EVAN MANN: GOOD MORNING MIDNIGHT

The title of Evan Mann's collection of photographs, GOOD MORNING MIDNIGHT, you might know as the title of a song most memorably recorded by Billie Holiday. Or the title of one of Jean Rhys's novels.

Both these previous works of art are in my personal canon. Now Evan Mann's book is too. I've added a link to his blog where some of his photographs can be found, like this one I attempted to scan to include here but couldn't do well without destroying the book.

Even is my sister-in-law's boyfriend (full disclosure), a Southern California native now living in Manhattan with Luloo and some other friends they share an apartment and a band with. They work in restaurants and bars to support their creative projects and interests and travels to exotic locations and landscapes.

He photographs moments from their lives and the lives of their friends and those they encounter with a ferocious precision that evokes an entire universe he allows us to glimpse in a way that sucks us in to each moment captured as if it were created just for our reaction, whether it be awe, or being disturbed and fascinated at the same time (you'll have to see the book for examples of those photos), etc. Here's another example.

I knew Evan was musically talented and could work a skateboard but I had no idea his photography was so potently arresting or startlingly original. You get the impact better from seeing them in this self-published (using the great gifts of the internet age the way we poets and other artists used the mimeograph machine and xeroxing when they were the quickest and cheapest means available for getting our work out to others) collection, partly because the book uses no titles for individual photographs, it lets the images speak for themselves and in their collective spontaneity and sometimes brutal honesty they create a narrative of what it is like to be young, adventurous and honest in these times.

I highly, highly recommend it. Go to his blog DISCREET INDISCRETIONS for ordering info.