Charles H. Traub

Charles H. Traub was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1945. Known for his ironic gaze and color photos, he was the founder of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago in 1976. In the late 80s, he launched the distinguished MFA Photo, Video and Related Media program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, in which he is still the chair. He has been represented by the Frumkin, Gitterman and Light Galleries in New York. He has more than 60 groups and solo exhibitions to his credit, and his works are part of private and museum collections around the world. Traub has had 17 of his books published. In 2020, he published with Lazy Dog Dolce Via Nova, a vivid look at eccentricities and character of Italian life in early 1980s.

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  • Looking Good
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    Looking Good EN

    € 38,00

    The book is available for pre-order and will ship from July 2026.

    Looking Good is a compendium of Charles Traub’s photographs on the nature of wandering and the gaze itself, a central preoccupation of his art.

    It brings together images from the mid-1970s to the present. As George Sand wrote, “the secret of the study of life lies in learning to use one’s eyes,” and Traub has pursued this study through more than fifty years of photography. People watch each other, watch Traub, stare into the void, wander in search of something to catch their attention. These are mostly candid photographs that capture the nuance of the fact that we are always in the act of observing.

    What you discover, looking the way Traub does, is that in some sense we are all performers, aware or unaware, putting on different faces in the moment we are seen and see others. “The content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash, it is enormously momentary.” (Willem de Kooning)

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    Photographs
    Charles H. Traub

    Text
    Natasha A. Chuk

    Editing
    Yan Jin

    Book design
    Bunker

    21 × 28 cm
    120 pages
    Hardcover
    English

    Isbn 978-88-98030-94-1
    Available from July 2026

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  • Photography Starter Kit -25% Off
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    Photography Starter Kit IT/EN

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    Original price was: € 160,00.Current price is: € 120,00.

    With Dolce Via Nova we are in the early 1980s on a journey from Milan to Marsala. The book recounts the journey of Charles H. Traub, guided by Luigi Ghirri, during which the American photographer composed an ironic and spontaneous portrait of an Italy that today we cannot say whether it really existed.

    The Picture Man recounts the ‘film life’ of Gusmano Cesaretti, one of the most authoritative voices of early American street photography. The book traces it thanks to an interview conducted in 2018 by young photographer and creative director Stefano Lemon

    Invisible is a 168-page book with over 100 photographs. It is the restitution of meticulous archive research from which many previously unpublished shots by Franco Fontana, the undisputed master of colour, emerged.

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  • Charles H. Traub Fan Kit -15% Off
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    Charles H. Traub Fan Kit EN

    Original price was: € 94,00.Current price is: € 79,90.

    Discover the master of American street photography .

    This selection includes the two titles of Charles H. Traub published by Lazy Dog. «Dolce Via Nova» is the diary for images of a journey made by Traub in Italy in the 80s, a collection that represents an Italy that has almost dissapered.

    «Skid Row» is a reportage, unpublished for half a century, of the urban undergrowth of America of the 70s. The black and white portraits in this volume depict the homeless of Chicago and New York, with an essay by philosopher Tom Huhn.

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    EN

    € 40,00

    The volume is a photographic testimony of the American urban fabric of the late 70’s. Charles H. Traub creates a series of portraits, depicting street tenants of Uptown Chicago and Bowery New York. 

    The author declares: «I wanted to see, to try to touch at least with my camera the experience of loss». The intent was not to satisfy a sort of voyeurism, but to witness the dignity and humanity of the homeless. They were very different from the contemporary ones; today they are no longer the result of individual destinies but of great social disparities. 

    A famous book by Nelson Algren, A Walk on the Wild Side, wondered «why lost people sometimes become greater human beings than those who have never been in their lives». Skid Row responds by highlighting a nobility that unites urban communities, even in the worst moments. 

    Unfortunately, this sensitivity, due to gentrification and indifference, is now systematically suppressed in favor of a transformation made by urban chic. 

    It is therefore even more necessary to recount these experiences, so as to recall the fundamental role of the “lost nobles” in the construction of the historical identity of a city. 

    —

    Text by Tom Huhn
    Book design Bunker

    21 × 26 cm
    112 pages
    Hardcover
    English
    Isbn 978-88-98030-59-0
    First published June 2023

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  • Dolce Via Nova Out of Stock
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    Dolce Via Nova EN

    € 54,00

    Early 1980s. From Milan to Marsala, Charles H. Traub composes an ironic and spontaneous portrait of an Italy that today we cannot say whether it really existed. The candid gaze of the American photographer immediately captures the idiosyncrasies of the Bel Paese: laziness, the unbearable and wonderful weight of history, the warm light of the countryside and the vivid light of the sea, the carefree and delightful life of the provinces. Bright blues, reds and yellows engulf the poses and gestures of strangers, transformed into affectionate archetypal caricatures, because Traub has in mind the work of another great master: Federico Fellini.

    On his travels in Italy, it is Luigi Ghirri who is his guide: the two do not speak the same language, but share a form of sincere curiosity for what surrounds them and the ability to observe reality with ever new eyes. So it was that in 2012 Traub recognised a lost magic in the photographs from thirty years earlier and decided to make a series out of them. Published for the first time in 2013, Dolce Via Nova renews the original sequence with a wide selection of previously unpublished photographs, edited by Giulia Zorzi and Francesco Ceccarelli, and transforms the book with a new design by Bunker. An essay by poet Luigi Ballerini and a dialogue with Gus Powell complete the work.

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    Texts by Luigi Ballerini, Gus Powell
    Book design Bunker

    21 × 26 cm
    144 pages
    Hardback
    English
    Isbn 978-88-98030-49-1
    First published June 2022

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