Gordin refers to his approach as “conceptual photography,” though by this he obviously means something much different from the haphazardly made, often amateurish or deliberately casual imagery generated as documentation of performances by conceptual artists since the 1970s. Carefully planned and meticulously crafted, Gordin’s images are previsualized as sketches on paper, which he then stages for the production of the negatives necessary to actualize the imagined image. […]
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Errol Morris’s position is, I think, quite clearly against the idea that the Burroughs family owned an alarm clock. He does not accept his own third option as credible, any more than James Curtis does. How on earth both Morris and Curtis managed to convince themselves of this, against all the efforts of Occam’s Razor, is something of a mystery itself. Nevertheless, the situation is even worse than that. […] I think it likely that those who buy this “enhanced” version of these texts will be lookers, not readers, more engaged with the book’s visual, sensual appeal than intrigued by and ready to become absorbed in the polyvocal discourse it contains. […] I can think of no other postmodern-era project that has at once paid such homage to Walter Benjamin while at the same time so thoroughly refuting him — by making a convincing argument that even digitally rendered, mechanically generated facsimiles of mass-produced artifacts can effectively contain and transmit the experience he called “aura.” […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Straight Outta Stone Ridge: Fall Back
On the last days before the rain and chill set in, during the first week of November, Anna and I spent hours on the grounds of the Stone Ridge Library, harvesting the seeds of its female ginkgo tree. I take gingko biloba capsules as a holistic supplement, but Anna knows how to make a tasty, healthful, traditional Chinese dessert from the seeds. We foraged close to 4 pounds of seeds, enough for many such treats. […]