My absence on the blog lately can be explained by attempting to pass my degree (haven’t yet, so posting might still be a bit sporadic). I’m starting a new series, looking at what I’m reading at the moment, which also ties into my current research interests and writing so I suppose I’ll just combine all that into one series – reading, researching and writing in one!
I’ve been researching and working on my graduate project which is titled “Is e Eire mo Bhaile”, which means “Ireland is my home”, in Irish. To that end, this post is about what I’m doing to research this project.
Books:
Rodinsky’s Room – Rachel Lichtenstein & Iain Sinclair
Lichtenstien and Sinclair take a very upbeat stance on the disappearance of David Rodinsky and trace this through the archive of ephemera left behind in his room in Whitechapel. The book traces Lichtenstien’s research of Rodinksy through writing and photography and gives a good example of a book using both photography and writing to illustrate.
The Photograph – Graham Clarke
Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma – Ulrich Baer
The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning – James Young
The Painter of Modern Life – Charles Baudelaire
On the Natural History of Destruction – WG Sebald
The Pivot of the World: Photography and it’s Nation – Blake Stimson
The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories – John Tagg
Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes Camera Lucida – Geoffery Bachen
These books deal with the photographic image as carrier of memory, the memorialisation of the journey, the journey itself, the ontology of the image and photographic archives.
Images of the final book and project itself to follow.
