Ann Mandelbaum. Matter

Sumptuous photograms and more investigating the formal properties of the natural world
This fourth monograph on the New York– and Costa Rica–based photographer, sculptor and video artist Ann Mandelbaum (born 1945) presents both analog black-and-white work from 1990 to 2000 and also digital color images from 2007 to the present. None of the 100 works published here have been exhibited or published previously.
The 35-year span of the volume reveals Mandelbaum's consistent obsession with the organic world, processed at first through the depths of the darkroom and subsequently on the digital screen. Her techniques draw on the history of photographic innovation, including the photogram and multiple printing. Throughout, Surrealist photographic vocabularies deploying sculpture, collage and the language of drawing can be detected.