2017 Best Books: Rebecca Norris Webb:
Rebecca Norris Webb is among my favorite contemporary photographers and here picks her favorite photo books from 2017. Photo-eye has several such lists from compelling photographers that are worth a look.
Category: books
Alan Felsenthal
A hull made to touch
the arctic shoulder of the vacant
sea.
Alan Felsenthal, “Lowly”
Current Reading
Current Reading
Current Reading
Current Reading
The Crystal Glow of the River
Bordering Illumination
What I have lost and cannot find I remember.
What I cannot see I attempt to call.
Working on a string of impulses, bordering illumination.
Current Reading
Michael Paul Smith and Elgin Park
Michael Paul Smith’s Elgin Park photographs are worth a look. There’s a documentary about Mr. Smith as well, and you can watch the trailer here.
The Impulse Society
Paul Roberts, The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification, 2014.
Mr. Roberts’ book covers a nearly-overwhelming range of causes and effects of consumer-rule across the spectrum of economic development, investment, and production in our society.
An example of the kind of thought it bears: rather than contribute to the restoration and improvement of our increasingly unsafe and unstable roadways for all who might use them, we instead use whatever means we have to buy a car that will keep us individually safe against the threat of our crumbling infrastructure, with no explicit regard for the others with whom we nevertheless share the roads. In which light, self-satisfaction and short-sightedness characterize our economic behavior both up and down the line, and it doesn’t bode well.
Recommended.
Currently Reading: Citizen: An American Lyric
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric, 2014.
Do Not Sell at Any Price
Amanda Petrusich, Do Not Sell at Any Price, 2014.
Andy Mister’s Heroes & Villains
Now available from The Cultural Society
Made to Break
D. Foy, Made to Break, 2014.
On Immunity
Eula Biss, On Immunity: an Inoculation, 2014.
Inspiration: Greil Marcus
Records that made no apparent history other than their own, the faint marks they left on the charts or someone’s memory, might count for more than any master narrative that excludes them.
— Greil Marcus, The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, 2014.
From the Mouth of the Whale
Sjón, From the Mouth of the Whale, 2008, translated 2011.
David Foster Wallace with Charlie Rose
explore-blog:
David Foster Wallace on commercial entertainment, the redemptive power of reading, and the future of writing in the age of information – highlights from his fantastic 1996 Charlie Rose interview.
I also like, “There’s this part that makes you feel full. There’s this part that is redemptive and instructive, [so that] when you read something, it’s not just delight — you go, “Oh my god, that’s me! I’ve lived like that, I’ve felt like that, I’m not alone in the world…”
Living with a Wild God
Barbara Eherenreich, Living with a Wild God, 2014.
“[I]f you’re not prepared to die when you’re almost sixty, then I would say you’ve been falling down on your philosophical responsibilities as a grown-up human being.”