“Marc Asnin has turned his 31-year obsession documenting his godfather’s life into an extraordinary book. It is an intimate portrait of Uncle Charlie’s turbulent life. The pictures are Marc’s, the words are by Charlie, who is intellectually brilliant. It is a raw, often confrontational but at the same time touching look at life lived on the edge. A confrontational portrait of a dysfunctional family’s life in Brooklyn at a certain time, it is fascinating, beautiful, touching & upsetting. I love the way pictures & words are used to make it an utterly mesmerizing work of art in book form.”
—Elisabeth Biondi, photo editor, curator and former Visuals editor of The New Yorker
“Tell Eugene Smith to make a family album and you might end up with something like Marc Asnin’s Uncle Charlie.”
My three-decade long study of my Uncle Charlie’s gradual descent into addiction and madness was released to the world on October 15. The book, whose cover of a hauntingly-dark portrait almost dares the reader to open, consists of 408 pages, 220 black and white images and 40,000 words of text, culled from 100 hours of recorded audio. It may be purchased online at Contrasto and Amazon.
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The thirty outstanding photobooks shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards were announced today in The PhotoBook Review 003, Aperture’s biannual publication.
Hi Marc,
It’s happening that on a train going to Verona I’m reading this article about your Contrasto book Uncle Charlie.(courious the book was made there)..the few images that the new replicates are of immediate attraction to me, it might be in the beginning because of a curious resemblance of your uncle with punk rock hero iggy pop; but going further in the reading what hits me is the poetic of your chronicle, the raw impact of the images, your point of view in contrast to your uncle’s quotes. It’s not important to me if the story it’s true or false, it’s the anti-rethorical way you tell it that matters to me. This is going to be a nice self-present the next bookshop I meet.
Thank you for your time
Best
Michele
