Of Brooklyn, by Brooklyn, from Brooklyn, for the World—Patchwork Planet, by Kate Milford and Jonathan Lethem
Some of you may be aware of the excitement generated when Jonathan Lethem mentioned to Mark Sarvas that he'd be writing the endnotes to the Library of America's edition of four Philip K. Dick novels. I therefore thought it worth mentioning that Jonathan himself is making another contribution to the book world at the moment, viz Patchwork Planet, a book of photographs by Kate Milford, of downtown Brooklyn, accompanied by texts by Jonathan, published by ourselves, and available exclusively through Bookcourt Brooklyn. So, buy it here, and here only...
All the details on the book itself after the jump, but Bookcourt will also be hosting a party for this fun project on December 7th at 8:00pm at their store on 163 Court Street in Cobble Hill to which all are invited!
Patchwork Planet is two Brooklynites' idiosyncratic composite portrait of an urban landscape—unlovable yet much loved—published by Brooklyn publisher Soft Skull Press and exclusively available from BookCourt on 163 Court St in Cobble Hill—serving books to Brooklyn and beyond since 1981.
Brooklyn is in the middle of a broad and deep transformation on both the macro-scale of the demolition and rebuilding of entire neighborhoods and the micro-scale of incremental house-by-house gentrification, obscuring its past under the curtain walls of high-rises, and the sheetrock of brownstone renovation. So Kate Milford and Jonathan Lethem have together created Patchwork Planet, a portrait of the real Brooklyn—not the sepia-toned "old" Brooklyn of the Dodgers but rather the five-and-dime downtown Brooklyn of the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties rendered in Milford's acutely detailed large format photographs of office buildings and intersections, storefronts and shoppers, accompanied by Lethem's whimsically personal anecdotes of chance encounters with Mad Brooklynites, of lost subway lines, and, yes of great views of the Manhattan skyline.
Photographer Kate Milford lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. The photographs in Patchwork Planet are selections from a larger body of work on Downtown Brooklyn, to be completed in early 2007. Her other recent projects include Siding, a series of portraits of exterior walls of Williamsburg, Brooklyn buildings; Mug Shots, a group of original portraits using the structure of mug shot photography; and Rock Camp for Girls, featuring photos from her two summers as the photographer-in-residence at Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls. She has worked as a portrait, event, architectural, and editorial photographer, and has taught photography to college students and 7th graders. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times Travel Magazine and Places.
Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including The Fortress of Solitude. He lives in Brooklyn and Maine.