Join photographers David Katzenstein and David Ricci in conversation on their newly released photo book projects: Katzenstein’s Brownie (Hirmer Publishers) and Ricci’s Hunter Gatherer (MW Editions).

Brownie is a collection of photographs created by photographer David Katzenstein over ten years, 1979-1989. With this series, Katzenstein pays homage to the original line of Brownie cameras that began in 1900. For the series, he used the successor to the famous Kodak Brownie, the Dualflex, which was first introduced in 1947. The result is a colorful, personal, and sensitive view of the world.

Described by one critic as “hot, lush and specific,” the series begins in New York City, eventually traveling the globe to explore both distant places and the use of the Kodak Duaflex camera. Throughout the project, Katzenstein’s goal was to embrace the camera’s limitations as a means of pushing the boundaries of composition, juxtaposing foreground and background while heightening the use of color.

The inanimate tableaux of the American resale marketplace gives power to collectible objects in David Ricci’s Hunter Gatherer (MW Editions). Ricci spent seven years traveling across the U.S. making photographs at antique malls and fairs, curio shops, thrift stores, and other sites where consumer goods from the past are sold. The images in Hunter Gatherer expose the hidden underbelly of American resale shops and cast a light on the country’s historical biases and stereotypes, weaving together a tapestry of racism, objectification, beauty standards, Christianity, and consumerism.

Ricci photographed these objects, displays and scenes as he found them. Some are humorous — a Catholic nun figurine praying over a Batman Pez dispenser — but the juxtapositions of blatantly racist objects including lawn jockeys, Black mammy figurines, and tomahawk-wielding Native Americans with anodyne items like lamps and bicycles call attention to the darker aspects of present-day America as well as its history. Though no people appear in the images, depictions of human figures suggest thoughts, dialogues and narratives that transform lifeless scenes into animated tableaux.