The Animal Side is a manifesto on the importance of animals for human thought. It attempts to characterize the importance, for human beings, of the fact that animals exist. Adopting a philosophical and poetic approach, the book seeks to show that animals' ways of inhabiting the earth are, for human consciousness, an expansion and an exploration of what philosophers and poets have tried to name by speaking of the Open. Beginning with the story of an encounter with a deer on a road at night, the book proceeds by showing that, beyond the diversity of animal life and the ways animals differ from human beings, there is a "layer of the perceptible" on which we all draw, humans and animals alike, in our own ways. At present, however, this layer itself is at risk. Thus the book can also be read as a defense and illustration of animals' modes of being, and as a plea for their survival.
In (Zus), a visual essay by the French photographer Benoît Fougeirol, views of and views from eleven of the ¿Zones urbaines sensibles¿ (Sensitive Urban Zones) on the peripheries of Paris reveal harsh paradoxes of modern society. These poor, marginal districts were defined by administrative boundaries in response to the ¿emergence of a social problem.¿ Through the synecdoche of architecture¿its materials, patterns, and surfaces¿Fougeirol presents the stubborn vitality and dereliction of the ZUS¿and the failures of collective imagination that they represent. (Zus) documents each territory with an inventory comprising photographs, graphic representations, and toponyms, none of which alone can account for a totality. The book¿s cumulative structure raises questions about the tools of representation and the nature of individual perspective. A text by the author, poet, and playwright Jean-Christophe Bailly reflects on the broader significance and lived experience of the ZUS, following a lyrical thread through inhospitable spaces.
« ... Il est aimable et même attirant le paysage de vos illusions, quand on le voit de loin ou de haut. Vous avez l’air de modestes jardiniers, d’enfants qui jouent à tracer des routes, à remplir des citernes. Mais que l’on s’approche aussitôt, sur ces routes pleines de poussière, vous venez et l’on voit que tout est rempli, saturé, et que vos paroles n’ont plus assez d’espace entre elles pour pouvoir vous parvenir et qu’elles se perdent, comme les oripeaux d’un habit devenu trop grand pour vous – un habit, le langage, qui avait besoin de silence et de vérité. Alors je vous le dis, ici, au théâtre, ou un peu de vérité a été préservée peut-être, je souhaite qu’un jour un matin vous soit rendu. [...] Mais ce matin ne vient pas, ou s’il vient et qu’il est noir, encore plus noir, que pourrez-vous vous dire, et nous dire ? » Collection « Détroits » fondée par Jean-Christophe Bailly, Michel Deutsch et Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
A compelling and innovative reflection on the way photography captures and condenses time Two photographs, connected by a ladder, separated by a century. First, William Henry Fox Talbot photographed a faithfully realistic image of a ladder against a haystack in the English countryside.One hundred years later, an anonymous photographer captured another ladder, “photographed” alongside an incinerated man by the blinding light of the atomic bomb. These two images underpin a poetic and theoretical reflection on the origins of photographic technique, the imaginative power of montage, and the relation of photography to time itself in Jean-Christophe Bailly’s The Instant and Its Shadow, translated into English for the very first time. A rare find of intellectual caliber and theoretical rigor, The Instant and Its Shadow pursues a unique and powerful reflection on the first hundred years of photography’s history and on the essence of the photographic art in general. Inspired by the unexpected coming together of these two iconic images, the book begins by retracing Talbot’s invention of the photographic calotype in the early nineteenthcentury, highlighting the paradox that saw Talbot wishing to imitate the representative arts of painting and drawing while simultaneously liberating the image from any imitative paradigm. This analysis leads Bailly to elucidate photography’s relation to material and visual reality. A meditation on photography’s seeming ability to stop time follows, concluding with the photographs of Hiroshima and the photographic nature of the atomic bomb. Building on an inspired juxtaposition of The Haystack with the Hiroshima photographs, the book becomes a testament to the potency of photomontage, arguing that “the more singular an image, the greater its connective power.” Bailly’s book is at once a lyrical homage to some of the founding texts of photographic theory and a startling reminder of the uncanny power of photography itself. Part theoretical reflection, part lyrical reverie, The Instant and Its Shadow is packed with profound and stellar insights about the medium.
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