Summer always brings its own rhythm — slower days (no wonder I haven’t blogged in a while — well, that and Covid), shorter nights, and, if you’re lucky, the kind of finds that make the summer of ’25 worth remembering. It might be a little dorky to call this a “heatwave of collecting”… but hey, I’m a dork. So here are five things I’d buy if I were you: rare books, unexpected paperbacks, and a photograph that hit me like a favorite song — a mix of poetry, raw street photography, jazz memoir, and pin-up iconography. Together, they make a strange but fitting portrait of what interests me most lately.
Charles Bukowski — Epos: A Quarterly of Poetry (1962)
I’m gonna call being a Bukowski completist a near-impossible mountain to climb. Owning all the BSP titles an expensive task. But what about making a run for the first 10 chapbooks? Still kinda expensive…but doable I say! Bukowski’s second book, tucked inside a “little” called Epos that came straight outta Crescent City, Florida. Five (or so) years before the beautiful Black Sparrow titles and at the start of what I’ll call “The Cult of Buk,” Charles Bukowski was hustling poems and growing his audience with small journals like this one. As the title says, this special issue featured his poems and drawings. Is this the point he starts pushing past the underground mimeo world?
This copy inscribed in big, bold Buk handwriting from 1969: “Early poems, early screams.” That’s the kind of thing only he could scrawl without irony. He even threw in a quick drawing inside the cover / endpaper, as if to remind you that poetry was just one of the ways he made marks on paper. For a Bukowski collector, I’ll go as far as to say this is a real score — not just because it’s scarce, but with its signature and bold drawing, it carries the whole arc of the title.
Mike Disfarmer — Photographs
Disfarmer was one of those small-town photog kooks who only makes sense in hindsight. He set up his studio on Main Street in Heber Springs, Arkansas, and spent decades shooting portraits of farmers, families, and the local kids with his no-frills, plain-backdrop style. No props, no glamour, no “rules” — just faces staring straight into the camera, caught somewhere between dignity and awkwardness. At the time, nobody thought twice about them. Now? They feel like haunted little snapshots of America’s heartland, unpolished and unforgettable. And if you’re thinking maybe I should jump in a car, road-trip it to Heber Springs, and knock on random doors with a pocketful of cash to see which families are sellers — you’re too late.
The Photographs book from Twin Palms is where a lot of collectors (myself included) first really learned — they fell — for him. BTW I love Twin Palms / Twelvetrees. As with all their titles, the production is second to none: heavy stock, deep black-and-whites, binding that feels like it was built to outlast us. Every page has weight, every portrait space to breathe. For photobook collectors, this one’s deceptively simple but ends up being indispensable — the kind of book you pull down when you want to remember that America was never as simple as you might imagine. Did I mention this title is long out-of-print?
Garry Winogrand — Winogrand Color (Limited Edition, Twin Palms)
Most know Winogrand for his black-and-whites — New York streets, airports, political rallies — where every picture feels like everything in his frame is seconds away from falling apart. Or coming together. But Winogrand Color is something else entirely. Working in Kodachrome (because who doesn’t love Kodachrome!?), he caught the same restless energy — but through a completely different lens. It’s America in full saturation, and like all color work, it hits differently. If his black-and-white images feel like history, his color pictures feel almost like life still in progress.
And then there’s the book itself — another amazing Twin Palms / Twelvetrees production. Here I go again. They didn’t just throw the slides into a binding; they made something special. Heavy pages, big reproductions, and the kind of design that makes you linger. The copy I’m flexing here is one of the slipcased limiteds, and it comes with a tipped-in photograph of Women Walking right on the slipcase. That little detail makes it feel even more alive, as if The Man himself just dropped a print in your hands. For collectors, this isn’t just a photo book — it’s a Big Book, and proof that even in color, Winogrand could bend the world to his eye.
Mezz Mezzrow & Bernard Wolfe — Really the Blues (Dell Paperback)
Mezz Mezzrow wasn’t just a clarinet player — he was a hustler, a self-mythologizer, and a bridge between the jazz underground and the mainstream. In other words, my kinda dude. This memoir, co-written with Bernard Wolfe, reads like one long riff: Harlem rent parties, Louis Armstrong, reefer smoke thick enough to choke, and a life lived half in shadows, half in neon. It’s one of the first real “insider” accounts of jazz culture, written in a hipster slang so authentic it practically swings off the page. Oh yeah Daddy-O!
And then there’s the copy I’m offering — the Dell paperback, complete with its lurid, oversized type screaming “TRUE… SHOCKING.” This is where literature meets pulp, and the combination is irresistible. Collecting paperbacks is on the rise — maybe it’s the price point, maybe it’s the “everything vintage” thang…maybe it’s just the sheer thrill of holding a book that feels like it’s lived a dozen lives before it landed in your hands. For me, it’s about the object itself: cheap paper, wild cover design, the promise of something lurid and forbidden between the covers. Really the Blues is all that and more — a cult jazz memoir hiding inside the skin of dime-store paperback sleaze.
Bettie Page — “Devil Girl” by Bunny Yeager
If Bukowski was the poet of America’s underbelly and Mezzrow was its jazz hustler, then Bettie Page was its grinning, winking id. Nobody has ever mixed innocence and danger quite like her. In this original, silver gelatin Bunny Yeager picture “Devil Girl” shot, Bettie looks like she just stepped out of a pulp comic — horns on her head, tail curling behind her, smile wide enough to let you know she’s in on the joke. It’s camp, it’s kitsch, it’s sex appeal with a wink.
This particular print is one of those pieces that stops you in your tracks, partly because it’s Bettie (always a showstopper), and partly because it’s Yeager at her most imaginative. Developed in the 80’s, stamped on verso, and signed by Bunny Yeager. The composition? Pure mid-century fantasy — playful menace wrapped up in satin and a smile with horns. For pin-up and picture collectors, Bettie is ground zero, and for Bettie collectors, Yeager is the high priestess behind the lens. The “Devil Girl” image hits both marks at once. Call it kitsch, call it art, call it Americana, or an investment — but whatever you call it, this one’s the devil you’ll gladly make a deal with.
