Sharing catalog essays
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This is kind of laying saying you get Playboy for the articles, but I have a serious passion for catalog essays. I love them for the pretty much the same reason I love the circle of photography blogs we are all reading so avidly - at their best, essays provide invaluable insight into the creative dialog artists participate in (a couple of months ago, reading once sentence about the work of Stephen Shore had a substantial impact on the fundamental way I approach photography).
The art market, of course, drives the production of books and essays and things. I moved to slowly on Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi for example, which has a woderful essay by Anne Wilkes Tucker, and it went out of print. As soon as I found out it was no longer available, I ordered Niagra that very day. That book too, has gone out of print, and I’m still waiting for my copy to arrive.
I while back, I scanned and posted James Agee’s essay from Helen Levitt’s 1946 book A Way of Seeing. John Szarkowski has said this essay is one of the best ever written about photography and the book has long been out of print. Starting as soon as I have a little more time, I’m going to start scanning essays and putting them online, and I encourage others to do the same. I’m going to do my best to collect and organize them and keep them in a central place.
I’m declaring this a life-long project. Or at least a project for the long term. I’m not going to start furiously checking out books or anything and I intend to approach this in a very leisurely way. But this is a call to action: I think that all you collectors of catalogs and monographs out there should scan your particularly interesting and out of print essays and post them on your blogs. If you don’t have a blog, send it to me and I’ll post it. Also, if you know where essays have been posted previously, please leave a link the comments.
Seriously. Do it. It’ll be awesome.
UPDATE: I have added a page called Essay Collection. Currently it has two items, but it’s going to grow explosively, I’m sure.
May 7th, 2007 at 1:15 am
What was the sentence?
May 7th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
“I simply look for ways to articulate the space.”