If you save your holiday shopping for the last minute, books are a good option. Here are three unique ones ideal for the curiosity seekers on your gift list.
One of the pleasures of art books is the deep dive they provide into subcultures you didn’t even know existed.
I’ve always had a fascination with photographing abandoned buildings in various stages of decline. Over the years I’ve shot a sugar cane mill consumed by rust and graffiti, a seaside motel swallowed by vegetation and a Victorian-era mansion slowly slipping into the sea.
Now, thanks to Japanese photographer Ikumi “Tommy” Nakamura’s new book, I’ve learned about UrbEx (short for urban exploration), an underground “community,” for lack of a better word, that likes to explore abandoned urban spaces — the more dilapidated the better.
Nakamura, a video game designer, takes it to a whole new level, traveling the globe capturing haunted images of abandoned structures falling into disrepair. Many of the sites she photographs inspire the environments she creates for her video games.
Her 223-page coffee table book is divided into geographic sections: North America, Europe, Asia and Classified, as in top secret. Highlights include a European mansion abandoned for a century still filled with personal effects; a ‘70s-era resort of UFO-style chalets on a beach in Asia; and the Island of the Dolls in Mexico City that puts to shame Doll’s Head Trail at Constitution Lake.
“These are more than just a record of neglected spaces,” writes photographer and game designer Liam Wong in the foreword. “They are also a meditation on the nature of time and memory. She shows us the beauty that can be found in even the most desolate of places.” (Thames & Hudson, $50)
“An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children”
Fashioned like a children’s alphabet book but geared toward adults, this slim, colorfully illustrated book by author Jamaica Kincaid and artist Kara Walker explores slavery’s influence on plant life around the world.
For instance, B is for breadfruit, a large, fast-growing fruit native to Polynesia that was introduced in the Caribbean as a cheap source of food for enslaved people. “The slaves apparently were taking time from their labors to grow food to feed their hungry selves,” Kincaid writes.
Colonialism is a theme that runs through the work of both Kincaid (an award-winning novelist, former staff writer for the New Yorker and avid gardener) and Walker (an Atlanta College of Art alumna whose work can be found in museums around the world). It is a through-line here as well.
Many of the objects representing letters of the alphabet are the botanical names for plants. For instance, L is for Liriodendron, commonly known as a tulip tree or poplar in the U.S. It was the tree, Kincaid points out, memorialized in Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit” about lynchings in the South.
Lovely to look it and fascinating to read, the book delivers some sobering truth bombs wrapped in pretty posies and prose. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27)
In the last few decades of her very long life, interior designer Iris Apfel, known for wearing oversize glasses and outlandish outfits, catapulted herself to style icon status by using her fuchsia, thigh-high, Yves Saint Laurent boots to kick down preconceived notions of aging gracefully.
As she approached her 102nd birthday last year, she wrote this reflection of her life and the guiding principles that kept her youthful, curious and relevant to the very end. Her chapter titles make her intentions clear: “You only have one trip. Enjoy it.” “There’s all kinds of beauty.” “What is the color of happiness?”
But the real charm of the book is its 300-plus photos, mostly glamorous portraits of her in wildly creative outfits posed in sumptuous settings, but there are also personal photos from her youth. The design is particularly creative in its use of fabrics from Old World Weavers, the textile company she owned with her husband, as graphic elements.
“My ‘overnight’ fame took seven decades,” Apfel writes. “Sometimes it’s just the right time for things. Don’t wait for others to tell you what to do — that makes everyone all alike. You’ve got to go out and find out for yourself.” (Harry N. Abrams, $50)
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She may be reached at Suzanne.VanAtten@ajc.com.
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