Oculus
– / + / related blog entries / video / NYFA interview / purchase / as installation
With Oculus, photographer Ken Schles brings to us an eloquent and moving follow-up to his acclaimed release, A New History of Photography: The World Outside and the Pictures In Our Heads (White Press, 2009).
Through an integration of text and image, Schles extends his investigation into the connection between image and memory by exploring the agency and nature of the image itself. Images, says Schles, are constructions that evoke memories as well as other images. They inform our "ways of seeing" and "knowing" on an ongoing transactional basis. Schles connects us to these ideas not only through his use of the image, but also by referencing ideas about images, memory and metaphors about light found in literature, philosophy, early writings on psychology and in ancient myth. In the confluence of theses sources we find timeless corollaries to deepen our understanding of the function and the possibility for the image.
Spurred on by private upheavals to reassess his understanding of the image and its connection to memory, master photographer Ken Schles offers to us in Oculus a deeply felt and haunting search for meaning that takes us outside the noise and quotidian confusion of popular culture.
Oculus, a photographic book about images, memory, and the metaphor of light.
96 pages; 35 plates.
Published by Noorderlicht.