Shards of America [Hardcover]

Phil Bergerson (Author), David Harris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2004

A shard is a fragment of broken pottery, often used by archaeologists to reconstruct objects from past civilizations. In Shards of America, Canadian photographer Phil Bergerson has gathered richly detailed images from neglected corners of American's towns and small cities, and created a fascinating mosaic. Businesses, religious sects, and community groups announce their presence, offer their services, and pitch their messages, while commercial signs, graffiti, posters, and public notices blanket the surfaces of buildings and public spaces. Paintings and movie posters, dime-store novels and daily newspapers, figurines and mannequins, decals and stenciled graffiti, and children's letters and drawings are laid out as artifacts of a greater whole. Patriotism, consumerism, censorship, nostalgia for a simpler past coupled with a desire for a less complicated present...touching on all these themes, Bergerson's quietly ironic but empathetic tone encourages the reader to imagine how our own ordinary world might appear to viewers in a hundred or more years' time.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Phil Bergerson has been a professor of photography at Ryerson University in Toronto since 1975. His work has been widely exhibited internationally and can be found in many prestigious collections including the National Gallery of Canada and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. A travelling exhibition of images from Shards of America, organized by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, will tour North America beginning in September 2004. David Harris is an independent curator and photographic historian. He is the author of Eugène Atget: Unknown Paris, Eadweard Muybridge and the Photographic Panorama of San Francisco, 1850-1880, and other books.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: Quantuck Lane Press (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593720106
• ISBN-13: 978-1593720100
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,801,933 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Message man, February 7, 2009

By 

Robin Benson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shards of America (Hardcover)

Canadian Phil Bergerson continues the American tradition of photographing messages in public places. The sixty photo spreads in the book all contain some sort lettering: either commercially printed or hand created which appear in shop windows or in the environment. David Harris writes in his excellent intro that the flow of images creates a visual framework with each spread deliberately contrasting their two photos. Some of this is not immediately apparent in the same way that not every photo in 'William Eggleston's Guide' slots into place on the first look through.

So many of Bergerson's photos pull you into the composition. Page forty-eight shows a cash register and liquor bottles in a bar with various printed messages on the wall behind and on the register, or the roadside on page eighty-eight with a vertical pole almost splitting the photo in two and various signs stretching into the distance both compositions, cropping and the deep saturated colors just seem so right. I thought the amount of detail in each photo very impressive, all the more so because every shot has been taken in a public place where anyone could have seen what Bergerson has seen but mostly we just pass it by and it's only when the same view is placed on a page that the ordinary reveals more.

Overall I thought this was a wonderful set of photos and the book is typical of the high standards you would expect from the Quantuck. Laura Lindgren (who has designed other Quantuck titles) does the usual impressive layout and typography and the Italian printer Mondadori (matt art with 175 screen) completes the package.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

5.0 out of 5 stars Untitled, December 7, 2009

By 

John Howarth (Forest Grove, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Shards of America (Hardcover)

Phil Bergerson's square color photographs show that he has a sensitive eye for the unusual, the intriguing, the ironic in American life. His sensibility brings to mind that of other contemporary photographers, Elliott Erwitt and Lee Friedlander. The book is a delight.