publiccollectors

[publiccollectors]

A graphic from Mad magazine #182 from April 1976. The larger piece this comes from is "A Mad Portfolio of Some Idealists' Dreams" by Arnoldo Franchioni.

I have been starting to visit and revisit Mad following the discovery of a huge box of old issues in the storage unit of my wife's late uncle. Some of this stuff has aged in rather interesting ways.

#Mad Magazine #Mad #WTC #World Trade Center #Arnoldo Franchioni #political graphics #911

[publiccollectors]

A 1979 brochure (reprinted in 1980) for a Song of Norway Festival event in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, held on the grounds of Cave of the Mounds.

#Norway #2-color printing #Cave of the Mounds #Mt. Horeb #Wisconsin #brochure

[publiccollectors]

A membership renewal letter from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, sent to my wife's late uncle in 1991.

#MCA Chicago #Museum of Contemporary Art #Museum membership #special access #artsy items

[publiccollectors]

An ad for Foto Folks, from the back of a photo processing envelope from 1990. I've been helping my wife's family deal with the estate of her late uncle, who saved a lot of paper. This is a good thing and a bad thing. I've been saving little bits of this and that, and hope to share more of them as we continue to excavate his condo and storage units.

#Foto Folks #film processing #photography

[publiccollectors]

[Apologies to On Kawara] 

Sometime yesterday, March 17, 2024, someone hacked my Facebook account, connected it to their Instagram account, and was promptly caught by Mark Zuckerberg himself probably (such a hero) and my account was disabled. Thus far I have not been able to re-able my account and it is locked. There is nothing to see here (there). Facebook’s instructions don’t work and they haven’t invited me to rejoin the party. I’m trying not to feel hurt. 

So many thoughts have crossed my mind. I could create a new account but—and this is such a weird thing to think about—I would never be able to reconnect with my Facebook friends that are dead to see how their old posts are doing. 

About 14 years of posts are just gone, I guess? I could start a new account (maybe, if I’m allowed) and feel like Rock Hudson in the creepy movie Seconds, starting a whole new life (except with probably a lot of the same friends all over again and the same job and stuff, so maybe that's not a good comparison). 

I made entire publications of my Facebook posts, and the posts of others that I collaborated with. It could be a very productive space for me, and a lot of new friendships sprouted from being on that platform. A lot of old friendships became deeper too. I wrote and posted a lot. It was mostly a very positive place in my experience. Being on Facebook generated a lot of creative opportunities. It has also destroyed a lot of people and countries and attention spans. I'm sure I read fewer books because of it. It has come with a price.

When Facebook started and all of my friends were signing up and talking about it, I waited. I hesitated to join because I was afraid that I would like it too much, and I would lose a lot of time using it. I eventually joined and quickly found out that I was correct. There are many people on that platform that I have not met in person but interact with online all the time, and have only known through email and social media for multiple decades. In many cases I don’t know any other way to get ahold of them. If I choose not to start a new account or can’t get my old one back, I will miss my interactions with those friends. 

Multiple times over the years people have told me that they enjoyed my posts so much that I was the only reason they stayed on Facebook. That’s a lovely compliment (that I mostly don’t believe). Now that my account is gone, I assume they will all leave the platform en masse. 

In the meantime, I suspect that my productivity will soar, at a time when I have multiple creative projects that demand a lot of attention. So for now, I am here and I am still alive. Feel free to message me, or email me at: marc [at] publiccollectors [dot] org. I love you. It’s been facetastic. 

#Fucking Facebook

[publiccollectors]

Horror Decor New Public Collectors publication! Available for $9.00 here. Public Collectors publication #82 is a photo booklet surveying five years of Halloween decoration documentation in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood area. From the back cover:

Every year I watch as my neighbors in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood add gruesome details to their homes for Halloween. Some people are ambitious and assemble constructions that look like they took months to acquire or create, but it’s the smaller and cheaper decorations that I’m particularly drawn to: a severed finger here, a scattering of bones there, with maybe some Caution! tape, or a rubber rat chewing on a foot tossed in for good measure. Simple, strange gestures like these can heighten our attention to other overlooked additions to our built and natural environment, revealing not just someone’s Halloween play, but other details that we mighthave ignored. What else are you seeing and what are you missing?

I shot these photos over the last five years. I have lived in Avondale since 2012, but it has taken me time to feel firmly situated and committed to making creative work about my neighborhood. I like having the time to observe slowly. Being mindful of privacy, I tend to zoom in rather than photograph someone’s entire house. It was hard to choose what to include, as I have enough material for four booklets, but ultimately this is what made the cut.

