Adam Fuss: Photograms of Life and Death - Hardcover

Fuss, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3883756970 ISBN 13: 9783883756974

Publisher: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2003

Synopsis

Adam Fuss has emerged as one of the bold and truly creative artists utilizing photography today. Fuss's photograms clearly break from those of his predecessors Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy and Talbot, and while striking a chord of homage, the images redefine how and what we see in pictures, both viscerally and intellectually. Like an eighteenth-century experimenter, Fuss utilizes organic and raw materials in an unusual approach, revealing spiritual and emotional process. Laid atop the paper for hours, and even days, colorization is recorded with a stroboscopic flash. Live snakes, the entrails of rabbits, eggs, cow liver, sperm, flowers, and stained glass circumscribe the vital, often mysterious energies emitted from these pictures. This book, the first major monograph of the artist's work, makes an important contribution to current discussions of photography's past and the question of its future.

About this title

Review:

This beautiful book is a rare combination: the most exquisite art paired with an essay of equal value. Adam Fuss's hauntingly mysterious photos, made without cameras through a variety of direct means, began to receive a good deal of critical attention around 1990 (when the artist was not yet 30). Eugenia Parry is a learned, experienced, prizewinning author of essays on French calotypes, Joel-Peter Witkin, the monotypes of Edgar Degas, and other subjects. In the same way that Fuss's photographs transcend the natural world while being profoundly enveloped in it, Parry's writing is nuanced and poetic, yet extremely informative. Her long, satisfyingly rich essay here delineates Fuss's childhood, his family life, his earliest impulses toward image-making, his love-hate relationship with cameras, and his working methods, and gently suggests connections between Fuss's experiences and his aesthetic. She incorporates Sufi hymns, English poetry, and a number of pungent quotes from the artist to create a short biography that should stand as a model for evoking the process, internal as well as external, of becoming an artist. The 57 plates of Fuss's lovely, enigmatic images of light, water, birds, babies, tangled roots, sunflowers, children, and stained glass windows are printed on thick white paper. This quiet, perfect book is already a classic. --Peggy Moorman

From Library Journal:

Fuss has created some of the most exquisite photography of the last two decades. By laying objects directly on photosensitive materials he bypasses the mechanism of the camera and places greater emphasis on process?both bringing the artist closer to his work and sacrificing some of his control. Utilizing this photogram technique pioneered by Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy, his works are nonetheless innovative and singular. Taking rabbit entrails, sunflowers, or stained glass windows as the raw materials, the 57 plates reproduced here range from pure abstractions to representational works, from subdued pastel-hued monochromes to multicolored iridescent images, but they are always beautiful. Art historian Parry contributes a cogent essay focusing on the rich metaphors and allusions in the works. An exquisitely produced book from a new small press specializing in photography, this first substantial monograph on Fuss is recommended for all collections with an interest in contemporary photography or history of photography.?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 3883756970
• ISBN 13: 9783883756974
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 112