ASMR4 is a small run, quarterly publication co-edited by Katie Murray, Victoria Sambunaris, Dan Torop, and Adam Putnam. The first four volumes of this project served as both conversation and message. The subsequent four focused on the strange and forgotten. ASMR4 Vol. 11 is the third in the current series, which fixates on the obsessive and anachronistic.
Kodachrome-Kodak’s twice improved answer to Americans’ insatiable appetite to catalogue every major event of one’s life: weddings, birthdays, proms, graduations, holidays, vacations, etc. As Paul Simon sang in 1973 “…makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah.”
It makes me wonder, was it the film or was it the life?
Either way, a long-forgotten box of my family’s “sunny days” untethered from actual memories, and the people who made them, becomes a pathway to something new.
— Katie Murray
where to buy:
ASMR4 v.5-11 are available for individual purchase. Subscriptions to v.9-12 are available. Or v.5-8 are available as a set. All via https://asmr4.square.site/.
ASMR4, Vol. 10 – Trailcam Photographs by Bill & Tony is now published.
ASMR4 is a small run, quarterly publication co-edited by Katie Murray, Victoria Sambunaris, Dan Torop, and Adam Putnam. The first four volumes of this project served as both conversation and message. The subsequent four focused on the strange and forgotten. ASMR4 Vol. 10 is the second in the current series, which fixates on the obsessive and anachronistic.
Trailcam Photographs are photographs of survival.
Pilot Peak was a landmark for the Donner Party on the emigrant trail. In September 1846, they abandoned their wagons and oxen to reach Pilot Springs at the foot of Pilot Peak after a treacherous journey across the Great Salt Lake Desert, unaware of their destiny that lay ahead.
Near Pilot Peak, in the remote mountains of northeast Nevada, sits another testimony to survival. In this parched desert landscape, which receives an average of 8.27 inches of rain per year, there is a trough where animals flock to satiate their thirst.
— Vicky Sambunaris
ASMR4, Vol. 9 – Field Work: Photographs by Ilana Halperin is now published.
Please join us for a launch of Field Work Saturday Dec 3, 2022, 4-6pm PPOW390
Broadway, NYC, 2nd Floor
ASMR4 is a small run, quarterly publication co-edited by Katie Murray, Victoria Sambunaris, Dan Torop, and Adam Putnam. The first four volumes of this project served as both conversation and message. The subsequent four focused on the strange and forgotten. ASMR4 Vol. 9, inaugurates a new series fixating on the obsessive and anachronistic.
Ilana Halperin’s Field Work is a brief but comprehensive look at the artist’s collection of photographs shot over the course of 20 years and across several continents. Following her own obsession with the formation of new landmass, these photos, shot with a Holga, document the various kinds of eruptions encountered by the artist on her travels. However, seeing them all together for the first time, I would say that it is the photos themselves that are erupting… as if the small plastic camera could barely contain what it saw.
— Adam Putnam
ASMR4, Vol. 8 – Clear Comfort: Photographs from the Alice Austen Archive is now published.
ASMR4 is a small run publication co-edited by Katie Murray, Victoria Sambunaris, Dan Torop, and Adam Putnam. The first four volumes served as both conversation and message. The current series focuses on the strange and forgotten. The latest issue v.8, Clear Comfort, concludes this series.
Clear Comfort, Alice Austen’s family home, held within its
boundaries all of the complications that a home can represent. At best, a
home can be a catalyst for creativity and exploration. At worst it can
prohibit, interfere, inhibit. Recognizing that, Austen turned her camera
towards her home and the people with whom she shared her life.
— Katie Murray
After a somewhat housebound hiatus, we have ASMR4, Vol. 8: Clear Comfort in production, and anticipate that it will be available in November 2020.
Please join us for the release of ASMR4, Vol. 7 – Icebergs Friday, January 10, 2020, 6-8pm The Penumbra Foundation (36 E 30th Street, New York, NY)
ASMR4 is a small run publication co-edited by Katie Murray,
Victoria Sambunaris, Dan Torop, and Adam Putnam. The latest issue is v.7, Icebergs: floating chunks of rock and snow; from the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives and the Ralph Stockman Tarr expeditions.
In
1997, I had a scheme. I would travel north. There would be no hurry.
From New England into Canada, toward upper Quebec and the Hudson Bay. I
would stop at rural airstrips and mosquito-ridden streams. It would take
months, even years, to make my way north. I thought that there would
always be a chill and sparsely peopled north into which to journey.
This journey never happened, but images have accumulated.
— Dan Torop
Please join us for the release of ASMR4, Vol. 6 – Del Rio: Photographs and Film Stills from the life of legendary Matadora Patricia McCormick 1929-2013 Thursday, April 18, 2019, 6-8pm The Penumbra Foundation (36 E 30th Street, New York, NY)
Vol. 6 presents archival images and film stills from the life of the legendary matadora Patricia McCormick (1929-2013, bullfighter 1951-62).
She had shunned an art career to become the Lady Bullfighter,
a defiant and extraordinary path, particularly for a woman at that
time. McCormick would later write, “I could keep this up
all day! I am in no hurry to kill, you lovely, brave beast. But I must,
before you learn how to kill me. I know you will die at the height of
your courage, trying to fathom the illusive cloth that you can’t get
your horns into, searching for the real enemy
you would destroy.”
— Victoria Sambunaris
ASMR4 v.6, Del Rio, as well as all previous volumes,will be on sale at the Petzel booth at the 2019 LA Art Book Fair (April 11-14).
Jennifer Krasinski interviewed Adam Putnam for Artforum. They spoke about Alfred Cook and ASMR4. Here is the interview.
Nearly twenty years ago, artist Adam Putnam came across the photographs of Alfred Cook in the archives of the Frick Collection. Recently, he edited together a selection of Cook’s images for ASMR4, a publishing project Putnam launched in collaboration with fellow artists Dan Torop, Victoria Sambunaris, and Katie Murray. Here, Putnam and Jennifer Krasinski discuss the mysterious Cook, and why these photographs have haunted him for so long.
Please join us for the release of ASMR4, Vol. 5 – Alfred Cook: Archival Photographs from The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library – Tuesday
Dec. 18, 2018, 6-8pm The Penumbra Foundation, 36 E 30th Street, New York, NY
ASMR4 is a small run, quarterly publication co-edited by Katie Murray, Victoria Sambunaris, Dan Torop, and Adam Putnam.
While the first 4 volumes served as both conversation and message, the upcoming series will focus on the strange and forgotten.
Twenty
years ago, while working as a book conservator at the Frick Art
Reference Library, I was given the job of cleaning and preserving a
series of photo albums, artifacts from when the Frick
residence was being rebuilt as a library and museum. The albums
contained original photographs taken by Alfred Cook, a footman to the
Frick family. His images reveal a lexicon of strange and curious
subjects: dark hallways, empty rooms, and most notably, light
fixtures. The images reproduced in this book were made between 1933 and
1935. — Adam Putnam
ASMR4 is pleased to announce the release of its fourth volume, Ordinary Matter, by photographer Katie Murray. The title Ordinary Matter, scientifically
speaking, alludes to all that is seen and knowable. Making use of
visual alliteration and an aesthetic rhythm the work in this
volume considers the mysterious nature of familiarity. Murray’s
collection of images exist somewhere between the mythic and the mundane,
reflecting a reality that is both rooted in and removed from our own.
Please join us to celebrate ASMR4 v.4 at Spoonbill Studios (99 Montrose Ave., Brooklyn) on September 13, 2018, 7-9PM.