I invited David Canario to write this booklet’s introduction. David also lives in Avondale. We met a little over two years ago when we found ourselves working to address the same concerns about affordable housing and aggressive development in our ward. David spends a lot of time canvassing for progressive candidates and concerns, and he’s an avid cyclist so he sees a lot when he travels through Avondale. He’s also a horror buff, making him a perfect collaborator for a project like this. 

— Marc Fischer / Public Collectors

#Public Collectors #Public Collectors Publications #Marc Fischer #Photozine #zine #artist book #horror #skulls #severed heads #Halloween #Halloween decorations

[publiccollectors]

Today's reward for helping my wife's family with her late uncle's estate: a solid chunk of the AC/DC discography - Columbia House cassette editions. There's no way her uncle listened to AC/DC. Maybe her late aunt? Either way, these deserve a good home, and that home will be our home.

#AC/DC #tapes #cassettes #dirty deeds done dirt cheap

[publiccollectors]

I donated some books to the Unique thrift in my neighborhood in Chicago recently and discovered that the record section was hosting Floating Heads Day. Whoever painted or otherwise crafted the appearance of the skin on that Horowitz record, truly understands what it takes to cause nightmares.

#Floating Heads #thrift store records #records

[publiccollectors]

Wurstelprater in October New Public Collectors publication! Available for $9.00 here. Public Collectors publication #81 takes a trip to an amusement park in Vienna just days before many of the attractions closed for the season. From the back cover:

When the Vienna Art Book Fair’s Director Marlene Obermayer invited the publishing imprint I co-run, Half Letter Press, to participate in the 2023 edition of the event, she generously booked a hotel room for me. Last time the fair was held in 2019, the hotel was a short stroll to the fair. This time it was about a 25 minute walk. She explained, “Its not the same like last time but also a really nice one (next to the famous PRATER).” I wondered why I had never heard of the Prater and meant to look it up before my trip. In the frenzy of packing books, I never got around to that. Instead I found out when I arrived. 

Founded in 1766, the Prater includes a massive amusement park (Wurstelprater) filled with dozens of garish rides, an enormous Ferris wheel, tests of strength and skill, bizarre sculptures and gnarly ride facades covering every surface, and a variety of restaurants and other delights. You don’t have to pay to get in—there’s just a fee for whatever rides and games you want to enjoy. You can walk through the park any time, including before it opens, which I did on the way to and from the fair every morning and evening. At night it’s a whole other reality with dazzling lights, pounding music, and rides whipping bodies in every direction, testing any visitor’s ability to hold in their wurst. As one YouTube video-maker commented, the Prater “feels like a carnival on steroids.”

These photos were taken in the third week of October, just days before most of the rides would shut down for the season. The Wurstelprater is a fully immersive experience that could never be fully documented in all of its countless details. Anyone thinking this booklet might ruin the surprise of visiting for the first time should know that I have barely scratched the surface. 

— Marc Fischer / Public Collectors

#Wurstelprater #Prater #Public Collectors #Marc Fischer #Public Collectors publications #amusement parks #Vienna #photobooklet #photozine

[publiccollectors]

A vintage brochure for Cap'n Nemo's giant party subs, from Chicago, unearthed in the papers of my wife's late uncle. It's such a great thing that he preserved this for future generations. Does anyone know what year this is from?

#party subs #giant party subs #Cap'n Nemo's #Hoagies #Giant hoagies #brochure #Chicago restaurants

[publiccollectors]

If I visit an estate sale, I always look for the home office. Last weekend, and basically every weekend for a long time to come, I helped my wife's family (aka my family) with her uncle's estate. It's a LOT to sift through, but it remains interesting and rewarding. The time spent with others is lovely. We go through things, we find things, we talk about them, we throw away things, and marvel at life.  

Yesterday I found something I was very excited about: a vintage Ace Fastener brand Aceliner stapler. There was a period where I was kind of obsessed with finding one. You can buy them on eBay very easily, and they aren't that expensive, but given that they were made in Chicago, I felt like I should be able to find one in the wild eventually. Jen's uncle had one right on his desk, but it was tucked away behind some stuff so I didn't see it until yesterday. The hard plastic has a couple little cracks, but it's still a beauty. These have a great hefty design and they swing all the way open so you can use them for tacking up flyers on cork boards if necessary. Really happy to be giving this a new home and extended life.

#stapler #aceliner #vintage office supplies

[publiccollectors]

New: Public Collectors publication #78:

Provisional Costumes

28 pages, full color digital printing, stapled booklet. PURCHASE ($7.00)

Public Collectors publication #78 is light-hearted, a little grimy, and a somewhat horror-drenched collection of found photos of costumed people. Like some other recent image-centered Public Collectors publications, eBay.com is the key curatorial tool here. 

