Clothbound hardcover with printed edges
164 pages, 85 plates
11 x 11 in / 279.4 x 279.4 mm
With an afterword by Emily Keegin
ISBN 978-1-942953-86-9
TBW Books is pleased to announce the publication of Ken Graves Was a Genius., a new monograph collecting the early black-and-white photographs of Ken Graves, with an afterword by Emily Keegin.
After studying photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, Ken Graves turned his camera on the America around him, spending the 1960s and 70s finding uncanny moments that often elicit a chuckle. Each photograph is a one-liner—comic, precisely framed, and quietly devastating. A master of the decisive moment, Graves pushed further: people caught mid-air, two sets of action unfolding simultaneously in foreground and background, gestures and body language deployed like props in a production his subjects never quite knew they were part of. The photographic plane becomes a stage, its unsuspecting subjects his actors—piecing together different elements within a single frame with the instincts of a collagist, a medium he would take up formally later in his career. What emerges are images that reveal more about America's true nature than words ever could: a landscape and its people that are funny, menacing, awkward, aggressive, joyful, and dubious—all at once. Together these early images form a collective portrait of a nation whose disillusionment with its own mythology was just beginning to show.
Graves is one of the unsung photographers of his generation. Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand achieved lasting recognition working in a broadly similar register, but Graves cast a shorter shadow—despite producing work no less striking or memorable. This is the third book of his work published by TBW Books, and his most essential.
Emily Keegin contributes an afterword contextualizing Graves within the era in which he began working.