I crammed myself into the miniature Ever Gold Gallery this past Thursday for the release party of Sandy Kim's self-titled debut book. Pushing awkwardly through the sweaty throng of teenaged revelers I found Jesse Pollock, longtime Fecal Face contributor and friend and the newly minted publisher of Unpiano Books. He looked nervous and very, very drunk.

Jesse Pollock

I can understand both. Drunk is easy. Nervous is adult and responsible. After all, he's just done the opposite of what publishers all over the world are doing: Jesse's taken a website and turned it into an imprint that publishes actual, physical books. You've got to be nervous about that shit. Jesse was handling it well. The release party was a success, even though most people never got any further than the front door and had to peer through the gallery's windows to see the prints and strain their ears over the sounds of O'Farrell Street to hear Girls play a set.

Girls

Earlier in the evening

I think Jesse's move has paid off fairly well. Sandy's book is beautifully designed and printed. The photos themselves are often anything but.

In a brief introduction, Matthew Schnipper writes that "like many young photographers, Sandy Kim has made her friends her subjects..." The photos, he continues, are "honest portraits of much of her daily life." This is indeed the case. Her photos are the document of a young photographer-the stand-in for any young person, really-finding out who she is. And as such, Sandy's photos often amount to nothing more than intense bouts of navel gazing, but who hasn't done that? Who hasn't looked at each moment in her life with intense fascination and wonder, believing every second to be worthy of documentation? In casting a wide net over these moments, Sandy often succeeds in showing true, honest, and fleeting life-the kind of life in which we invest every moment with significance, and are frequently very drunk.

I think, though, that for all the successes in the book, there are an equal number of mistakes. Included in Sandy Kim are moments of sublime beauty, private moments we've each experienced for ourselves, bathed in deep afternoon light, but likewise you'll find unremarkable portraits, narcissistic self-portraits, and point and shoot banality. Maybe, though, that's the point. If this is a true document, then we have to give the boring and the mundane room at the table as well.

In all, Sandy Kim has a mostly-keen eye. The pure, sanguine moments she's caught-the birth-canal red of a midnight refrigerator raid; awkward, bloody sex laughed off when the flash pops; explosive minutes of fevered activity set against hours of crushing boredom-are what we want to hold onto in our own lives. The overarching metaphor in her photos, blood, is an apt one.

Unpaino Books and Sandy Kim have made a valiant first effort.

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Buy the book $20 {moscomment}