Mike Mandel

Mike Mandel grew up in the San Fernando Valley, and as an kid in the 1950s could walk just about everywhere he needed to go: to school, or later down the street to the open field to collect rocks or catch lizards. All of his friends lived on his block, so he didn’t think too much about the time he spent in a car. But by the time he reached twenty in 1970, he realised how large a role the car would play in his life, and so began to photograph the inhabitants of 1970s California in their show more cars.

“On a late afternoon with the light low in the west I’d regularly find my spot on the corner of Victory Blvd. and Coldwater Canyon Ave. in Van Nuys (ironically, so close to home I could easily walk there). It was a busy intersection with a wealth of cars pulling my way to make a right turn. I was using a 28mm wide angle lens on my 35mm camera, which meant that I had to get in pretty close to the window to get my shot, and when I did there would inevitably be a reaction: surprise, amusement, and on some few occasions, annoyance.”

“In contrast to how this project might play out today, it seemed then that people enjoyed being recognised by the camera and readily participated in the playfulness of the moment. It was warm outside, the car windows were open. It was the window that framed and instilled these portraits with the language of the automobile environment.” — Mike Mandel show less

Libro del 1977 che ha contribuito a dar forma ai successivi 40 anni di fotografia almeno tanto quanto le quasi contemporanee esposizioni e libri dei "New topographics" e di William Eggleston. Al centro di questo lavoro è l’uso concettuale dell’immagine d’archivio e l’elevazione dell’opera di “editing” a un valore forse più grande di quello delle immagini stesse (impensabili, senza quest’opera, autori come Jason Fulford). In più, un libro che senza voler essere politico lo show more è, nel suo presentarsi come critica della tecnocrazia e del dominio dell’uomo sulla natura. Capolavoro della storia della fotografia. show less

The canonical 1977 American photobook returns to print in a new, definitive edition that most closely resembles the original
In 1977, American photographers Larry Sultan (1946–2009) and Mike Mandel (born 1950) published a book of photographs titled Evidence. The book was the culmination of a two-year search through the archives of 77 government agencies, educational institutions and corporations, including General Atomic Company, Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the San Jose Police Department show more and the United States Department of the Interior. The original pictures were made as objective records of activities unfamiliar to the lay public: the scenes of crimes, aeronautical engineering tests, industrial experiments and other subjects. Sifting through some two million images, Mandel and Sultan assembled a careful sequence of 59 pictures. The book was thoughtfully designed to depict the photographs in terms of their “documentary” origins, unaccompanied by identifying captions. Faced with a world of mysterious events and unfathomable activities, the reader is confronted with only the sequential narrative imagery of the book and thus must actively participate in creating its meaning.
Following a revised edition of the book in 2003 and a 2017 reprint—both of which sold out quickly and have become highly collectible—Evidence is back in print nearly 50 years after its initial publication. This new, definitive edition features revelatory new scans—many made from the original negatives—which greatly enhance the eerie objectivity conveyed by the book’s title. In many cases, the original negatives revealed that crops had been made to the image by the agencies; the complete images are restored here. The jacketless, library-style binding of the original 1977 edition is also restored, further underscoring its impersonal documentlike character and its canonical status. show less

A visual conundrum of incalculable mystery. ―Martin Parr, The Photobook: A History

In 1977, photographers Larry Sultan (1946–2009) and Mike Mandel (born 1950) published a book that would radically transform both photography and the photobook canon―a book described by Martin Parr, in The Photobook: A History, as "one of the most beautiful, dense and puzzling photobooks in existence, an endless visual box of tricks." Sultan and Mandel sifted through thousands of photographs in the files show more of the Bechtel Corporation, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the US Department of the Interior, Stanford Research Institute and a hundred other corporations, American government agencies and educational, medical and technical institutions. They were looking for photographs that were made and used as transparent documents and purely objective instruments―as evidence, in short.

Selecting 59 of the best, they published these images with the care you would expect to find in a high-quality art photography book, issuing them in 1977 in a simple, limited-edition volume titled Evidence.

Long established as a photobook classic and a seminal example of conceptual photography, Evidence was reissued as a facsimile edition in 2004 by D.A.P. with a new spread of images and a group of black-and-white illustrations selected by the artists from an archive of photographs that were not included in the original book, plus a commissioned essay by Sandra Phillips. Today both this reissue and the original 1977 publication are exceptionally rare and command high prices.

D.A.P. now reprints the 2004 edition of Evidence, making available to a general readership a truly pioneering and canonical photobook. show less