IDEA - Buck Ellison - Risk
Shop now. Pay in 30 days.
Overview
The new IDEA book is RISK by Buck Ellison. It is an art book. It looks like an IDEA book. But don't be fooled. The photographs are styled to match the imagery of a bank advertisement or lifestyle catalogue. They are painstakingly staged representations of wealth and privilege. They are so pitch-perfect as to become inseparable from their target.
It is the closeness that is the point; only the exacting accuracy of the copy can illuminate the unconscious machinations of the originals. The blue cotton stripe shirting fabric of the cover is a perfect example. It is a bookcloth, not cotton, but printed with a sewn-weave ink pattern. A facsimile that explains the process of the original that would otherwise be taken for granted.
The Bengal stripe is a popular shirting pattern. It originated in Bengal and was worn by the Bengal Lancers (a regiment of the British East India Company's armed forces) from the 17th century onward. The pattern was brought to England and became fashionable for gentlemen to wear on business occasions.
RISK is not Buck Ellison's first book. There was Living Trust in 2020 (Loose Joints), a now sold-out and very scarce first monograph, Little Brother (2022) and Best Reply (2023), self-published artist's books inspired by college readers, also sold out, and his photograph The Prince Children, Holland, Michigan, 1975 (2019) was chosen as the cover of The Image of Whiteness: Contemporary Photography and Racialization in 2022.
Books, and particularly art monographs and catalogues raisonnés, are (like drawing rooms, dining tables, family albums, trophy cabinets, private bank annual reports and prep-school clothing) meaningful artefacts in Ellison's world. When he makes an art book, as he has done with RISK, he is also making and remaking every book; the typeface carries weight, the footnotes are loaded with importance.
- Custom-Print Clothbound Hardcover
- 32cm x 24,5cm
- 144 Pages
- First Edition of 1000