Applicant by Jesse Reklaw

This is a great little book. It takes 5 or 10 minutes to read but it's something that you keep looking at again and again. And then you can't stop yourself from showing it to anyone who happens to be around. Published by Microcosm. Here's what they have to say about it:

“One night while rooting through the recycling bin for magazines, I found all the confidential Ph.D. applicant files for the biology department at an Ivy League university from the years 1965-1975. Stapled to many of the yellowed documents were photographs of the prospective students. They were treasures! I tore through the folders and rescued every portrait I could find. I had to have them. Only later did I realize I had to publish them”.

So begins the preface to Jesse Reklaw’s Applicant. A priceless time-bomb of pop culture, Reklaw serves a compelling and secret look into an impossibly lost era. The book collects photos from the 1970s paired with accompanying comments from employers and professors. The results are absurdist, confusing, often hilarious and disturbing.