An Uncommon Archive

This unusual volume is a selection of images from the projects, books and saved references found in the hard drives, stored files and archives of T. Adler Books. The collection draws from the seemingly disparate worlds of surfing, fashion and style, fishing, music, fine art, rock climbing, travel and adventure. The photographs, paintings, ephemera, illustrations and contact sheets are arranged in pairs and sequences suggesting subtle connections and parallels. Iconic historical images, works by well-known contemporary artists and photographers, and beautiful outdoor photographs blend and share page space with found paintings, incidental vacation snapshots and NASA imagery; works by classic photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Jacques Henri Lartigue share space with contemporary photographers Craig Stecyk, Ed Templeton, Tim Barber, Dewey Nicks and Thomas Campbell; a portrait of JFK seated in a sailboat eating an ice cream cone is paired with a 1905 photograph of the launch of the steamer Frank J. Hecker; formal portraits of John Muir and Duke Kahanamoku and open ocean photos (above and below the surface) by Wayne Levin and Corey Arnold are scattered throughout the volume, alongside paintings by Maynard Dixon and Robert Overby, nineteenth-century Cyanotypes by Anna Atkins and a handpainted sign by Stephen Powers. Iconic surfing photographs by Don James, Ron Church, Steve Wilkings, Leo Hetzel, Jeff Hornbaker, Art Brewer, Jim Russi, Jeff Divine and Jim Driver are mixed with dramatic climbing images from Glen Denny, Mike Graham, Allen Steck, Johannes Mair and Jeff Johnson. But it is the editor's imaginative sequencing and pairing of these photographs that provides the unique pleasure of this book. A fresh, blue-sky and water-drenched elegance carries the volume along, resulting in a melding of tone and composition, gestures and cultures, associations and connections that reinforce the individual images.

the paired images...are united by an eye for off-kilter composition and unadulterated joy, the kind that lasts only as long as a wave or a summer. (Su Wu T Magazine, online)

During a sunset session at Hendry's Beach, a surf break in Santa Barbara, photographer Morgan Maassen captured the unexpected inimacy of being aloat in the vast Pacific. This shot of his own hand skimming the water isn't your typical surf image (no barrels, slick cutbacks, or dramatic wipeouts)―but it draws you in nonetheless. (Kate Cunningham Conde Nast Traveler)