On Saturday, December 5th from 4:00 to 6:00pm, please join Arcana: Books on the Arts for another exciting, double-header with two of their fave phtographers: Ed Templeton and Ethan Rafal.

Ed Templeton

In 1999, the late, great Alleged Gallery published Ed Templeton’s first book of photography, Teenage Smokers. In the intervening sixteen years Ed is a firmly entrenched guiding light of the Southern California art community, and Teenage Smokers has become a sought-after high spot for any photo book collection.

Now, hot off the press from Tokyo’s Super Labo is Teenage Smokers 2 – featuring a brand new generation of nicotine-inhaling youngsters. Ed will be signing – and no doubt drawing in – copies of this, the newly republished Wayward Cognitions, a few remaining copies of the now sold out Deadbeat Club Common Side Effects Huntington Beach catalogue, Umbrella, and his magnificent new travelogue of Santa Catalina Island, Adventures in the Nearby Far Away. We’ll also have copies of the original Teenage Smokers along with a few vintage rarities available here the day of the event.

Come celebrate this treasure trove of new and vintage Templetoniana. Sales of Common Side Effects and Adventures in the Nearby Far Away will be limited to one per customer for those attending the event while supplies last.

Ethan Rafal: Shock and Awe

San Francisco-based Ethan Rafal has produced one of our favorite photography books of recent years! A complex autobiographical project examining the relationship between protracted war and homeland decay, Shock and Awe is a meticulously crafted work combining image, text, and found objects compiled over twelve years of traveling the United States that blurs the line between author and subject, and personal versus authoritative histories. Drawing from the traditions of documentary photography and writing set on the American road, the unique, hand-made journal was created with transfer prints, handwriting, and found materials that were bound in the remains of an abandoned vehicle. This trade edition limited to five hundred copies carefully reproduces every inch of every page conveying the look and feel of the original down to its strap closure. Made by middle-class workers in Spain, the paper was sustainably harvested in Finland, and the cloth is from New England.

The artist introduces audiences to this work through his ongoing “Shock and Awe Book Tour” which returns the journal to the people and places depicted, bringing author, subject, and viewer into an exploration of the total meaning of the work. The presentation of Shock and Awe is equal parts story-telling, show-and-tell, and group discussion featuring for its Arcana stop ample homemade cast-iron walnut pie served with bourbon and milk.

Ethan Rafal’s multi-media works deal with the individual and collective experience of violence, and the ways in which subsequent representations of violence inform personal and national mythologies. He helps run The Farmstand – an alternative artspace on a farm in Northern California – and collaborates with the Bay Area’s Art For a Democratic Society.