Records

Eric Doeringer’s remake of Ed Ruscha’s 1971 classic Records, and a companion in method to his other appropriations.

Ruscha’s original reproduced thirty records from his own collection, each spread pairing an album cover on the left with a photograph of the bare vinyl LP on the right. To make his version, Doeringer (b. 1974) tracked down copies of every record Ruscha had pictured and re-photographed them in the same sequence — but the two books are pointedly not identical: his copies carry their own histories of wear, price stickers, and doodles, and the labels differ in mono/stereo pressings and reissues.

The result turns a reproduction into a meditation on collecting, difference, and the impossibility of a true copy. It belongs to the now-sizeable genre of Ruscha-homage artists’ books — Doeringer has also remade Some Los Angeles Apartments, Real Estate Opportunities, and Stained. Self-published under his Copycat Publications imprint in an edition of 1,000, signed on the title page softcover, 72 pages, 7 × 5.5 in.