Slab Dwellers Book with Archival Print
$175.00
BOOK INFO
Limited edition of 100 books, including an 8×10 archival pigment print, both signed and dated.
Hardcover, 8×10 in. / 152 Pages / 105 Images on premium paper. $175.00
Shipping and Handling included for lower 48 USA States.
Other locations, contact: ray@carofano.com
Slab Dwellers, a documentary on the denizens of an alternative community known as Slab City, the last free place in America, a squatter’s paradise. It provides the foundation for this unlikely, eccentric community of various outsiders – drifters, “snowbirds”, artists, addicts, homeless and others – a community of independent, authentic individuals seeking freedom from a broad spectrum of perceived restraints from high rents and taxes to tyrannical rules and regulations, to the pressures and harassment felt by the underclasses. Welcome to “Hellhole” and my current photo essay, Slab Dwellers.
Ray Carofano has been a professional photographer for over 50 years, His work has been published internationally in numerous books and photographic journals
Carofano’s photographs have been widely exhibited in the United States and abroad including solo exhibitions at Fototeca de Cuba, Havana, Cuba, the Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego, CA, and Galeria de Arte Fotografo, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Fototeca de Cuba, Nat’l Archives, Havana, Cuba, Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, and the renowned Gernsheim Collection at the U. of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, among others.
Description
Crisscrossing California deserts for nearly two decades, driving thousands of miles and shooting thousands of images, Ray Carofano has been documenting the present as past in the desert of exurban Los Angeles. Portrait-like images render inhabitants, architectures, and utility with equal passion and objectivity. Broken Dreams, a serial investigation of abandoned dwellings, precedes Slab Dwellers, an intimate portrait of Slab City’s inhabitants.
The squatter’s paradise known, as Slab City is located on a barren stretch of Southern California’s Sonoran Desert badlands situated between the Salton Sea and Chocolate Mountain, an active military bombing range. The slabs are the last remnants of a World War II training base and provide the foundation for this unlikely, eccentric community of various outsiders – drifters, “snowbirds”, artists, addicts, and others – a community that accommodates extremes and tolerates a kind of freedom that expands the margins of society.
Slab City is an eclectic collective of independent, authentic individuals seeking freedom from a broad spectrum of perceived restraints from high rents and taxes to tyrannical rules and regulations, to the pressures and harassment felt by the underclass. Anarchic at its core, and infrastructure-free – no utilities, rubbish removal, sewage system, fresh water, electricity, etc. – Slab City endures in the harsh desert environment, barters its way through poverty, and boasts a cyber café, library, golf course, and performance space, all thanks to socialist principles of giving based on ability, and receiving based on need. To many, the enclave could well represent a post-apocalyptic vacation zone.
Limited edition of 100 books, including an 8x10 archival pigment print,
both signed and dated.
Hardcover with 152 pages and 105 images on premium paper.
Introduction by Ron Linden, essay by Scarlet Cheng and photo captions by
Ray Carofano and Scarlet Cheng.
Book with archival pigment print $175.00
Book only $75.00 CA residents add sales tax 9.5%
Shipping and Handling, U.S. Flat Rate $15.00
For more information, contact ray@carofano.com
