Edited by Thomas Zander.
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne.
264 pages, 250 illustrations
Texts by Charlotte Cotton, Jonathan Lethem, Connie Lewallen, Carter Ratcliff & Thomas Wagner
German I English
This richly illustrated publication chronicles for the first time the collaborative artwork by Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan. Their prolific artistic collaboration began in 1973 when they were both graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute. During the course of the next twelve years, they created nineteen projects together. Their bond as West Coast artists was further strengthened as together they confronted San Francisco’s post-Beat, post-Cafe Society art community that seemed alien to their southern California sensibilities. Mandel and Sultan’s projects during this period took the forms of artists’ books, How To Read Music In One Evening, 1974, and Evidence, 1977; a series of a dozen outdoor billboards in the form of hand painted photographs, silkscreen posters, oil paintings and digitally printed posters, 1973-1983; a film, JPL, 1980; and an installation, Newsroom, 1983. Although they both pursued individual projects during this twelve year span they nurtured and developed an intense and focused artist collaboration. Their seminal work, Evidence has been widely recognized as a landmark photographic book.