There Is No Eye (Hardcover)

by John Cohen (Photographer), Greil Marcus (Introduction)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Cohen is a photographer whose talents are put to excellent use in part because he finds himself in the right place at the right time, recording shared qualities within such widely dispersed locales as Greenwich Village's "Beat" scene, high-altitude Andean villages, and storefront churches. Cohen was a fixture in the 1950s folk-music revival (he was the guitarist in the trio The New Lost City Ramblers), who also happened to have a camera and a deeply inquisitive disposition at his service. The lyrical and moving work that resulted is collected for the first time in this monograph. The most appealing by-product of Cohen's densely textured black-and-white images is an ecumenical message that people everywhere will find ways to interpret and adapt to life by means both creative and life-giving. This message is visible in the slightly askew beer bottle in the pocket of a faceless Peruvian trumpeter, the artist Red Grooms ferrying a large painting across Third Avenue in a pram, and production stills from Robert Frank's beat opus Pull My Daisy. Many famous faces make an appearance: the crumpled forehead of Jack Kerouac, an impish Bob Dylan, a diffident Franz Kline, and a tousled, aging Woody Guthrie. However, the real meat of this fine and inspiring work is the depiction of unknown toilers in Cohen's family of man. Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
"You are right John Cohen--Quasimoto was right. . . . There is no eye--there is only a series of mouths--long live the mouths--your rooftop--if you don't already know--has been demolished. . ." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: powerHouse Books (November 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157687107X
• ISBN-13: 978-1576871072
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,255,532 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars there is no question, November 14, 2002

By	Brian A. Sanders (Charleston, South Carolina) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I treated myself to this book for its relationship with and inclusion of many subjects of my interest: photography, folk & bluegrass music, roots culture, beat culture, NYC 60s art culture, & exotic travel. When I read the description here, I thought, "wow, this sounds like one hell of a great book, tailored to my passions." Well, it's better than that. John Cohen is one lucky guy to have witnessed & recorded all that's in this book. The text is adequately sparse (for a 200-page book), but well-written and provides just enough accompaniment for the fascinating photography reproduced here. Regardless the title, looking through John Cohen's eyes is an ecstatic experience, taking one away to seemingly faraway times and places, especially for someone who was born in the 1970s (me). There is a story within each image, and the large scale of the prints makes you want to crawl inside each one and figure out what's going on. It's an Italian-made book, which explains the high quality; and it's the best ($) I've spent since Dylan was last in town.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm not neutral buy or steal or borrow this book NOW!, December 1, 2005

By	Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

To really know John Cohen and really to know so much about USA culture from the late 1950s until today, but particularly the part that the cultural dissonent and culturally cool parts of the folk and old time revival, and politically as well, you
really need to read this book and see this book

I make no secret of the fact that he has been one of my heroes since I about 58 was about 14, that I have enjoyed his writing and recording, and that through the luck mutual friends, I have met him. I sent my first published book autographed to him more than 30 years ago. I been seated with him at weddings. I have thrived not only on his music but his wonderful photographs,and his great collection of both Andean and Appalachian music for decades. I've been thrilled to see him performing at Newport Folk Festivals, in folk clubs, in living rooms. I am not objectiove, JOHN COHEN IS MY HERO.

However, after forty some years of this, this book hit me and struck me hard, as an important statement about the whole history of USA culture from the 1950s on. After all, John Cohen along with Dave Van Ronk was one of the first persons to feel Bob Dylan was significant. In one of his wildest anti-everything periods, Dylan still wrote and said, "You are right John Cohen," for the sensitive interviews John made with him, for John's sensitive films and photographs sampled here, for introducing John to Allen Ginsburg and other leaders of the Beat art and poetry movement who John started among.

At the same time John was and is a great traditional folk music performer, one of the great members of the New Lost City Ramblers, as well as a player on his own independent CDS. More than that, he is a great collector of both Andean and Appalachian folk music. In this book most importantly for me, John;s photographs and commentary with his relationship with the great musicial genius Roscoe Holcomb of Kentucky, further explicated in his liner notes to his second CD of Holcomb's work "An Untamed Sense of Control" is worth the whole book.


Also you gain a lot of knowledge or better feel for John as an artist who knew the abstract expressionists and the photographers who parallelled them. This is a great book for anyone who remembers the original Cedar Tavern or even the later/current one. This is a great book for people who need to know and feel the way that art and music tried to bridge the gap between the plastic, commercial, prefabricated, cardborn cookie cutter, drek that the consumer society and Madison Avenue and the Brill building dish out, and the liberating spirit of humanity. Not bragadocio layered, sticking out their thumb at normal people, mud in your eye, adolescent rebellion garbage.

Read this, and you find hope, and maybe know how to build a life. At the wedding our John and my best friend, I gave the couple an album of photographs I had taken in Nevada, knowing John and my friend had just returned from a photographic tour in a small plane of the southwest, some of whose pictures are in the book. I also gave a joke biography of myself, entitled how I wanted to be the next John Cohen

Not a bad thing to be.

TT