Ken Schles: The Geometry Of Innocence - Hardcover

Schles, Ken

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3775710116 ISBN 13: 9783775710114

Publisher: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2001

Synopsis

Twelve years after the legendary success of his first book of photographs, Invisible City, Ken Schles returns with his long-awaited sophomore effort, The Geometry of Innocence. Schles's focus is on the relentless shifting of social structures and spaces that mark the urban landscape of today. His images form a kind of visual roller coaster, sending the viewer onto city streets and playgrounds, into pubs and bars, putting the viewer inside a police helicopter and taking them to death row, hospital rooms, and police interventions. While there is no "story" per se, this breathless sequence of pictures is condensed into thematic clusters, providing a spellbinding and almost physically palpable experience. The works in The Geometry of Innocence address and play upon the immediacy and relativity of meaning in the photographic image, creating a bold and highly nuanced artistic statement.

About this title

About the Author

Award-winning photographer, writer, and film director Ken Schles lives and works in New York. His work has appeared in most major national and international magazines, and on numerous CD jackets. His work is represented in the collections of such museums as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Reviews

This is the second book by American photographer Schles, also known for his commercial work in magazines such as The New Yorker, Spin, and Esquire. Schles is not afraid of the dark, actual or figurative; since his first intimate documentation of New York (Invisible City, 1988. o.p.), his critical eye has brought him to the extreme (e.g., police helicopters, operating rooms, death row) as well as the everyday (e.g., birthday parties, weddings, construction sites). From each, he extracts strangely humanizing views to address his apprehension with the ragged, noisy isolation of the modern urban experience. The gritty and beautiful images, in color and black and white, are presented in a narrative fashion without much text, paired and combined by sometimes ironic intent or common subject or feel. The result is a calamitous and visceral journey through a kinetic, disturbing, vibrant America. This is a potentially nullifying presentation, but Schles's individual images stand up; each is explained in a closing image list. Recommended as a good initial purchase to large and academic photographic collections. Debora Miller, Minneapolis
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hatje Cantz Publishers
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3775710116
• ISBN 13: 9783775710114
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128
• Editor: Schaden Markus, Zander Thomas