Large-format analog photography, laser technologies and archival materials chart visions of the future This volume is the first in the Future series presenting the ongoing collaboration between Swiss artists Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs (both born 1979). It explores how our conceptions of the future have changed over time and how that impacts our views on the present.

Large-format analog photography, laser technologies and archival materials chart visions of the future This volume is the first in the Future series presenting the ongoing collaboration between Swiss artists Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs (both born 1979). It explores how our conceptions of the future have changed over time and how that impacts our views on the present.

During a period of three years Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs traveled several months through the United States, working "on the road" on the photo series The Great Unreal. The photographic work deals with reality and the fabrication of reality. The geography of America serves as both setting and fertile ground for the examination. Mysticism and demystification are important aspects in this process, as is working with a rich inventory of visual icons that can be continually deconstructed and manipulated. The working method of both photographers is based on interventions prescribed mostly by happenstance and change. Through repetition and associative placement, the sometimes crude, sometimes subtle interventions begin to link to one another, establishing an exciting transformation of reality that only hesitatingly reveals itself to the viewer. Together with book designers Megi Zumstein and Claudio Barandun, what emerged is an unmitigated picture book that makes a visual journey possible without any instructions. It comprises narrative image sequences that approximate the curiosity and restlessness of being on the move and, at the same time, depict associative connections with the American landscape.

In April 2013, photographers Nico Krebs and Taiyo Onorato, who have been working together for a dozen years, loaded up their 1987 Toyota Land Cruiser in Switzerland and headed east. They'd already roughly traced their route by running a finger across the map of Eurasia to their ultimate destination, Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. 'Continental Drift' is a travel log straddling the fine line between documentation and fiction about unknown lands, their possible past and conjectured future. It relates encounters with the utterly bizarre and inaccessibly alien, as well as with a remarkable openness and lavish hospitality they'd never known before, in striking contrast to their previous trip across the United States.

The first book on the New York painter's eclectic iconography of jazz musicians, boxers and friends With bright patches of acrylic paint and carefully placed found ephemera, New York-based artist Armando Alleyne's (born 1959) multimedia portraits are immediately eye-catching, drawing viewers in to inspect and appreciate the layers of meaning collaged on top of one another. Alleyne's renditions of jazz musicians, Afro-Latino singers, and his own family members and acquaintances are rife with color and contemporary iconography as well as references to the artist's own life. Series such as Shelter Blues reflect on Alleyne's experiences of homelessness, while Maria's Song pays homage to his late sister through a pantheon of religious imagery. This volume is the first book on Alleyne, highlighting a lifetime of work alongside snapshots and personal anecdotes.

In 'Familiar Territory' we find portrayals of farm animals together with their owners. However, instead of being situated in a stall or field, they are pictured in the midst of peoples' living quarters. The emotional connections that exist between animals and humans find multiple expressions here, and are also effectively questioned. American photographer Jon Naiman invokes the traditions of portrait and documentary photography as a way to investigate culture, habitat, domesticity, family and gender roles, as well as our relationship with animals. Although the photographs are orchestrated and carefully composed, Naiman has managed to capture moments of intimacy.

Photography Is Magic draws together current ideas about the use of photography as an invaluable medium in the contemporary art world. Edited and with an essay by leading photography writer and curator Charlotte Cotton, this critical publication surveys the work of a diverse group of artists, many working at the borders of the "art world" and the "photography world," all of whom are engaged with experimental ideas concerning photographic practice and its place in a shifting photographic landscape being reshaped by digital techniques. Readers are shown the scope of photographic possibilities in the context of the contemporary creative process. From Michele Abeles and Walead Beshty to Daniel Gordon and Matthew Lipps, Cotton has selected artists who are consciously reframing photographic practices using mixed media, appropriation and a recalibration of analog processes. Cotton brings these artists together around the idea of magic, the properties of illusion and material transformation that uniquely characterize photography. Beautifully produced and critically rigorous, Photography Is Magic is aimed at younger photo aficionados, students and anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of contemporary photography. It includes images and text by more than 80 artists, including Sara Cwynar, Shannon Ebner, Annette Kelm, Josh Kline, Elad Lassry, Jon Rafman, Shirana Shahbazi and Sara VanDerBeek, among many others.