{"id":1462,"date":"2017-02-19T23:56:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-19T11:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2021-10-11T08:36:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-10T20:36:23","slug":"american-landscape-shustak-usa-1960-1971","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/american-landscape-shustak-usa-1960-1971","title":{"rendered":"American Landscape: Shustak USA 1960\u20131971"},"content":{"rendered":"

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE: SHUSTAK USA 1960\u20131971
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This publication showcases photographs made by Larence Shustak before he left USA in 1973 to establish the photography department at the School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Shustak was part of an early ferment on the East Coast of the emerging awareness of photography as an independent tool of art, self-expression and social engagement, existing outside of the mainstream picture magazines and commercial studios. American Landscape samples Shustak\u2019s early experiments, commissions and personal projects that reflect an evolving sense of a time in transition, seen through the artist\u2019s eyes. Starting with more traditional street studies, graffiti, lively New York Jazz recording scenes and a serious documentary study of a Harlem-based Ethiopian Hebrew synagogue, the subject matter then evolved into art \u2018happening\u2019 events and the hippie culture of the late 1960s, and on to his provocative and lascivious nudes using a fish-eye lens. It provides a window to the intriguing worlds that photographers were traversing at the time.<\/p>\n

There are two additional treats in this modest, but gorgeous limited print publication: A well-researched essay by James Robertson written for a New Zealand exhibition of Shustak\u2019s work in 2008 that placed his US photographs in the context of the times, and a feature documentary film \u2018SHUSTAK\u2019 (2009) on DVD, made by Stuart Page as a means of elaborating on the intriguing narrative and a biopic of this man. Page\u2019s documentary was made with one simple question in mind, \u201cWhy would a successful New York photographer leave his family, friends and career behind, and travel to the edge of the earth, Christchurch, New Zealand?\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is Robertson\u2019s assessment of this informative and entertaining DVD:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo director Stuart Page, student and long-time friend of Larence Shustak gives us \u2018SHUSTAK\u2019. Both man and documentary are unconventional in more than just name and Page emphasises this photographic onomatopoeia extending aural and visual into a unique character study. Though biography is always an incomplete project, Page rethinks how a documentary functions, to match its subject, and to knowingly and playfully exist as an artwork in its own right. What results is a multi-layered work that reflects on its own process of production. A multifaceted portrait of an artist, as the one-time apprentice radically yet respectfully re-masters the teacher through friends, family, students, and colleagues and most importantly the artist\u2019s own output.\u201d<\/p>\n

RIM BOOKS<\/p>\n

ISBN 978-0-9941306-2-4<\/p>\n

September 2016<\/p>\n

42pp, soft cover, staple bound, 90 min DVD<\/p>\n

RRP NZ $100 inc.GST LIMITED FIRST PRINT EDITION of 10<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a>\t\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

Out of print<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE: SHUSTAK USA 1960\u20131971
<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

This publication showcases photographs made by Larence Shustak before he left USA in 1973 to establish the photography department at the School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Shustak was part of an early ferment on the East Coast of the emerging awareness of photography as an independent tool of art, self-expression and social engagement, existing outside of the mainstream picture magazines and commercial studios. American Landscape samples Shustak\u2019s early experiments, commissions and personal projects that reflect an evolving sense of a time in transition, seen through the artist\u2019s eyes. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-photography","tag-out-of-print","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rimbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}