@10x10photobooks

‌‌ Hello friends, this is @amirvank from @dastrasphotobooks and hope you have good weekend 💫 Today we look at Farshid Azarang’s book, “Book of Amnesia”. Azarang is an author, lecturer and photographer who has contributed a great deal through his instructions, translations and publications. ‌‌ The “Book of Amnesia” is a photobook comprised of pictures and writing. It is very personal, with references to family, love, photography and death. The photos are chosen from the author’s family album plus photos taken by the author himself. The scripts are both the work of the artist himself and quotations from other authors. Although the combination of picture and text is somewhat challenging in general, the combination in this book sits well and complimentary. ‌‌‌‌ What I enjoy most about this book is the adventurous selection of pictures and engaging and sometimes self-confessional notes (talking about his mother’s death, killing of pool’s fishes, a voyeuristic look at the neighbor’s wife and etc.) that leads to a philosophical monologue about life. The sequence of writings and the photos are laid out in a manner that they direct and even challenge your thoughts. Here is some notes from the book: Slide 4: “I never wanted to live like fools” Don Corleone Slide 5: “A guru asked his disciples to put their thumb and index finger together. Which finger is touching the other? Both simultaneously and alternately? Are there any ambivalent feelings? Our mind cannot distinguish between the fact that it is simultaneously going through an experience and making the experience take place. Photos are the result of the same connection. They involve the same ambiguous feeling, that in the other world as well as this one, we are connected to each other. We are simultaneously experiencing and being experienced. The photographic ecstasy (or maybe the ecstasy of art in general) is giving oneself to the experience of the world. This is where one is engaged with existence. In this manner, the subject is not an object but the world itself. Here, the world is the subject. I start with my experience of the world to get to the world’s experience of me.” ‌‌ more on comments!