powerHouse Books is pleased to announce the August 2010 release of
Suburban Knights: A Return to the Middle Ages
Photographs by E. F. Kitchen
Introduction by Leo Braudy
“I’ll be honest, I see a lot of people join because their real life sucks. You can come here and be anybody.”
—Lord Duncan the Monster
Whether they’re bored office stiffs, housewives, or disgruntled war vets, the armor-clad members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) like to get beat up the old-fashioned way. Boasting more than 30,000 members worldwide, and over 16 “Kingdoms” in the United States alone, the eclectic eccentrics of the SCA participate in a variety of rigorous medieval battle simulations. Suburban Knights is a series of portraits of these 21st-century warriors, in costume and in character as their knightly alter egos.
From 2003 to 2005, internationally renowned photographer E. F. Kitchen photographed and interviewed the fighters of the SCA on location at their battles. Kitchen’s unique approach dispensed with technologically sophisticated cameras, and she instead used a tripod-mounted, 8x10 bellows camera with exclusively handmade and antique lenses. The results are appropriately hoary, sepia-tone images of these fierce warriors lost in time.
Suburban knights willfully escape from the 21st-century and into the realm of the SCA, where one can come face to face with the formidable armor and lance of a knight calling himself “Nissan Maxima.” Warriors are icons for an idealistic code of behavior extolling power and virtue. The men and women of the SCA capture a bit of this past glory for themselves, and while a majority of the portraits obscure the faces of these knights, under their thick armor, their features couldn’t be made clearer.
E.F. Kitchen’s photographs are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art among others. Her work has been published in books including The Greatest Alum Covers That Never Were (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, 2003), and Flora Photographica (Simon & Schuster, 1991), as well as periodicals such as the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Angeles Magazine, and View Camera. She is based in Venice, CA.
Leo Braudy is a professor, and the author of From Chivalry to Terrorism (Vintage, 2005), and The Frenzy of Renown(Vintage, 1997), among other books. He is also the coeditor of the Film Theory and Criticism anthology. His most recent book is On the Waterfront (British Film Institute, 2008) in the BFI Film Classics series, and he is currently working on a book about the intertwined history of Hollywood and the Hollywood sign
PHOTOGRAPHY / MIDDLE AGES / ARMS & ARMOR
Hardcover, 10 x 12 inches, 96 pages, 59 tritone photographs
ISBN 978-1-57687-536-0 $35.00
EVENTS:
Suburban Knights Photography Exhibitions:
July 14 – September 6
The Powerhouse Arena, NYC
September 23 through October 2
Louis Stern Fine Arts, Los Angeles
October 21 – November 14
Central California Museum of Art, Paso Robles, CA
Book Events and Receptions:
July 22
E.F. Kitchen in conversation with Charles Desmarais, Director, Brooklyn Museum
The Powerhouse Arena, NYC
August 26
Museum of Photographic Arts, Bookstore, San Diego
August 30
E.F. Kitchen in conversation with Leo Braudy
Art Catalogues at LACMA, Los Angeles
September 28
Book signing and exhibition reception
Louis Stern Fine Arts, Los Angeles
October 29
Book signing and exhibition reception
Central California Museum of Art, Paso Robles, CA