From the back cover:

The Photographic Images category on eBay.com is an abyss. I can lose hours disappearing down that hole looking at snapshot photos. Sometimes I start browsing with a single seller, which may limit the offerings to merely 30,000 photos instead of half a million. That is still too large, but I embrace this dream-like mental space and see where it leads as I wander through the lives of unknown and unknowable people. 

When this publication idea started to form, the photos in sales listings began to resemble booklet pages. I thought about possible pairings and sequences—what I should buy and when I should wait until I found a neighboring photo. I did not start by looking for photos of costumed people, but as I sifted through thousands of images of people dressed for Halloween and parties, I settled on the theme, with a focus on indoor environments. The result is this small publication of photos from many sources, acquired in a few long digging sessions. This selection mainly spans the 1970s to early 1990s. I have certainly worn thrown-together costumes like these in that time frame, in my youth. I don’t know what some of these people were going for, but I like what they came up with.

 — Marc Fischer / Public Collectors

NOTE: If you tried ordering this and got an error, please try again. The link has been fixed. Thanks and sorry!

#Public Collectors #Public Collectors Publications #Provisional Costumes #Photozine #Photography #Costumes #Marc Fischer #Found photos #horror

[publiccollectors]

New: Public Collectors publication #77: SURVIVAL SUCCESS by Jonathan Canady

20 pages, 3-color RISO, stapled booklet. PURCHASE ($6.00)

This booklet features Jonathan Canady’s drawings based on illustrations from a 1957 U.S. Army-issued survival guide (reprinted in 1970). Canady’s drawings are paired with scans of some of his source material. The illustrator of the drawings created for the Army is uncredited. Some of the original drawings that inspired Canady are placed alongside his reimaginings, while others are dispersed throughout the booklet in less direct placements or not included at all. In his versions of these illustrations, Canady takes these pragmatic guides to surviving under harsh conditions and transforms them into existential scenes of discovery and recovery. His humans are no longer soldiers that have successfully followed a lesson in a book, but creatures from a less identifiable time whose circumstances have been made strange and unknowable.  

#Public Collectors #Public Collectors Publications #Publications #RISO #artist zine #Drawing

[publiccollectors]

Providence! I'm having an exhibit and I'm coming to your city for a quick visit this week. It would be great to meet you at Paper Nautilus on Thursday night. Jan 19, 2023, 6-8 PM!

Protest Grim Reapers Archival Press Photos from Public Collectors

On view Jan 19 – Feb 28, 2023 Reception Jan 19, 6-8pm Paper Nautilus Books, Wayland Square 19 South Angell Street, Providence, RI, 02906

The Public Collectors project Protest Grim Reapers is a dive into the world of discarded and resold press photo archives. This exhibit reproduces details from 27 press photos of the famed Pale Horse rider, spanning from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Across six of New England’s coldest weeks, we’ll get cozy with the documented personification of death in a neighborhood bookshop. From the back cover of the book that accompanies this collection: The grim reaper is an enduring figure at demonstrations. The reaper—or sometimes simply an angel of death—appears at protests for any cause where the gravity of a death figure feels appropriate. The reaper traditionally carries a scythe and wears a black hood and a skull mask or skull face paint, but sometimes the scythe is replaced with a different symbolic object.  For the past four years I have been collecting press photos of grim reapers at protests against hunger, radioactive waste, animal abuse, the death penalty, the Vietnam war, the closing of a Chrysler plant, demands for clean air and water, restrictions on abortion and more. These older press photos are routinely sold on the secondary market by dealers that acquire the archives of newspapers, or others that have purged their file copies. The dates of these photos reflect the availability of darkroom prints and wirephotos, taken before digital photography became dominant at most news outlets.  In recent years, the grim reaper has been in the news when people wearing this costume attended protests against keeping beaches and schools open during the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, the reaper tells spectators: ‘I am here because this is a matter or life or death for someone or something. I don’t want to be here, but because of you, your corporation, your politicians, or your crimes against humanity, my presence is justified. If this wasn’t deadly serious, I would have stayed at home or worn something else.’  — Marc Fischer / Public Collectors

Marc Fischer is the administrator of Public Collectors, an initiative he formed in 2007. Public Collectors aims to encourage greater access and scholarship for marginal cultural materials, particularly those that museums ignore. Public Collectors’ work includes the Library Excavations publication series and web project, Quaranzine—which produced 100 single page publications with over 75 collaborators at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Malachi Ritscher—a project about the late Chicago music documentarian and activist, produced for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. In addition to Public Collectors, Fischer is also a member of the group Temporary Services (founded in 1998) and a partner in its publishing imprint Half Letter Press (ongoing since 2008). He is based in Chicago. www.publiccollectors.org

