Pop Life (Hardcover)

POP LIFE treats the often-discarded bottle cap with the reverence of art historical paintings and sculptures, inviting readers to appreciate the beauty and context embedded in these tiny works of Americana art. This unique book unveils the intricate graphic design, historical significance, and thought-provoking stories behind the bottle caps of long-gone American beverage companies, offering an unprecedented look at a piece of metal that holds so much history and yet is rarely explored in such vivid detail. The caps of renowned collectors including Todd Selbert and Ron Small in Connecticut, Barry Oremland in Massachusetts, and Phil Pfeiffer in Nebraska are featured within the pages.

The first side of the double-sided book—POP—moves through a delightful and surprising array of Americana themes: old school Disney characters, sports clubs, olde tavern mischief, devils, angels, and the Harvey Ball smiley face. It serves as a historical document of these tiny works of art. Flip the book over and now you have LIFE, where cheeky, hopeful, raunchy, and politically punning stories and jokes abound, as Griffith uses the bottle cap brand names themselves to create sophisticated yet Dad Joke-y wordplay puns The interactive production of POP LIFE generates “a laugh-out-loud / did you get that?” game activity the whole family can enjoy.

Through these visual narratives, readers experience the interplay of American optimism and charm within an era when thousands of independent bottlers across the U.S. vied for consumer attention with their own distinct designs and branding. To round out the book, collector Todd Selbert contributes a text that speaks to the bottle-cap collector lifestyle.

Christopher Griffith is a multidisciplinary artist and photographer who has threaded the needle between the world of art and commerce for over 30 years. He started his photography career in London and Paris having abandoned a PhD in Genetics at University College London in the mid 1990’s with assignments for BLITZ, The Face, VOGUE Paris and multiple international ELLE magazines alongside advertising campaigns for Issey Miyake, Trussardi, and a long standing relationship with ETRO.

Griffith published his first monograph STATES (powerHouse Book, 2001), a minimalist survey of the detritus characteristic of post-war American motorama; followed by FALL (powerHouse Books, 2004), a hyper macro studio of the colors of autumn in the American Northeast; and finally BLOWN (Auditorium Editions, 2009), an abstract study of blown out tires collected from the highways across the United States.

In POP LIFE, Griffith has returned to a common theme in his personal work that explores that which lies discarded and forgotten and raises it to the level of a visual icon purely through the lens of photographic high fidelity. He photographs these small disposable artifacts with the same attention and care as normal reserved for an expensive watch or pieces of jewelry. The result is a perception of images that far exceeds that of holding the object in your hand. Simple bottle caps are transformed into big, bold, and beautifully texture objects that are confusingly appealing in beauty…even though they are still just disposal bottle caps!

Todd Selbert settled in New York City in 1966 after serving in the army, getting a degree in English at Parsons, and selling soap for Procter & Gamble. Selbert entered the world of advertising as a Media Buyer for Grey, then as an Account Director, eventually landing as a copywriter at BBDO. He has sidelined as a Compilation Producer and Line Writer for multiple record companies, most notably for artists including Stan Kenton, Shorty Rogers, Art Pepper, Johnny Richards, Chet Baker, Carmell Jones, and Nils Lindberg. Selbert is an avid reggae, dub, and jazz aficionado. Selbert has collected soda memorabilia for almost eight decades and has one of the most coveted collections of vintage and rare bottle caps in the world. After calling New York City his home for over 50 years, he now lives in Greenwich, Connecticut.