Monographs

JUSTIN KIMBALL: Elegy

Radius Books, 2017

Hardcover

10.75 x 13.25 inches, 87 color images, 184 pages

Text by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa

ABOUT THE BOOK:

This series by photographer Justin Kimball (born 1961) features small towns in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio brought to the brink of obsolescence by the recent financial downturn, capturing their streets, residents and landscapes in photographs both sensitive to their subjects and compositionally striking. While imbued with social and political subtext, Kimball’s images—of ramshackle buildings against a landscape, a mother and baby on their front porch, roadside church signs and teenagers playing a game of pickup basketball—carry a broader significance. In his depiction of communities faced by hardship, Kimball examines the persistence of hope and the concept of what it means to be human in our modern world. His photographs document a growing—yet often overlooked—portion of the American landscape, providing an impressive portrait of the present day.

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Edition of 4. Handmade portfolio box chamise containing ten signed archival inkjet prints and a signed copy of the Radius book ELEGY; box: 14 x 20 inches; prints: 13 x 19 inches each.

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JUSTIN KIMBALL: Pieces of String

Radius Books, 2012

Softbound with slipcase

9.5 x 10 inches, 60 color images, 128 pages + booklet

Text by Douglas Kimball

ABOUT THE BOOK:

For four years Justin Kimball photographed in abandoned homes, hotels and buildings in the Northeastern United States. For much of this work he accompanied his brother Doug, an auctioneer, into the houses of the deceased or dispersed. While Doug cleared these spaces of items for potential resale, Justin sought within them the evidence of an individual’s life. Photographing “the smallest objects (a note, a box of hair pins, a stain on a pillow),” Kimball re-imagines their existence and relationship to the absent owners. “I use the camera’s descriptive power and the photographic illusion of truth to create the narrative and inspire feelings about its subject. The resulting photographs are my perception of what happened in those spaces: Who lived there? What was hidden and what was seen?” Justin’s 60 color photographs from this body of work are explorations of the minutiae of everyday life—a contemplation of our brief and humble legacies before they are cleaned up and cast to the wind. Included in this volume is a booklet of Doug Kimball’s evocative writing about his own experiences with the emotional storm that surrounds these objects, their owners and beneficiaries.

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Limited Edition of 25. Softbound slipcase, 9.5 x 10 inches / 60 color images, 128 pages and booklet. Text by Douglas Kimball. Includes a print of Main Street, Chair, signed and numbered by the artist, and a hand-applied print of Church Street on the cover.

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JUSTIN KIMBALL: Where We Find Ourselves

Center for American Places, Chicago, 2006

Hardcover

11.5 x 9.75 inches, 53 color images, 104 pages

Text by Richard B. Woodward

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Clambering down slippery rocks to a swimming hole. Ducking the plume of smoke from a barbecue grill. Wishing for a breeze in a too-small dome tent. Scanning the sky for rain from a postage-stamp backyard. It is in these small moments of action—and inaction—that Justin Kimball captures our everyday attempts to relax. Indeed, one might argue that the events depicted are everyday life.

Kimball’s compelling photographs depict ordinary people—parents and teens, grandparents and kids—in landscapes of leisure. These are not the exclusive resorts and white sand beaches of the affluent; rather, they are the parks, campgrounds, and fishing piers where most Americans vacation. They are natural landscapes—inviting, green, and sometimes beautiful—but at the same time they are imperfect—muddy, crowded, and partially paved. There is nothing idyllic about these vacation spots; indeed, Kimball’s photographs make clear that daily life can never be fully left behind. The people in his pictures, though momentarily transformed by cascading water or the shade of towering trees, remain enmeshed in ties of family and obligation, shadowed by thoughts of home.

It is Kimball’s particular genius to isolate these moments between duty and pleasure. Where We Find Ourselves enables viewers to identify with—and participate in—this bittersweet aspect of American leisure and the ambiguous contemporary relationship between people and nature