Aperture #217
“Lit.”
Winter 2014
In Aperture‘s “Lit.” issue, celebrated British novelist Tom McCarthy, remarking on the relationship of words and images, writes: “Perhaps in the end the difference between image and word isn’t relevant. Because ultimately it’s all scriptural… photography is a branch of writing.” Aperture‘s winter issue teases out a range of ways in which photography and writing are intertwined. As our increasingly image-driven culture arguably places new pressure on the written word, Aperture explores how novels, poetry, and the short-story form have provided conceptual springboards for photographers, as well as how words function as images, how images can be “read,” and how documentary photographers, including Walker Evans, have been influenced by literary history.
WORDS—The sharpest ideas in photography
Geoff Dyer and Janet Malcolm discuss their respective practices as writers with an abiding interest in photographs; “Walker Evans & the Written Word,” by David Campany; Teju Cole, Mary Gaitskill, Rivka Galchen, Tom McCarthy,and Lynne Tillman on how our image culture impacts their work as fiction writers; Carmen Winant on midcentury publisher New Directions’s classic photographic covers; and Moyra Davey speaks with curator Matthew S. Witkovsky about her use of literary touchstones.
PICTURES—The magazine’s visual showcase
Vince Aletti introduces the photographs of French writer Hervé Guibert; Drew Sawyer on Natalie Czech‘s “Poems by Repetition” series; Nat Trotman considers Erica Baum‘s photographs of printed matter; Eric Banks revisits William S. Burroughs‘sexperimentations with photography; Brian Dillon introduces Eamonn Doyle‘s series based on Beckett works; Ivan Vartanian on postwar Japanese novelist and playwright Kobo Abe‘s little-known photographic work; Sarah Dobai‘s response to Nikolai Gogol‘s darkly humorous 1842 tale, “The Overcoat”; Aaron Schuman on Alec Soth‘s Iris Garden, with stories by John Cage and images by William Gedney; and novelist and editor Heidi Julavits introduces Gus Powell‘s latest project, The Lonely Ones.
COLUMNS:
Redux
Erin O’Toole on Lew Thomas‘s Structural(ism) and Photography
Curriculum
A List of Favorite Anythings by James Welling
Collectors: The Poets, with contributions by:
John Ashbery
Richard Howard
Ann Lauterbach
Ben Lerner
Dispatches
Wojciech Nowicki on Krakow
Object Lessons
Germaine Krull‘s Roman maquette, ca. 1930
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