purple VISUAL ESSAY

by COLLIER SCHORR

 

These collages are from my upcoming book Memories of the Administration (steidlMack, 2010), the third volume in the series, “Forests & Fields.” This series presents a body of pictures, taken from 1993 to the present, which document a small town in Germany. Each volume plays with a genre of photography books. The latest one deals with reportage, war photography, magazine assignments, and books that memorialize a particular war or army. The project collages my pictures with pieces of appropriated pictures and bits of texts from books I’ve found. The project concerns many various conflicts and a narrative is formed through their description. The fascination for real war pictures and fictionalized accounts of war, including Hollywood movies, is taken into account, as is my own representation of the way violence, heroism, and fascism are fetishized. By photocopying my own images and others I’ve taken from books, I…