New and Used

Growing up in Ohio in the 1970s, photographer Marc Joseph’s first exposure to art, writing and music came through 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 increasingly endangered 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 Dennis Cooper and Jonathan Lethem, critic and curator Bob Nickas, poet Eileen Myles and others, all of whom respond to the New and Used of their own experience. Other contributing writers include Stephen Elliott, Shelley Jackson, Jeremy Sigler, Ian Svenonious and Nick Tosches.