2013
soft cover book, color
5 in. x 5 in., 66 pages
Edition: open
Baldwin says, for better or worse, I obsessively collected Amanda Knox photos from the internet. Something had to be done with them so here it is, a book of stream-of-conscience pairings of photos also pulled from the internet. This book is about me, it’s about us, it is not about anyone depicted inside. No offense intended, just a provocation and a reminder that…
…an industry that could give us a result identical to Nature would be the absolute of Art. A revengeful God has given ear to the prayers of this multitude. Daguerre was his Messiah. And now the faithful says to himself: “Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools!), then photography and Art are the same thing:” From that moment our squalid society rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gaze at its trivial image on a scrap of metal. A madness, an extraordinary fanaticism took possession of all these new sun-worshippers. Strange abominations took form. By bringing together a group of male and female clowns, got up like butchers and laundry-maids in a carnival, and by begging these heroes to be so kind as to hold their chance grimaces for the time necessary for the performance, the operator flattered himself that he was reproducing tragic or elegant scenes from ancient history.
-excerpt from Baudelaire’s “On Photography”
