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SHIPPING MID-NOVEMBER 2024

ISBN 978-1-59005-604-2
Hardcover, 11.5x13 inches, 68 pages, 42 duotone plates.

RJ Muna’s photographic series, Fleeting Gestures, captures various images of birds mid-flight. Muna embraces the camera as a machine and its indifference to what it takes a picture of. With variations in the exposure, he creates intentionally blurred abstractions of individual birds that capture the essence of their motion. Varying levels of clarity create an interplay between the photographs that requires the viewer to see the whole selection in order to interpret what each image conveys. The velocity of flight creates an array of gestures, minimal in detail, that range from the upward ascent of the feathered edge of a wing to the curvilinear expressionist stroke of a horizon.

RJ Muna is an acclaimed photographer based in San Francisco, with a background in fine art, studio photography, and dance, and he is widely known for his innovative and evocative photography. Muna began his professional career shooting street demonstrations in in his hometown of Berkeley at age 16, in the waning years of the Vietnam era. After graduating with a degree in Art from San Jose State University, he would later go onto achieve over 150 national and international awards in his career as a commercial photographer, most notably receiving the Lucie award in 2003.

His film work has been featured and screened in many festivals including Art Basel Switzerland, Dance on Camera Festival, Dance Camera West, and the San Francisco Dance Film Festival.

Beautifully printed in duotone on Korean art paper, Fleeting Gestures features an accordion binding with cloth covers, presented in a raven-black cloth slipcase. The first edition of this exquisite artist’s book is limited to 750 copies.

“RJ Muna has created photographic versions of these invented glimpses, pictures that offer unrelated elements with an implausible balance, shifting back and forth between reality and surreality. These pictures of ‘indecisive moments’ led him to go further to consider the kind of glimpses that are entirely within the mind, seen only (and only occasionally) by the mind's eye.” — Owen Edwards