ICE

This conceptual book presents itself as a true time capsule, containing a singular vision of the United States frozen in a specific era. A unique collection of ice merchandisers, with their cold and enigmatic aesthetic, resonates with the increasingly heated news and social climate of the 1960s. The photographs, built on strong contrasts, create a duality that structures a narrative intensifying from page to page. An open-ended narrative unfolds — not necessarily linear, but shaped through minimalist textual fragments that punctuate the images, offering just enough guidance to suggest a thread without ever imposing one.
The ice merchandisers are placed alongside newspaper pages, as if to emphasize the absurdity of their coexistence, though one that was very real in magazines of the time. Out of this repetition emerges a sense of strangeness: these objects, deeply ordinary within the American everyday landscape, ultimately acquire an almost extraordinary dimension.

About Alberto Artbooks
Founded in 2023 by French-German artist Thomas Block Humery, Alberto Artbooks is an independent publishing platform based in Paris, operating at the intersection of pho-
Photography, essays, and art objects.
More than an editorial platform, it is a space for storytelling where the book becomes a territory of experience, a place where images, text fragments, and archives interact to create intimate and open-ended narratives. Each publication is rooted in a sober, precise, and deeply embodied aesthetic.