Conceived and edited by artist Slavica Perkovic, this book for Lewis Baltz presents letters she asked Baltzs friends to write to him without seeing the images he had secretly made while teaching in Venice. (Baltz had told all he had stopped photographing; he had in fact continued to do so, walking the empty Lido beach to the Grand Hotel des Bains, then closed for renovation.) The first book of new material by Baltz since his passing in 2014, For Lewis Baltz. 8 + 38 texts. 14 images is shaped by the continuing resonance of his oeuvre, his absence and the complex notion of self.

Born in Newport Beach, California, Lewis Baltz (1945-2014) studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and Claremont Graduate School. Baltz came to prominence with the New Topographics movement of the 1970s, and his awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Charles Pratt Memorial Award. Baltz's work is held in many major museum collections. His books with Steidl include 89-91, Sites of Technology (2007), WORKS (2010), The Prototype Works (2011) and Candlestick Point (2011).