A sumptuous monograph presenting for the first time the extraordinarily imaginative and delightful work of visionary artist Renaldo Kuhler (American, 1931-2013). The Secret World of Renaldo Kuhler catapults a thrilling new discovery into the pantheon of the most accomplished visionary--or "outsider"--artists. Like Henry Darger, Howard Finster, George Widener, and Adolf Wölfli, Renaldo Kuhler was an exceptionally gifted artist and possessed an imagination all his own. By day Kuhler was a self-taught scientific illustrator under the employ of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, for which he created thousands of wonderfully precise illustrations of myriad natural history specimens--reptiles, fish, turtles, and the like. Renaldo Kuhler was an unusual individual, as was instantly clear from his appearance alone. Six-foot-four, with a white beard and ponytail, he wore a custom-tailored uniform consisting of a sleeveless Kelly green suit jacket with wide, black, notched lapels, epaulets, and brass buttons, a matching suit vest, yellow flannel dress shirt, a fleur-de-lis Boy Scout neckerchief, and tight-fitting knee-length shorts ("cotton-blend lederhosen"). However, unbeknownst even to family, friends, andcoworkers, Kuhler was more than an eccentric, gifted scientific illustrator. He was a prolific visionary artist, who, as a teenager in the late 1940s, invented an imaginary country he named Rocaterrania--after Rockland County, New York, where he had lived as a child. For the next sixty years, in secret, he illustrated the nation''s entire history and the prominent characters of its populace. Rocaterrania is a fantastical world, a richly illustrated amalgam of Kuhler''s personal cultural and aesthetic fascinations. Situated just north of the Adirondacks in New York, at the Canada-United States border, Rocaterrania is a sovereign nation of immigrants, from Scandinavia to Eastern Europe. Kuhler invented a complete world populated by a royal family and a succession of leaders resembling historical Russian figures, Women reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich and Janet Leigh play important roles as do bearded men of a seeming Hasidic Jewish heritage, men bearing curious physical similarities to American presidents, and neutants--individuals neither male nor female. Amid forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers, Kuhler''s imaginary country is made up of provinces and cities filled with distinctive Rocaterranian architecture and well-planned railroad and metro systems. Its government is unique, and it has its own religion, Ojallism, and its own evolving language and alphabet. With an organized labor service, a prison system (modeled after a New Jersey state penitentiary), a university system, a Rocaterranian Olympics, and an independent movie industry, Rocaterrania is a nation bustling with dozens of characters and their intrigues.Initially meant to be an escape, Kuhler''s Rocaterrania became a secret lifelong obsession, an intricately coded, metaphorical account through Rocaterrania''s tumultuous history, which dovetailed with Kuhler''s own struggles for independence and freedom.Renaldo was the son of the German-born industrial designer Otto Kuhler, renowned for his Art Deco-era streamlined trains; his Belgian mother had little patience for her son, who was ostracized and bullied throughout his life for being "different." The Kuhler family moved in 1948 from Rockland County, New York, to a remote cattle ranch in the Colorado Rockies--an unbearably isolated environment for the teenaged Renaldo. Retreating to his sketchbooks, journals, and watercolors to invent his imaginary nation of Rocaterrania, young Kuhler wrote, "The ability to fantasize is the ability to survive." The Secret World of Renaldo Kuhler is filled with more than 400 illustrations in pencil, ink, acrylic, oil, gouache, watercolor, colored pencils, and markers, demonstrating Kuhler''s phenomenal draftsmanship and wide range of style--from delicately shaded graphite works to comic-book ink drawings. Complementing Kuhler''s impressive artistry is his gift for analogical thinking, which flowered in his appropriation and reimagining of personalities, places, and events from world history to form a cohesive and fully imagined world. After decades of secrecy, Kuhler eventually first shared his work and the story of his imaginary country with filmmaker Brett Ingram, whom he met by chance in the mid-1990s. In 2009 Ingram released Rocaterrania, a feature-length documentary with prized footage of Kuhler at home and at work, and talking about his creation. WithThe Secret World of Renaldo Kuhler Ingram has written the complete story of Rocaterrania as relayed to him over time by Kuhler, resulting in a fascinating, highly entertaining first and major book about this rare, newly discovered, full-blown visionary outsider artist.

