Description
Seth Lower's second photobook explores an observation he made about Los Angeles after moving to the city in 2010: "It isn't always easy to differentiate between what is spontaneous or real, and what's mediated. Nothing is ever one or the other. " Throughout the book, the comically unresolved drama of our unnamed "hero" emerges from several distinct elements: photographs of generic but oddly familiar movie set locations around the city; portraits of aspiring actors glaring into the sun; awkwardly poetic dialogue and screenplay notations lifted or modified from Hollywood blockbusters; and Lower's own fabrications and personal anecdotes. Referencing works as diverse as Mulholland Drive and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, The Sun Shone Glaringly evokes all the tropes of the LA myth to address an essential question: how do popular representations of Los Angeles affect the everyday experience of the city, and how do people negotiate the slippage between their real lives and their potential selves?
Reviews
The Sun Shone Glaringly takes Hollywood movies as starting points, to create its own story, combining text and photography. Ignoring the text while looking through the book is not going to work. The text is too much of an integral part of the whole experience. It would be like watching a movie with the sound turned off. The text is a collage of material that's either taken from movies, it's anecdotal, or it's just made up. You're not being told which one is which, but there is a list of the movies some of the text is based on. Because the text and the photographs essentially are made to operate the same way - both create a sort of mental image in the viewer's head, The Sun Shone Glaringly is the kind of book you certainly want to look at if you're interested in how text and photographs can be made to work with each other. -- Jorg Colberg * Conscientious Photography Magazine *
Book Information
ISBN 9780989785907
Author Seth Lower
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint The Ice Plant
Publisher The Ice Plant
Weight(grams) 200g
Reviews
The Sun Shone Glaringly takes Hollywood movies as starting points, to create its own story, combining text and photography. Ignoring the text while looking through the book is not going to work. The text is too much of an integral part of the whole experience. It would be like watching a movie with the sound turned off. The text is a collage of material that's either taken from movies, it's anecdotal, or it's just made up. You're not being told which one is which, but there is a list of the movies some of the text is based on. Because the text and the photographs essentially are made to operate the same way - both create a sort of mental image in the viewer's head, The Sun Shone Glaringly is the kind of book you certainly want to look at if you're interested in how text and photographs can be made to work with each other. -- Jorg Colberg * Conscientious Photography Magazine *
Book Information
ISBN 9780989785907
Author Seth Lower
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint The Ice Plant
Publisher The Ice Plant
Weight(grams) 200g
