Michael Salerno’s “Childhood”: Wet Boys, Smiley Faces
Michael Salerno’s book “Childhood” on Infinity Land Press is a slow behemoth of articulated components of what it means to be a young boy grown older.
Category Archives: Photobook
Debt, Failure and Truth Seeking – McNair Evans ‘Confessions for a Son’
Evans shows the south as part of the rest of America, falling behind itself and failing in the everyday struggle against entropy. By Owen Campbell, ASX, April 2015 There is in McNair Evans Confessions for a Son a sense that time passes slow and lonely, a stillness manifest in an image of a hound weighted […]
Three New Titles by Daido Moriyama in ‘Mirage’, ‘White and Vinegar’ and ‘Dazai’
Mirage swings between the dynamic of a lover’s intimate photographs and those of a lonely stalker. By Owen Campbell, ASX, March 2015 The standard, reflexive way of referring to Mirage (2013), White and Vinegar (2012), and Dazai (2014) would be “three books by the photographer Daido Moriyama, as well as a story by Osamu […]
Blood Loss and the Spectral Dissonance of Self in Aaron McElroy’s “The Devil May Care”
@ Aaron McElroy The devil may indeed care, but there is a good chance he will simply stand idle at our emotional butchery while the moonlight plays delightful tricks along the contours of the young woman’s pubic thatch and each of her freckles is counted as a mirthful stone hurled…against an absent asbestos choked God. […]
A Towering Pillar of Salt and a Seat Next to Julius Streicher at a Dinner in Hell: A Look at 2041’s Islamophobic Fetishism
You see, down here, everyone becomes a pillar of salt, eventually. I am simply idling at a perversity that need not be sexual. I like to cower, but I like to cower in the profundity of political infraction and a safety of self. By Brad Feuerhelm, ASX, February 2015 This is a new gutter […]
A Confrontation of Resemblances – Onorato & Krebs’ ‘Lightning Tree’
The earth arcing up in anger at the sky – is the only part of a lightning strike that is visible to the human eye. By Eugenie Shinkle, ASX, February 2015 Lightning – at least the part of it that we can see – doesn’t come from the sky. Invisible fingers of negatively-charged particles […]
Under Nancy’s Heel, Under Nancy’s Holy Boot – The Crush Photography of John K
I’ve read enough Marquis de Sade to understand that sitting on objects such as candles, improperly folded parchment, and wax encrusted rope can offer a certain sense of pleasure within the penal system, but for some reason, the idea to sit on a bear head, magazine, or American flag had completely escaped my reasoning or […]
INTERNET GOTHIC in Doug Rickard’s ‘N.A.’
XZc7w, 2011 @ Doug Rickard Horrorcore, a sort of contemporary American gothic, with all the inherent inversion of values. INTERNET GOTHIC and Transcendentalism in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction By Owen Campbell, ASX, January 2015 In the preface of National Anthem Doug Rickard quotes Walt Whitman; in the coda he quotes Woodie Guthrie. […]
Gregory Halpern – Watching Time Pass on Earth in ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon’
…a sensation of watching time pass on earth while suspended in the aether… By Owen Campbell, ASX, January 2015 There is, in viewing, East of the Sun, West of the Moon a sensation of watching time pass on earth while suspended in the aether, immune from time and all earthly elements. East of the Sun, […]
Guided Inquiries into the Promised and Failed Utopian 90’s Rave Culture in ‘Close Your Eyes’
Gareth McConnell’s Close your Eyes is a salient tome of guided inquiries into 90’s rave culture. Gareth McConnell Close Your Eyes Self Publish Be Happy 2014 By Brad Feuerhelm, ASX, December 2014 A Metaphor: Wavering, I stood with no grand hesitation towards the lip of the abyss. I shuddered to think once that my […]
Consummate Parodies of Human Cuisine and Subsequent Evacuations in the Work of Thomas Mailaender
from Toilet Fail @ Thomas Mailaender When we set down our armchair politics and our bleeding heart two-minute liberalism and our redundant interest in watching a stray cheetah breastfeed orphaned piglets, we are left with but a few strands of Internet fodder we all succumb to en masse; namely pornography and people doing […]
Cataloging Desire and a Reluctant But Necessary Eulogy in ‘Russian Interiors’
To say these images are erotic would be a mistake; they are a more like a self-enforced catalogue of sexualized ego pandering. By Brad Feurehelm, ASX, December 2014 Andy Rocchelli’s “Russian Interiors” is first and foremost a beautifully realized book by Cesura Publishing. The tactile quality of the raised floral cover and the lifted […]