1st Edition
Subtext Critiquing Individual Photographs within a Collective Consciousness
Subtext invites and encourages personal and blatantly subjective responses to photographs and analyzes the drivers behind them. During decades of participating in critiques as both student and teacher, André Ruesch has become convinced that it is the personal response to work that connects us in the most visceral and meaningful way. This book aims to encourage and educate viewers how to read and understand photographs on a deeper level, honoring and validating their responses to photographs. This book seeks to vitalize students in the photography classroom. Rather than a dense tome of theory, this is an accessible guide to taking individual ownership of—and enjoying—the visual experience.
To be visually literate is comparable to being linguistically literate. Such literacy is necessary to engender a deeper understanding and valuation of culture: both types of literacy create, enrich, define and historically document the expression of one individual to be shared by all.
I - DEDICATION:
II - QUOTES: by Sir Ken Robinson and Eugenia Parry
III - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
IV - CONTENTS:
V - FOREWORD: An interview of Patrick Nagatani by Ryoichi p. 000
VI - INTRODUCTION: For whom this book is meant and how to use it p. 000
VII - PROLOGUE: The periodic table p. 000
1 - THE VELVET HAMMER: The potency of elements p. 000
2 - THE PERSONAL GALAXY: The symbol p. 000
3 - JUST FASHION: A question of identity p. 000
4 - NIKE AND THE BUTTERFLY: The reversed stereotype p. 000
5 - STAYING IN LINE: Conductivity p. 000
6 - POLITICS: The metaphoric landscape p. 000
7 - HENRY’S TALE: The photographic fable p. 000
8 - MOMENT BY MOMENT: Elapsed time - Eadweard Muybridge revisited p. 000
9 - THE DROWNED GUN: Time as poetry p. 000
10 - SPLIT AGAIN: The reversed connection p. 000
11 - THE OTHER HALF: Water and air p. 000
12 - THE ORIGINAL: Please touch the art p. 000
13 - THE TYRANNY OF BORDERS: The half-life of elements p. 000
14 - THE HOLY ROSARY: Belonging p. 000
15 - A CONVERSATION WITH GOD: The white elephant in the room p. 000
16 - SUPERSTRUCTURE: Conflation p. 000
17 - LADY LIKE: Body language p. 000
18 - RECYCLING: The image ecology approach p. 000
19 - APPROPRIATION: Reinterpretation p. 000
20 - DAD: Titled versus untitled p. 000
21 - SPEED AND STOICISM: The nature of the elements p. 000
22 - REFLECTION: The literally and the figuratively p. 000
23 - SKY VIEW: Upside down p. 000
24 - BLOOD IS BLOOD: Assumption p. 000
25 - HYPNAGOGIA: Viewpoint p. 000
26 - HARMONIA: Rendering the invisible p. 000
27 - SNAP: Breaking point p. 000
28 - RECOGNITION: The need for invisibility p. 000
29 - BIG AND SMALL: How we give thanks p. 000
30 - AMMO AND THE HAPPY MEAL: Be theatrical p. 000
31 - THE SPIDER AND THE NET: Catch and caught p. 000
32 - DIRTY JOBS: A deceptive comedy of errors p. 000
33 - WHAT IS TO COME: Dreaming p. 000
34 - THE ANGEL AND THE WASP: The order of the elements p. 000
35 - IN THE END: Together p. 000
VIII - EPILOGUE: Florence + The Machine p. 000
IX - IF LOST OR LONELY: Get your work out there p. 000
X - QUICK REFERENCE: Artists in alphabetical order p. 000
Biography
André Ruesch has been an active photographer for over thirty years. After receiving a BA in photographic studies at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland, he moved to Albuquerque to receive his MA and MFA for graduate studies in photography at the University of New Mexico. While there, his main mentors were Patrick Nagatani, Betty Hahn, and Eugenia Parry.
Ruesch’s work has been internationally exhibited in museums and galleries and published in the British Journal of Photography, Art in America, and Asian Art News among others.
He lives in Massachusetts, where he is a Professor at the Lesley University College of Art and Design & the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
