Pure, uncompromising and unapologetic artist books are all too rare in mainstream publishing. To overcome this, the irrepressible Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates has set up his own imprint, Black Madonna Press, as just one more weapon in an arsenal at the service of his socially engaged ventures. Gates was granted access by Johnson Publishing Company (the pioneering African-American publishers of magazines Jet and Ebony) to a treasure trove of archival photographs, from which he has fashioned Black Madonna in tandem with an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel that is an ode to the figure in her many forms. Encountering these raw images, including annotated contact sheets, out of their original context challenges the reader to reconsider the very process of their production and dissemination.