Book of the Week
Book of the Week: A Pick by Sarah Bradley
Sarah Bradley selects A Perpetual Season by Gregoire Pujade-Lauraine as Book of the Week.
This week's Book of the Week pick comes from Sarah Bradley who has selected
A Perpetual Season by Gregoire Pujade-Lauraine published by MACK.
"This is a book that I keep returning to and keep recommending. On its surface,
A Perpetual Season by Gregoire Pujade-Lauraine presents photographs of anonymous urban spaces — a series of buildings, walls, staircases and somber concrete forms. These images are punctuated by the occasional presence of living things, plants that seem at once starving and overgrown, and people wandering or peering with furrowed brows, their expressions locked in the pained look of waiting or a glance of unfulfilled anticipation. Though constructed entirely of images depicting what is mundane enough to be overlooked,
A Perpetual Season is precisely assembled to build a space that quietly reverberates with surreal tension. It is a place both vast and claustrophobic, familiar yet seemingly nowhere. Forms lose recognition, flattening out, resting in a liminal state between what is recognizable for its commonplace utility and a bewildering perspective stretched to abstraction, reduced to lines, planes and tonality. The living seem trapped, yet they keep moving. The sole sparse lines of text by Roberto Juarroz tucked in the back of the book acknowledge the labyrinth we have just wandered through. Ultimately, it’s not so much the images that stick in my mind, but the space
A Perpetual Season conjures, unfathomable yet knowable — known, even, as if recognized by feel from a dream.
It’s a striking object, too, perfectly sized to fit in the hand with a soft-toned image printed on the exterior cloth and gorgeous grey-blue page edges."—Sarah Bradley
Read the review by Adam Bell
Picked as a Best Book of 2014 by Alex F. Webb & Lewis Chalpin
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