“The photograph preserves presence by recording its disappearance.” — Quinn Jacobson, Glass Bones (influenced by John Berger and Roland Barthes)
I’ll be doing the final edits on the manuscript this week. I’ve now gone through the book several times, including all 26 chapters, the introductions, conclusions, notes, and preface. Honestly, it’s hard to describe the amount of work this has been. Some days I wonder what exactly I committed myself to, and then something clicks into place, a paragraph opens up, an image suddenly belongs where it should, and I feel inspired all over again.
I want to thank the people who have acted as readers throughout this process and worked through the chapters with me each week. Your feedback, criticism, encouragement, and patience have mattered more than I can say. This book is better because of you.
I don’t know the exact date the manuscript will go to the printer yet, but my goal is to have a proof copy in my hands by the end of the month, possibly sooner. I’ll make signed hardcover copies available to anyone interested for the cost of printing and shipping, and there will also be a paperback version on Amazon at cost.
I’ve decided to hold off on the ebook version for now. I may eventually release one, but at this point I feel like this book is meant to exist as a physical object. With the amount of artwork, texture, and visual material woven through it, it simply feels better in your hands than on a screen.
“The photograph preserves presence by recording its disappearance.”
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: this project has never been about commerce or making money. It’s about sharing ideas, artwork, and questions that I think matter. It’s about trying to better understand what drives us as human beings, especially in the shadow of mortality.
I’ll begin work on RUPTURE next week and officially start building that book in June. It will be a completely unique kind of project. Glass Bones is heavily theoretical and philosophical. RUPTURE will foreground the artwork itself: the images, the darkroom, the studio, the materials, the failures, the residue, and the physical process of making. The theory will still be there, but mostly in the background.
What I’m increasingly interested in is whether the work itself can function as epistemological evidence. Not illustration of an idea after the fact, but evidence generated through creative practice itself (arts-based research methodology). The photographs, paintings, plates, chemicals, traces, and repetitions are becoming central to what I’m calling Rupture Field Theory (RFT).
Dr. Dan Liechty will be serving as faculty for this next stage of the journey, which feels both exciting and somewhat surreal to me given how foundational Becker’s work has been to my thinking for so many years.