One Day at a Time

One Day at a Time

Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari are artists who have produced important bodies of work independently and as collaborators. In the 1970s, Mandel created and self-published 'Myself: Timed Exposures' and 'Seven Never Before Published Photographs of Edward Weston', both now regarded as important and influential artist books. He also collaborated with photographer Larry Sultan on the book 'Evidence', which is widely considered to be one of the classic books of twentieth century photography. Zakari, a Turkish-born graphic designer, recently broke new ground with the publication of her visually stunning cyber-journal 'Web Affairs'. Together, Mandel and Zakari have produced 'The Turk and the Jew', and have in the past several years been working on a project about the public image of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in contemporary Turkey. The cover image is from an even more recent body of work which combines Mandel's skill as a photographic appropriationist with Zakari's talent as a text-and-image artist. Utilizing the long since discredited tenets of Eugenics, the books author, a mid twentieth-century Kabbalist and outcast disciple of Jung, attempts to explain the obsessive-compulsive narcissism of a former patient. Curiously, and in contrast to to the solid design of the cover, Dr. Mandelbaum's theoretical ramblings strike one as being vague to the point of emptiness, and tend to leave the reader feeling uncomfortably blank.