Crushed is Jason Fulford's second book. This selection of color photographs was inspired by the contrast in the feelings of sadness and humor--one interpretation being that beauty and humor can provide both antidote and a necessary companion to melancholy. These pictures were taken from 1997 to 2001 in the United States, Canada, France, Hungary, India, Iceland, China and Romania.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book of Looks,
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This review is from: Crushed (Hardcover)
As a visual arts professional since 1989, particularly dealing with photography, I have seen a lot of really good and incredibly bad art books. With most being outrageously expensive it takes quite a bit for me to spend my money on them. Having grown sick of photography and its lack of visual progress, I have over the last six years turned my back on it and related books. This is the first photography book I have purchased in a very long time and am glad I did. This monograph is wonderfully published from the tipped in plates front and back to the beautiful reproductions inside; this book surpasses some more costly ones (it's design is reminiscent of William Eggleston's Guide). This is, in fact, not the most minimal art book ever published, I think that would go to Richard Misrach's first book of desert photographs which was published with only an ISBN number.
This is a book of images taken 1997-2001 by the author in such far-ranging locales as the US, China, India, Canada, Iceland, and Transylvania. There is no explicatory text, just the identifying titles listed at the end. I personally do not have a problem with the "titles" not being shown next to the image because, in the end, they don't matter. The images transcend their physical locale and become anywhere, anytime images; they are more global than local. In addition, the lack of titles keeps the viewer/reader from potential influence about how they may read an image knowing where it was made; the lack of titles helps the viewer/reader come to a completely unbiased interpretation of the image. The lack of immediate titling forces one to really look at each image and consider it on an aesthetic level instead of mere geographic location. It's difficult to pinpoint Fulford's visual influence for there are images reminiscent of a number today's leading photographers: William Eggleston,Rineke Dijkstra, Alec Soth, Stephen Shore, and Susan Lipper. A common theme running through the book...um, not really sure but these images are all very quiet and sometime melancholy, sometimes humorous. Oh wait, I know...the theme is: life! This is really very apparent. These images give us what photography shows us best - the moment between the next moment. All we have to do is take the time to recognize these moments and their simple beauty.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Maybe I'm Being Dense, But I Just Don't Get It,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Crushed (Hardcover)
(I revised my February 2006 review to address points in an April 10, 2006, review on this page.) The 10/2005 issue of Photo District News, a magazine for professional photographers, named this one of the "most captivating and influential photography books" from 1999-2004. In an interview on the Web, photographer Jason Fulford said "this book is about the simultaneous feeling of sad and funny," which was intriguing. So I thought I would buy a copy.
This hardcover (ISBN 0-9701656-7-6) measures 23 cm high by 18 cm wide. The covers and the pastedown endpapers are illustrated with four photos not found in the body of the book. The first page has a quotation "It's only a game, but it's the only game" by the character Emmett Creed in a 1972 novel "End Zone" by Don DeLillo. After that are almost 100 pages containing 60 color photos, each 11.5 cm square. The photographs were taken 1997-2001 in the United States (accounting for just over half the photos), Canada, China, France, Hungary, Iceland, India, and Romania. Blank pages are interspersed apparently randomly among the pages with photos. The last two pages give locations and dates for the 64 photos (which are difficult to use because the photos on the interior pages are unnumbered!*), as well as copyright information. Overall, I'm not as favorably impressed as PDN's editors. Some photos are either funny or sad, like #13 with the couple putting their heads through holes in a sculpture to pose as king & queen of the sea; #21 with the single car in the parking lot covered with snow; #33 with people in a park in the shadow of a palm tree; and #46 with hairy guys. I see some recurring themes: tree trunks on wallpaper in #1, real tree trunks in #4; plastic lamb in #11, flock of lambs in #34; crushed cars in #15 and #28; a tiger print on sheets in #16, a stuffed tiger in #50; plastic(?) white horse in #17, real(?) white horse in #53; brown paint on bricks in #42, brown towels in #43; etc. But I find no theme or sequence linking all the photos. Furthermore, most of the photos are just uninteresting. The photos are not beautiful in a painterly sense like Eggleston's, nor are they poignant like Dijkstra's or Soth's. Susan Lipper's books show far more insight into humanity. For example, her "Grapevine" (1994) documents a town in West Virginia with photographs and interviews; her "Trip" (1999) consists of road trip photos with a text by Frederick Barthelme. In my mind, this book is most reminiscent of Stephen Shore's books (like "American Surfaces" and "Uncommon Places"), which I consider mundane and over-rated. Per the publisher's Web site, the book is limited to an edition of 3,000; I'm wondering if all those copies will ever be sold. * In the aforementioned interview, Fulford states that the location info "seemed relevant in order to say that this book is not about any one region or country," but to accomplish that goal it would have been better to either: (1) randomly list the 64 locations, or (2) state only something like "the photos were taken in North America, Asia, and Europe."
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a sequence of humor and beauty,
By
This review is from: Crushed (Hardcover)
Jason Fulford has proven himself, in Crushed, to be one of our younger generation's heirs to the meditative and witty fine art photojournalism of Robert Frank, Lee Friendlander, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, and William Eggleston. The sequence of the images in the book is a wordless essay that is both hilarious and heartbreaking.
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