"Another Ventriloquist: Stories" by Adam Gilders

ISBN: 9780982964200

There is something wonderful being in a bookstore and picking up a book due to its cover, and then buying it because you read one of the short stories while standing in the store.  At first, Adam Penn Gilders reminded me of Lydia Davis, but only superficially due that both authors wrote short-short stories.  They also write/wrote strange narratives in a minimal style that becomes maximum in texture and emotional reflection.  Gilders has a dry sense of humor, and the fact that these small narratives are about married couples or the workforce in an office, there is something desperate that is not spoken.  It's tragic that Gilders died in 2007.  I would have liked to see more books by this excellent writer.

"Land Line" by Michael Schmelling (J&L Books)

There are two types of photo books for me personally.  One that is obvious and one's that are not obvious.  Michael Schmelling's "Land Line" is not obvious.  For that reason as well as the brilliant (simple) design of the book makes me go back to it again and again.   At first I picked it up and then put it down again, but I was drawn to this book like Sherlock Holmes looking a the scene of a crime and picking up the clues that is obviously still set in place.

The term land mine comes to mind an object (usually telephone) that is connected to another party through cable or fixed locations.  There is no text in the book except on the credit page where they listed the locations of the photographs, and most of them, as well as beginning and the end of the book takes place at the USA Memory Championships in New York.  One tries to read a narrative here, but then I noticed that the first series of images were taken in 2008, and the others (which are placed at the end of the book) were taken in 2007.  So it is not following a regular time-line, but even that is intriguing to me.   Most of these images are men and some women (here and there) with great concentration on their faces, or giving that long stare to space.  At times it looks like they're at a conference, it is only at the end where one sees a winner holding his award for U.S. Memory Champion, but even that the winner looks stressed and there is something slightly sinister about the image.  Perhaps he is being interviewed by the judges?  In between those two segments are images from a barber shop, inside a federal prisoner transport plane which one has to presume they're police or prisoners, kids dressed up in costumes, and then the oddest image of all is Kevin Bacon, taken in Brooklyn in the year 2011.  When you add these images up, what does it mean or what story is being told?

The book resembles a dream where you wake up and the images are still fresh in your head.  But you can't really make a full narrative.  A doesn't go to B, but A goes straight to D and so forth.   The collection of images have a certain amount of tension, which adds to the appeal of the book itself.  "Land Mine" like I mentioned above, are set locations, but its the viewer that has to make the connections between the images, and that is the fun part of the book.   A highly sophisticated inner-adventure type of work.  Highly recommended for the images as well as what we think they may represent to us. A classic photo book that is artful not only for the photographs by Schmelling, but also for its (mysterious) concept as well as the beauty of the book itself.  Must see it in person.  Please do.

"In This Dark Wood" by Elisabeth Tonnard (J&L Books)

"In The Dark Wood" has become an obsession of sorts, due to the combination of found images and in a funny way, found text. "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi ritrovai per una selva oscura/ché la via diritta era smarrita" this being the opening line to Dante's "Inferno," here translated from Italian to English 91 times. Elisabeth Tonnard had gathered photographs from a street vendor Joseph Selle and his 'Fox Movie Flash' that was placed very close to a movie theater where he or they took pictures of people as they walk down the boulevard. The chosen images are all shot in the nighttime, and they share a quality of singular people either lost in thought, strolling down the street, or a determination to go from one destination to another. Most of the images of the women seem to be carrying packages of all sorts, which suggests that they went shopping, and there is only one photograph of a mother holding her child's hand. The men on the other hand, with some exceptions, are not carrying any items, and seemed to be wandering perhaps from their work place, or even leaving the movie theater.

For example one of the text's translations, "Midway along the journey of our life/I woke to find myself in a dark wood,/for I had wandered off from the straight path" brings a sense of the spirit of the Flâneur, but with a darker connotation. Suggesting that these people are walking in darkness (nighttime as well as spiritually) is a reading or more of a 'replacement' by Tonnard. In that manner the book is very Situationist like in that it deals with the juxtaposition of image with the text that gives it a new meaning.

Also reading the text over and over again (with separate images) is fascinating as well. Similar to Raymond Queneau's “Exercises in Style” one reads the same phrase, but the difference between the translations gives it a separate reading of the text or at the very least, a slight change of Dante's intention with the lines, which can be very slight. I suspect Tonnard was not concerned about the quality of the translation but just the beauty of the language as well as the pictorial image of the text, and what it conveys with respect to the path that is not perfectly good.

If the book had a volume, this work would be on mute, but you can clearly feel the vibrations, and part of the joy is thinking about the specific text with that image. Dante wrote a beautiful piece of poetry of sorts, and the images convey the thought and the haunting of Dante's words, but through 91 translations of the same phrase. Also one can make out the words on the movie theater marquee “Petrified World.” Which is perfect of course.