Plush

Plush is Marilyn Minter's first artist's book, a direct, close-up set of photographs devoted to a single subject that had largely vanished from popular imagery: female pubic hair.

Minter has described the project's premise plainly: in the nineteenth century, "plush" was slang for pubic hair, and she wanted to make beautiful images of a subject that had become taboo, asking models of every race and color to grow theirs out before she photographed and later painted from the resulting images. The book gathers those photographs in a softcover bound in bright pink paper-wrappers, with the title set in bold black type across the cover. It was released on December 3, 2014, at the Miami Beach Edition Hotel, in a signed edition of 500 copies plus 10 deluxe copies.

Plush also marks the end of an era: it was the last book published by Fulton Ryder, the secretive Upper East Side bookstore and imprint run by artist Richard Prince, before it closed in 2014. For Minter, better known for her enamel paintings and photographs of glamour, desire and the body's messier textures, the book extended a career-long interest in subjects that make viewers look twice.