Coffee-Table Notes

Since 2008 or thereabouts, MuseumsEtc has published more than 100 titles that fuse photography, social history and politics in a series of beautifully bespoke editions. This month sees the publication of three new books that sum up the quietly radical ethos of the Edinburgh based but avowedly internationalist independent imprint.   Jo Spence: The Unknown Recordings compiles transcripts of tapes made by the feminist writer and photographer that reveal an unflinching and at times painful look at Spence’s life and work as a low paid working class artist. The texts are accompanied by images taken in her cramped Islington flat that make for an intimate and unsettling self-portrait of one of the late twentieth century’s most singular of artists.   The Erasure of Palestine collects more than 80 images taken over three years by photographer Ahmad Al-Bazz of what remains of the hundreds of towns and villages depopulated and destroyed during the creation and expansion of Israel from 194...