Publisher's Description
This second book from Michael Abrams continues his exploration of vernacular images and their power to access our latent memory. Lifted from their origins in family albums, the photographs travel a meandering path through the fictional "Springfield". Alternating between the sacred and profane, black and white, exquisite and ordinary, the book is experienced as a cumulative impression of both the conscious and remembered. The cover image of a masked family begins the journey into a world of the unknown yet eerily familiar. The author guides us across a suburban terrain that shifts between Ozzie and Harriet and David Lynch.
Springfield crafts a sense of place by weaving snapshots with other evocative visual elements such as wallpaper remnants, newspaper clippings and secreted snapshots. A short story by Gerry Badger is separately laid in as a found object might be inserted in to an album for safekeeping. The accumulation of interwoven stories and images propose a guide through the author's version of Springfield. In the course of the journey our attempts to keep secret our hidden memories and desires are exposed- but only with the additional effort that the book demands of its viewer.
Michael Abrams first book "Strange and Singular" was awarded the 2008 Rencontres d'Arles Contemporary Book Award. He resides in Washington, DC and is a founding partner in Loosestrife Editions.
Publisher: Loosestrife Editions
Size: 8 3/4 x 7 3/4"
156 pages, 135 duotone images and bound 16 page booklet
Edition of 1,000