Tender

Second Edition

Softcover with French fold jacket
166 pages, 80 plates
8 x 10 in / 203 x 254 mm
2024
ISBN 978-1-942953-72-2

First Edition

Softcover with dust jacket
160 pages, 80 plates
8 x 10 in. / 203 x 254 mm
Signed and numbered by the artist
Includes an original 4 x 6 inch / 102 x 152 mm print
2023
ISBN 978-1-942953-59-3

TBW Books 很高興能夠出版 《Tender》，這是藝術家 Carla Williams 的首部攝影專著。這些影像拍攝於 1984 年至 1999 年，Williams 長期將其私藏，直至今日才將其公開。《Tender》是一幅完整而個人的自畫像，描繪了一位年輕、酷兒、黑人女性如何在親密的空間裡探索自身的可能性。

Williams 18 歲時，就讀於普林斯頓大學並開始學習攝影。在《Tender》中，她拍攝黑白與彩色的人像，以自己的形象創造影像。她的視覺記憶同時受到攝影史上男性主導的經典作品影響，也來自童年時期父親色情收藏中發現的女性身影。透過自身的身體，她創造了自己從未見過的影像。

Williams 運用了 即時成像 Polaroid、35mm 以及 4x5 Type 55 大畫幅底片，這些格式讓她得以快速看到影像結果，進而持續嘗試自己的表達方式與身體形態。在這場與自身的親密對話中，她展現了每一種自我的可能性——挑釁的、俏皮的、感性的、溫柔的、強大的、冷酷的、魅惑的、憂鬱的、幽默的。《Tender》的照片充滿一位年輕藝術家的原始能量，她站在成人世界的門檻上，同時也探索著自身萌芽的性認同。

本書收錄藝術家 Carla Williams 的文章，並邀請學者 Dr. Mireille Miller-Young 撰寫專文，共同為這部作品提供更深入的視角與解讀。

TBW Books is pleased to present Tender, the first monograph by artist Carla Williams. Made in private between 1984 and 1999 and kept mostly to herself for more than thirty years, the images in Tender comprise a complete, personal self-portrait of a young, queer, Black woman intimately exploring the realm of her own possibility. When Williams was eighteen and studying photography at Princeton, she began making the black and white and color portraits in Tender to create pictures in her own image. Her mind was filled equally with the canonical images of the medium’s male-driven history and the posing women discovered during her youth in her father’s pornography collection. Using her own body, Williams created the portraits she had never seen before. Made with instant Polaroid 35mm and 4x5 type 55 film formats, Williams profited from the near instant result to continuously play with her own expression and form. An act of tender commune with herself, these are every version of the artist on full display: provocative, playful, sensual, gentle, powerful, mean, glamorous, forlorn, funny. The photographs in Tender are ignited with the raw energy of a young artist on the cusp of adulthood and her own burgeoning sexual identity. Included in the book are essays by the artist and scholar Dr. Mireille Miller-Young.

Winner of the 2023 Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award