Just before Christmas I got a couple of wonderful things in the post. First of all Harvey Benge
sent me a copy of his books, Paris Diary and Truth and Various Deceptions
Truth and Various Deceptions is a loose-knit collection of pictures which are variously truthful and deceptive - a sketchbook of consumptive semi-consciousness perhaps, a series of unrevealed revelations?
Paris Diary portrays a mechanistic world of tarmac and half-formed technology where photographic references add to an air of comfortable alienation. French alienation perhaps; I am not what I am and I am what I am not.
On the cover is a portrait of Aron Morel wearing an Edgar Allan Poe badge. The same day I got Harvey's books, I received the above card of Poe with a raven on his shoulder. Next day I'm with a Baltimore Ravens fan telling me how they got their name, and that led me naturally to Masahisa Fukase's Ravens.
So it's all about photobooks and everything is coming round full circle. The link on Fukase appeared in the BJP, which is where you'll find my feature on new photobook publishers in the January issue. Which makes everything come round full circle again.
Photobooks, publishing, best-of, it's all feeling a bit of merry-go-round as we go into the New Year. So look out for more of the same as I gets more into the swing of 2012.
2 comments:
I've seen sections of it and it ticks all the right Japanese photobook boxes, I'm sure the back story of him falling and being in a coma adds to the mystic and dark raven motif at least to us westerners. A great bit of poetry. Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, Mark. I love back-stories so it hits all the spots for me - almost all the spots anyone.
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