Books published by MW Editions

Poignant, multilayered portraits of America's future farmersA new book by award-winning Minneapolis-based photographer R.J. Kern (born 1978), The Unchosen Ones features portraits of future farmers in America's heartland. Kern's subjects are Minnesota 4-H members posing with their farm animals. Each one spent a year raising an animal, which they then entered into a 4-H competition. Kern first photographed them in 2016, and none of the children who sat for him succeeded in winning an award, despite the obvious care they had given to their animals. The formal qualities of Kern's lighting and setting endow these young people with a gravitas beyond their years, revealing self-directed dedication in some, and in others, perhaps, the pressures of traditions imposed upon them. These beautiful portraits capture a certain America, a rural world and a time in life when the layered emotions of youth are laid bare. Four years later, in 2020, Kern returned to photograph and interview his young subjects. The new images are poignant when juxtaposed with the originals, tapping into the mindset of America's agricultural youth. The diptychs of the children are punctuated by lush landscapes of the farms where these children have grown up.As he took the second group of photographs, Kern inquired about what his young subjects had carried forward from their previous experience. What were their thoughts, their advice, their dreams and their goals for the future? How do they fit in future agricultural America?

Madagascar presents 30 black-and-white photographs by Spanish photographer Pancho Saula that capture the light and contours of this unique island. Madagascar is one of the most remote and beautiful countries in the world, and one of the very few places that has not yet been transformed by the deracinations of globalization: some areas are still untouched by tourism, and some ethnic groups, such as the Vezo, live in isolation in primitive conditions. Time stops in Madagascar, and nature is rich and intact: the vast majority of the island's abundant flora and fauna exist nowhere else on earth. Ancient baobab trees tower above; enormous sand dunes envelop seaside fishing towns. Superbly printed in this handsomely designed volume, Saula's photographs of the island range from the near-abstract to clear-eyed but sensitive portraiture.

"In the spring of 1865, a seemingly unremarkable dishcloth played a crucial role in ending the Civil War as the South's flag of surrender at Appomattox. A Confederate horseman carried a humble white linen towel into the lines of General George Custer, near the courthouse at Appomattox. The horseman was sent on behalf of General Robert E. Lee, who was requesting a suspension of hostilities while General Ulysses S. Grant proposed terms of surrender. Focusing on this Confederate Flag of Truce, Afro-Caribbean American artist (and professor at Amherst College) Sonya Clark (born 1967) explores the legacy of symbols and challenges the power of propaganda, erasures and omissions through her works. By making the Truce Flag-a cloth that brokered peace and represented the promise of reconciliation-into a monumental alternative to the infamous Confederate Battle Flag and its pervasive divisiveness, Clark instigates a role reversal and aims to correct a historical imbalance"--

In Poorly Watched Girls, New York-based artist Suzanne Bocanegra (born 1957) explores the ways that popular entertainment theatricalizes women in trouble. For the immersive video Valley, she recreated Judy Garland's wardrobe test for Valley of the Dolls (1967). Garland was fired from the film but famously kept the clothing from the test. Here, eight notable women wear replicas of the wardrobe: poet Anne Carson, choreographer Deborah Hay, artist Joan Jonas, singer Alicia Hall Moran, author and actor Tanya Selvaratnam, actor Kate Valk, artist Carrie Mae Weems and ballerina Wendy Whelan. Dialogue of the Carmelites, inspired by Poulenc's 1956 opera based on the true story of a convent of nuns executed during the French Revolution, incorporates music by composer David Lang, performed by Caroline Shaw. In La Fille, Bocanegra uses theatrical sets, costumes and collage to capture the essence of the 18th-century ballet La Fille mal Gardée (The Poorly Guarded Girl), a comic portrayal of young love between two peasants.