BILL WOOD'S BUSINESS by edited by Diane Keaton and Marvin Heiferman - 2008

New York: International Center of Photography // Steidl, 2008. First Edition. Hard Cover. Oblong Quarto. Pictorial boards; contents clean and binding sound; light edgewear including some softening at the spine ends and corners; this copy has been inscribed on the half title to Jim Long (a fine art photographer, painter, and video artists whose works have been exhibited and published internationally) from Keaton: “Jim! Some business Huh!! L. Diane Keaton.” Long met Keaton through a mutual friend, Mary Sue Milliken, celebrity chef and restauranteur and her husband Josh Schweitzer, well known LA architect. While most known for her distinguished acting career, Keaton is a published photographer as well as a noted editor/curator of photography. In a 2007 review in New York Review of Books, Larry McMurtry comments on Keaton's uncanny eye as a curator of old and/or overlooked collections of photography. In 2008 she was recognized by the International Center of Photography with the ICP Trustees Award, noting that “[Keaton] has long pursued her interest in the photographic medium. Several collections of her own photographs have been published, and she has edited or co-edited multiple collections of vintage work, commonly focusing on photographers who are forgotten or ignored. The latter include Still Life (1983), Mr. Salesman (1993), Local News (1999), and her forthcoming collection of images from Fort Worth, Texas, Bill Wood's Business, to be published in conjunction with the ICP exhibition of the same name in May 2008.” This ICP recognition is no small achievement. Her 1980 monograph, Reservations, is a surprising collection of images of hotel lobbies resonating with melancholy which seem to be, in the words of McMurtry, “variations on the nature of emptiness.” This is a nice association from one photographer to another. Signed and inscribed by Keaton