Paper Airplanes: The Collections of Harry Smith

"A charming yet cantankerous pauper in life, in death Harry Smith has become nothing less than a subterranean superstar," Paper Airplanes: The Collections of Harry Smith editors John Klacsmann and Andrew Lampert write in their introduction to this charming yet fascinating new title from J & L Books and Anthology Film Archives—one of our favorite Holiday Gift Books of 2015. "His myriad accomplishments as a filmmaker, artist, musicologist, anthropologist, and occultist are celebrated by a range of disparate communities, most of which are invested in him for entirely different reasons. Since his death, a slew of retrospective music releases, film preservations, books, screenings, and gallery exhibitions have firmly established him as a key figure of the 20th-century American underground. While Smith’s entire body of work is incomparable and justly celebrated, he is in many ways equally infamous for the many abandoned and abolished projects left in his wake, including those that were lost thanks to unpaid bills, irate landlords, numerous moves, bad moods, and self-destructive outbursts." To read more on Smith and his collections of Paper Airplanes and String Figures, continue to their recent interview with Madeline Weisburg.