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Smart Art Press, Published 1999. Paperback, 84 pp.; 28 cm; illustrated with black-and-white photographs throughout; Smart Art Press, Volume V, No. 50; published in association with Craig Krull Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Charles Brittin, Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, January 23-February 27, 1999; foreword by Craig Krull; introduction by Walter Hopps; interview with Kristine McKenna.
In Very Good condition. Black and white pictorial paper covers with French flaps; front cover bearing a close-up black-and-white photograph of an eye; mild surface and edge wear. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked.A survey of the work of Charles Brittin (1928-2011), a Los Angeles photographer whose images captured a pivotal period in the city's bohemian cultural life. From 1950 onward, Brittin moved through the inner circle of the emerging LA art scene, documenting Ed Kienholz, Wallace Berman, Walter Hopps, John Altoon, and George Herms at work and play in Venice Beach studios and galleries. His photographs of the Ferus Gallery milieu are among the most intimate records of that moment in California art history. As the Beat era gave way to the sixties, Brittin turned his camera to the civil rights movement, photographing the Watts riots, Black Panther funerals, and the Mississippi Delta, producing documentary work of equal power alongside his bohemian portraiture. Accompanied by a substantial interview with Kristine McKenna tracing Brittin's career and his decades of engagement with the Los Angeles avant-garde.