Monday 11 January 2021

A model type of book
























There doesn't seem to be many books about an interesting photographic artist. This thick monograph was published in 2011 and the Editor Okwui Enwezor also edited a 224-page title about the artist published by Prestel in 2016. I expect both books to have a lot of duplication.

The first fifty-two pages are text with thirty-five an illustrated Q and A between Casebere and Enwezor, a fascinating read as it places Casebere's work in a broad social and artist context. There follows 205 pages of photos and this is where I felt the book was a bit disappointing, too many of them seem to me more mono technical exercises and perhaps lacking in visual interest. However, this is an artist monograph and should rightly show how the creative endeavors progressed through the years, here, photos start in 1975.

Work from 2007 shows Casebere creating model tableaus of houses set in various landscapes. Some of these really look quite ambitious. Page 253 showing Landscape with houses #9, constructed in 2010. It has at least twenty-five houses on a slight hillside with a baseball and football pitch in the foreground. There are twelve photos in this series and it's possible to see how much detail Casebere puts into his model house and landscape construction for his photos. 

The book's last pages have an illustrated timeline listing of the artist's film, installation and sculpture work. This is an excellent Damiani production and a full record of Casebere's work from 1975 to 2010.


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