Your CSUN Art Librarian here to share some of the new art, design, and photography books we’ve recently added to the collection:
Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film
This catalog from the currently ongoing LACMA exhibition examines the history of Photoshop and other digital image manipulation tools from the 1970s to today.
Steve: a Framework for AI and Identity Design
A small but informational guide for ethically incorporating AI into graphic design. It includes conversations with designers from the world’s leading design firms.
Lost days, endless nights : photography and film from Los Angeles
An exploration of how artists such as Agnès Varda, Dana Lixenberg, Allan Sekula, Catherine Opie, John Divola, Gregory Halpern, Paul Sepuya, and Guadalupe Rosales have reimagined and reshaped our understanding of contemporary Los Angeles.
A timely and important guide to how art has been used to challenge conventions and power structures from the 20th through the 21st centuries.
Consuelo Kanaga: Catch the Spirit
This catalog is from a retrospective exhibition organized in collaboration between SFMOMA and the Brooklyn Museum on photographer Consuelo Kanaga. Kanaga is an important but often overlooked figure in the history of twentieth-century photography. She worked as a photojournalist for the San Francisco Chronicle but is also known for her still lifes and portraits of Black Americans.
Catalog from a traveling exhibition organized by the ICA Boston that made its way to LA via LACMA and the California African American Museum in 2024-25. This is the first survey of Simone Leigh’s work which focuses on the Black female experience through sculpture, installation, and video.
Graphic design students and enthusiasts take note! The publisher’s description says it all: “the book’s dizzying array of designs range from the Gutenberg Bible to Joy Division album art, with work by both anonymous creators and industry icons such as Aleksandr Rodchenko, Paul Rand, Paula Scher, Ahn Sang-soo, and Julia Born.”
This book brings together a collection of works chronologically beginning in 4000 BCE to represent the diverse history of ceramics to the present.
A Superlative Palette: Contemporary Black Women Artists
Catalog from an exhibition held at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture. It presents work of contemporary Black women artists from around the world including Nina Chanel Abney, ruby onyinyechi amanze, Lauren Halsey, Rachel Jones, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Jennifer Packer, Calida Rawles, Deborah Roberts, Tschabalala Self, Amy Sherald, Mickalene Thomas, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
This book looks at how and why contemporary artists use drawing in their practice. It features essays as well as artworks created using traditional drawing instruments as well as those done digitally.
Interested in learning about new resources for art in the Library? Check out or subscribe to the New Acquisitions blog: https://libguides.csun.edu/art/recent! And if you have a recommendation for a book that you’d like to see in the collection, fill out the Purchase Recommendation form. https://library.csun.edu/collections/purchase-recommendation