#Public Collectors #Marc Fischer #Protest Grim Reapers #Public Collectors Exhibitions #Providence #Paper Nautilus

[publiccollectors]

New Publication: Public Collectors publication #76: PROTESTER PORTRAITS

16 pages, 2-color RISO, stapled booklet. Approximately 150-160 copies. PURCHASE ($4.00)

It has been a little while since I made a publication, start to finish, in a day. I always have paper and other materials on hand that allow this to happen; it's just a matter of finding the time, idea and headspace to do it. It's a pleasurable thing when it comes together and I try to make something in booklet format like this once a year or so. From the back cover:

"PROTESTER PORTRAITS is the latest in a series of publications I have created using details from discarded press photos in my own collection. In Fall 2021 I purchased 1,000 press photos contained in two auction lots in a quest to find more material for the exhibition and book Protest Grim Reapers. This trove yielded exactly two photos for that project, leaving me with the task of finding interesting uses for the rest. For this short booklet, I’ve selected photos of a number of costumed or performative protesters, framed in the manner of portraits—though most were part of larger multi-person compositions originally. I have retained the events or causes associated with each protester, as well as the year each photo was taken. I left out the photographer and newspaper credits, however, as these photos—and the way they are used in this booklet—deviate quite heavily from their original function."

#Public Collectors #Publications #Public Collectors Publications #Marc Fischer #Protesters #zine #Photozine #artist book

[publiccollectors]

Public Collectors publications #75

Protest Grim Reapers

$10.00 [PURCHASE]

Public Collectors publication #75 is another dive into the world of discarded and resold press photo archives. Protest Grim Reapers reproduces details from 27 press photos spanning from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Where available, the stories behind each photo are included. From the back cover:

The grim reaper is an enduring figure at demonstrations. The reaper—or sometimes simply an angel of death—appears at protests for any cause where the gravity of a death figure feels appropriate. The reaper traditionally carries a scythe and wears a black hood and a skull mask or skull face paint, but sometimes the scythe is replaced with a different symbolic object. 

For the past four years I have been collecting press photos of grim reapers at protests against hunger, radioactive waste, animal abuse, the death penalty, the Vietnam war, the closing of a Chrysler plant, demands for clean air and water, restrictions on abortion and more. These older press photos are routinely sold on the secondary market by dealers that acquire the archives of newspapers, or others that have purged their file copies. The dates of these photos reflect the availability of darkroom prints and wirephotos, taken before digital photography became dominant at most news outlets. 

In recent years, the grim reaper has been in the news when people wearing this costume attended protests against keeping beaches and schools open during the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, the reaper tells spectators: ‘I am here because this is a matter or life or death for someone or something. I don’t want to be here, but because of you, your corporation, your politicians, or your crimes against humanity, my presence is justified. If this wasn’t deadly serious, I would have stayed at home or worn something else.’ 

— Marc Fischer / Public Collectors

#Public Collectors #Marc Fischer #Public Collectors Publications #Grim Reaper #Protest Grim Reapers #Death #Protest #Activism

[publiccollectors]

Public Collectors publications #68-74:

11x17: Issues #9-15

$14.00 [PURCHASE]

11x17 is a periodical made from a folded sheet of 11x17 inch paper, with a different theme or focus for each issue. It is edited, designed and published by Public Collectors. Public Collectors was founded by Marc Fischer in 2007 and is based in Chicago, Illinois.  Building on QUARANZINE—the single sheet publication that Public Collectors produced at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, 11x17 also uses a single sheet format but this time it's the larger tabloid format. The periodical will be released in sequential sets. Reprints are not planned and to preserve the surprise of opening each issue, only the front covers are shown. An indication of what's included in this set, from the insert card: 9: SUPERMARKET GRAFFITI by Natalia Rocafuerte: Consumer temples, defaced. 10: THE SLASHER FILM by Michael Peirson: showers you in blood, and then some. 11: MONTROSE DELI BULLETIN BOARD: So many bits of paper, so few different authors.  12: BURNING SHIPS (AND SOME ROBOTS): Highlights from a found sketchbook 13: PAPER-MASKED PROTESTERS: A simple face-concealing strategy loved by a single-sheet periodical

14: CONTINUOUS VIOLATION ALTERED DAILY: A dangerous development documented.  

15: POKEWEEDS, PLANTAINS, CREEPERS: Drawings by Philadelphia-based Alina Josan

#Public Collectors #Publications #11x17 #zine #artist book #artist periodical #RISO #Public Collectors Publications