Behind Rocky Schenck's Recurring Dreams

Don’t know who Rocky Schenck is? You should. The film director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) collects Rocky's work and wrote the introduction to his new collection of fine art photography, The Recurring Dream. Rocky not only makes hauntingly beautiful hand-tinted photographs, he also makes films, music videos, and has worked with Adele, Francis Bean Cobain, Robert Plant, Ray Bradbury, Ellen DeGeneres, Willie Nelson, B.B. King, T-Bone Burnett, Nicole Kidman, Stevie Nicks, Patti

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LaBelle, Dionne Warwick, and John Prine. He says that many of these luminaries come across his work, feel an emotional connection to him, and reach out to collaborate.

Rocky Schenck has lived and worked in Hollywood since he left the University of North Texas years ago, but his childhood in Texas and his family's artistic heritage informs his work. The author John Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story) describes Schenck’s photographs as stills “taken from a movie that exists not on film but rather in one’s memory, with all the fuzziness typical of remembered impressions.” Schenck has talked to many media outlets about how he approaches his art and how he reflects on his ties to Texas. We've compiled some of the most interesting insights into his life and process to celebrate the publication of The Recurring Dream.

Don't miss Rocky Schenck's book signing and artist reception at The Wittliff Collections in San Marcos on Sunday, October 2nd. More information here. He'll also have an exhibition opening at the Fahey Klein Gallery in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 20th.

On growing up in Texas and his family's artistic heritage:

"I grew up rather isolated on a ranch outside of Dripping Springs, Texas, where I spent much of my childhood painting landscapes and watching old films on TV before and after school. I became obsessed. I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker, and I started writing, directing, and photographing little movies. My Dad bought me a twin lens Yashica stills camera, and I learned photography while shooting stills on the sets of my little epics.

My early films and photographs were all in black and white as I attempted to duplicate the look of the vintage films I saw on TV. I never had formal training as a photographer or a filmmaker. I also loved to draw when I was a child, so my parents enrolled me in an oil painting class. My ancestors were classically trained artists who moved from Europe to Texas in the 1850's, and I was a big admirer of their work. I suppose I wanted to learn how to paint in the rather romantic style of their paintings. I started selling my little landscapes around age thirteen.

— From a piece in KYKYLYKY; interview by Jan Walaker

Inside the Artist's Studio

Year End Round Up of Best Books

End of year best-of lists are everywhere this month. We've had a great year and are very proud of the lists our books have landed on thus far. Help us celebrate another great year in publishing!

Holiday shopping note: Order by next Thursday, December 17, to guarantee domestic delivery by December 25.

End of Year Round Up

“Best Of” or “Gifts” Lists

New York Times Sunday Book Review Holiday issue

The Jemima Code
Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks
By Toni Tipton-Martin

"The Jemima Code is no ordinary book. It’s a heaping helping, a long overdue acknowledgment of African-Americans who have toiled in this field since the country’s beginnings. With eloquence and urgency, Tipton-Martin makes the case that without the people of the African diaspora not only would America’s food be different, so would its culinary conversation." 

—The New York Times Book Review

Variations on a Rectangle
Thirty Years of Graphic Design from Texas Monthly to Pentagram
By DJ Stout

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The best photography books of 2015

Frame
A Retrospective
By Mark Cohen 

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NPR, Best Books 2015

The Jemima Code
Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks
By Toni Tipton-Martin

"[The Jemima Code is] that rare coffee table book that serves up important history and compelling imagery in digestible, bite-size chunks that still stick to your ribs." 

—Michel Martin, NPR's Best Books of 2015

Don’t Suck Don’t Die
Giving Up Vic Chesnutt
By Kristin Hersh

"Don't Suck, Don't Die is not only one of the best books of the year, it's one of the most beautiful rock memoirs ever written. Hersh is as stunningly talented an author as she is a musician, and her portrayal of Chesnutt is perfectly done." 

—NPR's Best Books of 2015

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Wall Street Journal, Best Books for Photography Lovers 2015

Frame
A Retrospective
By Mark Cohen 

"Mr. Cohen’s pictures are remarkable." 

—The Wall Street Journal

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American Photo, Best Books 2015

Frame
A Retrospective
By Mark Cohen

Political Abstraction
By Ralph Gibson

Remembering Photographer Mary Ellen Mark

A giant of the photography world has passed. We were fortunate enough to have worked with Mary Ellen Mark and the Wittliff Collections on a book of her photographs from India and Mexico, Man and Beast. She had such kind words to say about her experience publishing with us that we feel as if we've lost a loyal friend.

Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015)
Image from Man and Beast

Here is fellow Magnum photographer Eli Reed (A Long Walk Home) on Mary Ellen Mark:

I heard of Mary Ellen Mark's passing late today with some shock and sadness. She was and is one of the foundations of true photojournalism in a time that needed her kind of important additions to what is needed to tell important stories with truth, beauty, and a healthy respect for her subjects. 

They were not just subjects. Many became friends that stayed in touch with her throughout her life. The dimming of her light is an extremely important loss at this time in photographic history. There are so many well meaning professionals and amateurs who have tried to copy the work of photographers that possibly inhabit the same space that she lived in and the well meaning failed for the most part. 

One needed to have the same kind of faith in your own original vision that Mary Ellen Mark displayed time after time. It seems too many photographers did not get that very important memo. Particularly the part of that memo that tells you to get ready for failure so that when victory comes—it will be as sweet as a Georgia peach. 

Mary Ellen could have been a very tough US Marine if she had somehow and for some reason thought to go in that direction but fortunately for the rest of us—she chose the path of being as gentle as the sweetest kiss from a Summer's sweet breeze celebrating the coming of a sultry night. 

Mary Ellen Mark was a magnificent human being who gave, through the work she produced, much more then she received and I mourn her passing. She was a special kind of a living day and night that brings to the front very beautiful mornings. Sweets dreams to her is a good thing.

Read Mary Ellen in conversation with Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture Foundation, and Martin Bell, Mark's husband, former politician, and British UNICEF Ambassador, in this excerpt from Man and Beast.

UT Press photo books make Best of 2013

We have a feeling our readers didn't encounter enough 'Best of Lists' across the media landscape at the close of the year. So here's a list of all of the 'Best of 2013 Lists' featuring some of our recent photography books. Allow us to revel in this recognition while we begin placing wagers for which Spring/Summer 2014 photobooks might make it to the best of 2014.

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American Photo selected five UT Press titles for their 2013 Best Books of the Year:

• The “Reflection” category features Steven Hoelscher’s Reading Magnum, and Amon Carter Museum’s Color: American Photography Transformed. Notable mentions to Roy Flukinger’s Arnold Newman: At Work, and Dan Winters’s America. See the full reflection category on www.americanphotomag.com. >>
• The “Documentary” category features Michael Kamber, Photojournalists on War. See the full documentary category on www.americanphotomag.com. >>

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• Photojournalists on War made Time LightBox's Best Photobooks of the Year on lightbox.time.com. >>
• Lord George Robertson, former NATO Secretary General, picked Photojournalists on War for the Telegraph UK as his favorite book of the year. Full list on  www.telegraph.co.uk. >>

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• Color: American Photography Transformed is one of Luc Sante's picks for the year in the New York Times: www.nytimes.com. >>

4

• PDN (Photo District News) chose Donna DeCesare’s Unsettled/Desasosiego as one of their Notable Photo Books of 2013. Read PDN's take on this award-winning photojournalist's 30 years of research and advocacy on www.donnadecesare.com. >>