© Nicole White / National Monument Press
Zach Clark: As I mentioned on the first day, Nicole was a big impetus for this project, so I was excited to see what she would make. Nicole took some very big swings, being willing to work in scarlet (red) which is a bold color, and then created a collection of images that include positives and inversions in the same pieces. They make my eyes vibrate. This book is also printed on this truly disgusting paper, an orange from French Paper’s butcher tone line. It looks like someone rubbed bacon all over the sheet before we printed it, somehow it works perfect for this book
© Nicole White / National Monument Press
The photographs in Dream House reside in a space between document and fantasy. They depict the process of new homeowners attempting to make a house livable over the course of many months. Nothing is straightforward, everything is complicated, and the photographs illustrate that madness along with moments of respite. These photographs also exist as individual prints in a limited edition.
© Nicole White / National Monument Press
Dream House is 36 pages, risograph printed in Scarlet on Domtar & French paper with an SF9450. 5×8″. Edition of 200 +25. Published in July of 2024.
© Nicole White / National Monument Press
© Saskia Kahn / National Monument Press
ZC: I had mentioned on the first day I previously knew most artists in the collection, but Saskia is the exception to that. Tamara suggested I invite Saskia to be part of the series, thinking our mutual connection to Eastern Europe would help us to get along, and tamara was right. Without Digging is my favorite type of book to work on an artist with: the main job at hand is to figure out how to present a collection of work centered around an extremely heavy topic, like ethnic cleansing, in a way that is inviting and approachable. What I love so much about this book, and I think the color choice, violet, really is what drives that quality home, that
even the darkest most saturated values are still inviting and hold a feeling of safety.
© Saskia Kahn / National Monument Press
© Saskia Kahn / National Monument Press
Without Digging is a collection of documents and photographs created during Saskia Kahn’s journey to the coast of Latvia, where she visited the 1941 massacre site of her great-grandfather–an unmarked industrial landscape by the Liepaja Lighthouse. Various alternative darkroom processes transformed the images, and many feature white streaks made with her fingerprints using chemigrams. By chance, this work was produced in the same summer that scientists used non-invasive radar to confirm the presence of mass graves (without digging). Part of a longer series called “I Can Smell the Water,” this project reflects Kahn’s pursuit to understand the relationships between land, memory, identity, and justice.
© Saskia Kahn / National Monument Press
Without Digging is 32 pages, risograph printed in Violet on Domtar & French paper with an SF9450. 5×8″. Edition of 200 +25. Published in July of 2024.
© Nelson Chan / National Monument Press
ZC: When people insist I select a favorite book from the series, Bip is the book I bring up, but admit I’m conflicted about that. For those unfamiliar, to be “bipped” is Oakland slang for having your car windows smashed for someone to theoretically steal what is inside, however because of the state of OPD, this is more of a widespread pass time than a targeted crime, which is the type of urban dysfunction I don’t love relaying about our city and confirming people’s biases, but, the results of the book are so cool, I typically put up with it. This is another book like Tamara’s that looks really experimental, but is pretty straightforward classic photography. To make these images, Nelson photographs broken car windows around town, sweeps up the glass, and then back in the dark room, creates photograms of the glass organized into the shape of the hole that was made. The result is just the really unexpectedly beautiful composition.
© Nelson Chan / National Monument Press
Bip is a dive into the ubiquitous Bay Area nuisance of “bipping”, the act of smashing car windows to break in and steal whats inside. To make the images in Bip, Nelson Chan would photograph broken windows he would see while moving through the area, and then collect the broken glass to bring back to the studio. In the darkroom, Nelson would use these glass shards to create photograms in the shape of the area left open by the initial “bip,” creating works that both make whole and point out the problem in the region.
© Nelson Chan / National Monument Press
Bip is 36 pages, risograph printed in Maroon on Mohawk Via Light Gray paper with an RZ310. 5×8″. Edition of 200 +25. Published in August of 2024.
© Nelson Chan / National Monument Press
Zach Clark is an artist, educator, and curator based in Oakland, California; the publisher of National Monument Press; one half of Chute Studio; a collaborative Risograph publishing studio; author of A Mixtape Left Behind, a monthly music and memory newsletter.
National Monument Press is the publishing project of Oakland based artist Zach Clark focused on supporting the investigation and documentation of uniquely American stories through small edition artists’ books, zines, and printed matter, conceived of and completed largely through collaboration with other artists.
Nicole White uses historical and contemporary photographic processes to examine the medium’s varied functionality while studying the cultural landscape around us. She holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, a MA in Art History from the University of Connecticut, and an MFA in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
White has exhibited her work internationally, most recently at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts, Chung24 Gallery in San Francisco, and TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image in Philadelphia. Her work was published in Der Grief and JRNL, in 2020 and 2022, respectively. In 2024, she was included in the +KGP publication, Of Covid and produced an artist book with National Monument Press, entitled Dream House. White’s collaborative 2021 publication, Rolls & Tubes: A History of Photography, is in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, among others.
Saskia Kahn is an artist and educator from Brooklyn, NY. Her work as a portrait photographer extends into community building-building by leading collaborative art projects. Her interest in diasporic memory influences her photography. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, and she is a contributing photographer to BmoreArt magazine. Kahn is assistant professor at Community College of Baltimore County.
Nelson Chan was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from Hong Kong and Taiwan and has spent most of his life between the States and Hong Kong. Having grown up on two continents with unique cultures, this immigrant experience has influenced the majority of his work.
Nelson is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received his BFA and a graduate of the University of Hartford, Hartford Art School, where he received his MFA. He has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as the Museum of Chinese in America, New York, NY; Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; and 798 Space, Beijing, China. His books are collected in the institutional libraries of the Harry Ransom Center, The MET, The Whitney, and MoMA.
Sara J. Winston is an artist and contributing editor at Lenscratch.
Follow Zach Clark/National Monument Press, Nicole White, Saskia Kahn, Nelson Chan, and Sara J. Winston on Instagram: @zachclarkis; @othernicolewhite; @ohsaskia; @enlargedheart; and @sarajwinston