by Spurl Editions, and due for release in November.
Releasing November 2, 2015. 24 cm x 22 cm softcover, shrink-wrapped, 132 pages (117 black & white photos), limited edition of 750 copies, afterword by the photographer in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian.
Excerpts from the forthcoming ebookMy Suicide, by Henri Roorda, are featured in Asymptote’s October 2015 issue! Read them here. Asymptote is an international journal dedicated to literary translation.
The post is accompanied by short biographies of the author and translator, a letter written by Henri Roorda the day before his suicide, an illustration by Samuel Hickson, and the French text.
Eva Richter, the translator of My Suicide, was the blog editor at Asymptote from 2014 to 2015. During that time she interviewed authors such as Luis Negrón and reviewed literature in translation.
We hope you enjoy this preview! The full ebook will be published November 18, 2015.
My Suicide is an essay by Swiss anarchist Henri Roorda, written in 1925 and translated from French into English by Eva Richter. It is a free ebook from Spurl Editions. In My Suicide, Henri Roorda describes his philosophy of joyful pessimism.
