Christopher Wool: East Broadway Breakdown Special Edition
This artist’s book reproduces a series of black-and-white photographs Christopher Wool took on New York’s Lower East Side between 1994 and 1995. The series is named for the street on which Wool lived and worked and was shot at night using a 35mm camera. Recording the area’s dilapidated storefronts, ramshackle staircases, and litter-strewn sidewalks, the images confront the viewer with a set of consciously awkward formal arrangements, presenting a kind of visual entropy rooted in the urban environment. By applying extremes of contrast, Wool further obscures his subjects, pushing them toward abstraction in a way that resonates directly with his paintings.
This special-edition version of the book was issued in a clamshell box. Each of the 160 copies includes a different signed and numbered black-and-white photograph from the series that corresponds to one of the images reproduced in the book.
Publisher: Holzwarth Publications, Berlin
Publication date: 2003
Contributor: Christopher Wool
Designer: Hans Werner Holzwarth and Christopher Wool
Printer: Quensen, Lamspringe, Germany
Format: Softcover in dust jacket and photograph in box
Dimensions: Book: 8 3/8 × 11 inches (21.5 × 27.9 cm); Photograph: 4 × 5 7/8 inches (10.2 × 14.9 cm); Box: 9 × 11 3/4 × 1 1/8 inches (23 × 30 × 3 cm)
Pages: 328
Language: English
Edition: Edition 124/160
Signed: Signed, numbered, and dated on photograph (verso)
ISBN: 3-935567-11-1
