Penelope Umbrico: Photographs - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1597111716 ISBN 13: 9781597111713

Publisher: Aperture, 2011

Synopsis

"Penelope Umbrico: Photographs" offers a radical reinterpretation of everyday consumer and vernacular images. As the artist describes, she works "within the virtual world of consumer marketing and social media, traveling through the relentless flow of seductive images, objects and information that surrounds us, searching for decisive moments--but in these worlds, decisive moments are cultural absurdities." Umbrico finds these moments in the printed pages of consumer product mail-order cataloguess, travel and leisure brochures, and online sites such as Craigslist, eBay and Flickr. By identifying and isolating image typologies--candy-colored horizons and sunsets, books used as props--the farcical and surreal nature of the lingua franca of consumerism and recreation is brought to new light. "Penelope Umbrico: Photographs" presents a unique and challenging approach to quintessential issues of representation in contemporary culture, including how images are used to construct and communicate consumer desire, and whether or not the growing volume of images we view online fosters a critical visual literacy. This volume, Umbrico's first monograph, is accompanied by a series of essays, appendices of source material, excerpts from theoretical works and other material serving as resources for engaging further with the work and issues involved.

About this title

About the Author:

Penelope Umbrico graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, and received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. She has participated extensively in solo and group exhibitions, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. Umbrico is core faculty in the School of Visual Arts MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media Program. She lives in New York City.

Review:

"In her work Umbrico often appropriates or rephotographs existing images and, by gathering and presenting them with titles that draw attention to the 'contingent relationships between the photographs,' suggests ideas and indeed, narratives about the photographs and photography that are far different from those intended by the photographer or the original publisher of the image." --Conor Risch, PDN, July 2011

"It was interesting for me to think about my work in a book form because my work is almost always installation-based. I didn't want the book to be a document of my installations, so it made sense to me to think about the book as architecture and to 'install' the work onto its pages as I would in an exhibition space." --As told to Irina Rozovsky, ArtForum, June 20 2011

About this edition

• Publisher: Aperture
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1597111716
• ISBN 13: 9781597111713
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 172