88 <strong>The</strong> shelf Arts Photography Publishing Shedding light When all else fails, let us look to the light and draw from it a moment we shared. When it was just right, when it fell on us so perfectly, all those little details it helped, erm, bring to light, mummified in the well of memories. For it is here that they will keep, as the light shifts and steals new shape. <strong>The</strong>re are some that will always remain. camden by Jean-Christian Bourcart Images en Manœuvres Editions Bourcart’s most recent publication – what could almost be described as a photo journal – sees him set foot into one of Americas most malignant areas. It portrays the subject in complete disarray, caught off guard. It’s as if the state had just come and repossessed the bed, the fridge, even the roof, just as he was about to click the shutter. Q-tips litter the floor, along with pen caps and exposed cables. From bitter cold streets to sticky tarmac and, every so often, a gesture, a kiss, an embrace. This is the stuff of “shit”… All the things you weren’t supposed to see. And to think he simply googled “most+dangerous+city+america”, result “Camden.” red roses yellow rain by Marrigje de Maar hatje Cantz In Red Roses Yellow Rain, Marrigje captures the more humble abodes and their interiors over a period of several visits to the “Motherland”, a country rapidly hurtling into modernisation. Here she allows us to spy into a culture still steaming with history and traditions. A domestic journey into communist China and what lies behind the wall. It’s almost like walking onto the set of a Zhang Yimou film. <strong>The</strong> classic coral-red and jade-green with floral flasks and pink plastic bags taking on a form of true “minimal-decor” all captured with that similar somber light. So inviting are these images, one can almost smell the tea brewing. Writer Melisande McBurnie Photographer Stine Sampers gone? by Robert Adams Steidl In his latest book Gone?, Robert Adams take us on a “Hansel and Gretel” journey into the landscape of a recollection based in Colorado. Shot in black and white, a series of photos taken in the 1980s document the slow evolution of a once wild region. Revisiting a place, where as a young boy Adams walked and the impact it now plays on reshaping his memory, Gone? is the disappearance of personal landmarks, of how one got from A to B and all the little pit stops in-between. <strong>The</strong>re is something engaging upon seeing Adams’ vast lands devoid of colour that leaves us with an urge to fill it in, a true scrapbook of sorts. One can’t help but want to remember with him of how it used to be… far Too close by Martina Hoogland Ivanow Steidlmack Far Too Close entangles the boundaries between familiar and foreign. Drawing the viewer into something of a secret and what lurks in its shadows, Ivanow depicts the features of an almost faceless person, making it near impossible to make out where one subject ends and the other begins. Having traveled extensively over a seven year period to remote places such as Siberia, Sakhalin Island and Tierra del Fuego, on the southern tip of Argentina, the photographer sets out to explore and capture a personal history of “home”. <strong>The</strong> shape of sheets are here and the place on a pillow where a head had rested. black and White by Ellsworth Kelly hatje Cantz Investigating the interplay of positive and negative, form versus colour and the space that surrounds us, Ellsworth Kelly brings us back to basics. With over six decades of study and observation into his everyday surroundings, having first gained worldwide acclaim for his paintings and drawings, Kelly now presents us with Black and White. Asking the viewers’ approach to be that of a child, who learns from disassembling and reassembling, the result is engaging and playful – looking somewhat simple at first sight though closer inspection reveals there’s an equation behind each move, a “working out” so to speak, a consideration of weight, balance and its tipping point. Indeed we are left with a querying feeling of “What came first?” Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/theblackbooks for Amazon purchase links.
from left to right Far Too Close (Steidlmack), Red Roses Yellow Rain (Hatje Cantz), Gone? (Steidl), Black & White (Hatje Cantz) and Camden (Images en Manœuvres Editions). Culture 89
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