[5] Before he turned 21 Mandel completed People in Cars and Myself: Timed Exposures among a number of conceptual photography projects, many of them self-published in book form that were later (2015) collected and re-published as a boxed edition of facsimile books and objects entitled Good 70s, edited by Mandel, Jason Fulford and Sharon Helgason Gallagher[6] The publication led to a recognition of his 1970s projects in two concurrent solo exhibitions, one at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)[5] and the other at Robert Mann Gallery in New York City, both in 2017.
The letters are real, but the dates fictional as they were written by Phillips specifically for the 2015 publication of the box set as a tongue in cheek contextualizing device describing her feelings about Mandel's works in progress while at the same time providing a running commentary on the Watergate scandal.
There was a measure of chance involved in making the photos as Mandel would identify a potential photographic opportunity, set up the tripod and camera and walk into the picture during the 10 second delay.
"[18] Paul Sorene on October 18, 2017, quotes Mandel in his Flashbak article, about his project where he regularly photographed a middle aged housewife who lived down the street from him in Santa Cruz, California in 1974.
[19] Boardwalk Minus Forty is a look back at life on the beach, created during the artist's time living in Santa Cruz, California while a student at the San Francisco Art Institute.
These included Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Harry Callahan, Minor White, Aaron Siskind, William Eggleston, Ed Ruscha, and John Szarkowski.
Evidence (1977) is "a book of photographs sourced from scientific, industrial, police, military and other archives", over one hundred of which across the USA they visited and scoured for material.
They appropriated images and text from postcards, illustrated books, and magazine advertisements, replacing traditional slogans with unclear messages and nonsensical symbols.
For Sultan and Mandel, the billboard evoked their media-rich hometown, Los Angeles, while offering a platform that could engage unsuspecting audiences in a typically passive and commercial context.
Working in the overlap of banal and bizarre, the artists manage to unhinge the public from their daily realities for a single moment, revealing the lurking possibility of something new.
[33] Sultan and Mandel's early forays into the poetics of the found image and its relation to the history of the photo book began in 1974, with their small publication How to Read Music in One Evening/A Clatworthy Catalog.
The wearing of religious clothing in public was banned, women's legal rights were expanded, and the Arabic alphabet was dropped in favor of Latin characters.
Lockdown Archive is comprised entirely of images that Mandel and Zakari pulled from the internet that were posted and re-posted by citizens and media alike to illustrate that day.
In public art, you expect something that’s very emblematic of the city— you know, you make some reference to how wonderful Tampa, Florida is as a destination—but in this case, I chose to focus on the experience of flying and, after 9/11, maybe how we are all a little bit more contemplative about what it means to get into an airplane.