Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. If you’re struggling to do anything beyond basking in whichever air-conditioned spaces or cooling centers you can find this summer, let alone picking up a heavy text, know that you are not alone.
Our editors and contributors have a short, sweet list of captivating books to nudge you out of a reading slump this month, or to keep in your back pocket for the future. Our picks span photography of artists’ lofts in Manhattan, engaging essays by scholar Nell Irvin Painter blending the historical and the personal, and even a how-to manual for aspiring comic artists. Enjoy, and stay cool! — Lakshmi Rivera Amin, Associate Editor Louis Carlos Bernal captured synchronous waves of vulnerability and resistance in his stirring pictures of Mexican-American communities across the Southwest United States and beyond.
Accompanying a traveling exhibition at the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography, this book is the first major monograph of the late trailblazing Chicano photographer. Whether he was portraying families in intimate domestic settings or chronicling the living conditions of California farmworkers, Bernal found a way to center his subjects’ individuality while affirming his own values �.
