James A. Ganz

This generously illustrated book chronicles Steve Kahn's "The Hollywood Suites" series, which is comprised of photos taken in rent-by-the-hour apartments in a run-down section of Hollywood from 1974 to 1977, featuring porn industry models and the architecture of the rooms themselves.

In 1974 the photojournalist and art photographer Steve Kahn began a series of provocative black-and-white Polaroids of porn-industry models posing in seedy Hollywood apartments. What began as an exploration of staged photography and portraiture evolved over the next three years into "The Hollywood Suites," a multi-faceted conceptual project in which Kahn turned his lens away from the models to deconstruct their seemingly mundane and monotonous surroundings. Endlessly fascinating, Kahn's series touches on myriad themes including bondage, containment, isolation, and the poetics of absence. This volume includes more than 100 works arranged in chronological groupings based on the original Polaroid film sessions and features essays that offer a scholarly assessment of a groundbreaking work.… (mere)

Shame on me for missing the museum exhibition! This catalog is the next best thing, and it’s a book I wish I could own. It contains lots of art I love, many pieces and even artists new for me, and I enjoyed much of it. I have always had interest in the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair, but even though I’ve hung out a lot at the Palace of Fine Arts and the area over the years, I hadn’t been so curious about he 1915 Exposition. I’m glad I read this and viewed this book and now know a lot more about it. Its history is interesting, as are what it featured. This hardcover book is ridiculously heavy, even for an art book, and trekking it from and back to the library was a chore; reading a paperback edition might have been preferable. I read this book at the same time as I read a history heavy book about the same fair: San Francisco’s Jewel City: The Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915. (I did not read every word of this book as I usually do, but I read enough to get a lot out of reading it and to have an opinion worth sharing.)… (mere)