Photograph by John Gossage, from The Thirty-two Inch Ruler.

Washington is one of the world’s most photographed and photogenic cities, and the subject of many photo books: from glossy souvenirs that never stray far from postcard views, to more local-minded work by the likes of Carol Highsmith, who documented the decay and restoration of the Willard Hotel, and the late Fred Maroon. Soon to join the latter ranks will be our DCist Exposed magazine — but while you eagerly await that, a new book by local photographer John Gossage, the subject of a recent show at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, as well as a DCist interview, will more than whet your apetite for the city beyond the postcard.

The subtitle to the first part of Gossage’s remarkable two-for-one photo volume The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler/Map of Babylon is simply “Some photographs by John Gossage.” The sentiment serves the photographer’s modest visuals, as his images frequently seem uneventful and even boring (if not quite in the vein of Boring Postcards, the theme well-mined by his friend and fellow photographer Martin Parr). But like the films of Ozu, there is a quiet intensity to the Gossage vision that rewards patient and open eyes.

The work in The Thirty-two Inch Ruler was born on September 12, 2001, the day Gossage became aware that then-Secretery of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was his Kalorama neighbor. Gossage talked to the Washington City Paper about this discovery in an article titled “The Devil in Kalorama,” but the resulting monograph steers clear of the sensationalism that title would promise. Steidl is one of the premier publishers of photo books and this is a typically well-crafted title, brilliantly designed in ways that go beyond the fine printing. Cyrptic color bands mark off sections of images, and the dust jacket is ingeniously reversible, each side printed with a cover for the corresponding section of the book.