PhotoGraphs WrittenLight - Softcover

Muecke, Mikesch W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1941892094 ISBN 13: 9781941892091

Publisher: Obvious Press, 2015

Synopsis

When taken literally, a translation of the word ‘photograph’ means ‘written light’. In this book I offer the reader/viewer a collection of ‘textual illumination’ divided into categories. The accompanying short short-stories—in some cases no more than a few words—are literary counter weights to the visual text.Rather than pretend to be a technophile and focus on how each image came about (aperture setting, focal length, lens type, film, etc.)—which is a conventional means of augmenting photographic images—I borrow instead Roland Barthes’ take on photographs, and treat what the camera captured as something that cannot be repeated. In other words, the how of the photograph is not as important to me as what is made visible with light.Continuing with Barthes, conceptually these ‘things written with light’ are all punctum rather than studium. They represent what caught my eye over the years. Sometimes I framed my subjects consciously, at other times I only realized later the significance of a particular frame.

About this title

About the Author

Mikesch W. Muecke is a teacher and designer who works in the Iowa State University and at Culicidae Press, an Iowa and Florida-based publishing house. He holds degrees from the University of Florida (Bachelor of Design, 1989, Master of Architecture, 1991) and Princeton University (Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory, 1999). Born in Germany to a journalist and a home-maker Muecke has worked as a newspaper photographer, carpenter, shade-tree mechanic (mostly on Citroëns and Renaults) in Europe and has explored painting, ceramics, print-making, and graphic design in the United States.

Edition details

• Publisher: Obvious Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1941892094
• ISBN 13: 9781941892091
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 288