What started out as a simple trip to a postcard fair turned into a lifelong investigation for author Robert Flynn Johnson. Captivated by the beauty and originality of a group of nineteenth-century photographs of women, he had to know more. Now, nearly a decade after his first encounter with the images, Johnson has uncovered more than two hundred vintage photographs of women who lived and worked at a brothel in Reading, Pennsylvania, circa 1892. Taken by commercial photographer William Goldman, the photographs paint a full picture of the environment that the women inhabited--from inside the brothel, posing artistically for the camera, to their off-duty routines, such as reading, smoking, and bathing. Never-before published and taken two decades before the famous E. J. Bellocq photographs of prostitutes in Storyville in New Orleans circa 1913, these beautifully produced photographs are only now seeing the light of day. Johnson uses these photographs to detail their aesthetic, historical, and sociological importance in the history of photography, examining them alongside paintings and photographs by such artists as Degas, Picasso, Atget, and more. Accompanied by essays from Professor Ruth Rosen and Dennita Sewell that provide an insightful historical overview of these images in context of the period in which they were taken and a preface from famed burlesque dancer Dita von Teese, this volume provides a personal visual record of lives of these women while also offering a deeper understanding of the Working Girls that existed more than 120 years ago.

Back in the eighties, when the Western world was deluged by a wave of blue denim, Carhartt’s brown duck work coats entered the streets as an antidote. Detached from their original raison d’être of attiring hard-working men in mines and on railroad tracks, they arrived in our cities as some sort of new anti-denim. Soon after, and largely due to the efforts of Carhartt’s European distributor Work in Progress, the American workwear classic evolved into the international streetwear icon by which we know it today. WORK IN PROGRESS: THE CARHARTT WIP ARCHIVES is the first comprehensive publication exploring that remarkable evolution. Edited by Michel Lebugle and Anna Sinofzik, with texts by Gary Warnett, Mark Kessler and Anna Sinofzik, it features more than 350 images including heaps of hitherto unpublished photographs, artworks, as well as ephemera drawn from the company’s own archives and different private collections, providing an unparalleled look into the brand’s bustling universe. Featuring the extensive story of the brand from its humble beginning to their most popular garments like the Detroit Jacket, Watch Hat, Siberian Jacket, and Cargo Pants, WORK IN PROGRESS is a celebratory, transatlantic stroll through the company’s rich and colorful history. This collection will appeal to both fashion enthusiasts and devotees of American cool.

An immersive photographic tour of the legendary Hotel Chelsea, whose residents share their spaces, their stories, and a delirious collective history of this landmark. Jackson Pollock, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan, Arthur C. Clarke, Andy Warhol, William S. Burroughs, Janis Joplin, Eugene O'Neill, Rufus Wainwright, Betsey Johnson, R. Crumb, Thomas Wolfe, Jasper Johns—these are just a few of the figures who at one time occupied one of the most alluring and storied residences ever: the Chelsea Hotel. Born during the Gilded Age and once the tallest building in New York, the twelve-story landmark has long been a magnet for artists, writers, musicians, and cultural provocateurs of all stripes. In this book, photographer Colin Miller and writer Ray Mock intimately portray the enduring bohemian spirit of the Chelsea Hotel through interviews with nearly two dozen current residents and richly detailed photographs of their unique spaces. As documented in Miller's abundant photographs, these apartments project the quirky decorating sensibilities of urban aesthetes who largely work in film, theater, and the visual arts, resulting in deliriously ornamental spaces with a kitschy edge. Weathering the overall homogenization of New York and the rapid transformation of the hotel itself—amid recent ownership changeovers and tenant lawsuits—residents remain in about seventy apartments while the rest of the units are converted to rentals (and revert to a hotel-stay basis, which had ceased in 2011). For the community of artists and intellectuals who remain, the uncertain status of the hotel is just another stage in a roller-coaster history. A fascinating portrait of a strand of resilient bohemian New Yorkers and their creative, deeply idiosyncratic homes, Hotel Chelsea is a rich visual and narrative document of a cultural destination as complicated as it is mythical.

Artists, cartoonists, comedians, musicians, actors, politicians, the famous and the infamous, these chosen people are just that: People chosen to be rendered by the man BoingBoing calls “The greatest living portrait artist.”

This comprehensive collection of portraiture of comedians born before 1930 includes the famous (Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, Jerry Lewis, Mel Brooks, Jack Benny), the not-so-famous (Benny Rubin, Shelly Berman) and the largely unknown (Al Kelly, Menasha Skulnik). The Reuben Award-winning Friedman presents a thorough visual history of these greatest Borscht-Belt comedians.

The little-known world of industrial shows is reconstructed through the record collection of author Steve Young, who has spent twenty years finding the extremely rare souvenir albums as well as tracking down and interviewing the writers and performers.