Jill Mathis - Parallel Text (Photographs)

Essay (Italian / English) by Sabrina Zannier
Hardcover
Cover Design: Stefan Sagmeister
Size: cm 29 x 22,5
pp. 74
31 colour-illustrations
Edizioni Pendragon (June 1999)
ISBN -06-3
List Price: € 20,14 $ 19,50
Our Price: € 12,91 $ 12,50

(....) After having studied the works of Jill Mathis in their exhibition dimension, after having experienced the visual impact of these photographs anchored, for the most part, in black and white, in subtle tonings and discreet insertions of colour, enough to offer us a reality mediated through the filter of thought and devoid of the glaring invasiveness which characterises quotidian communication, I have found myself glancing at the same images in reduced format. Images for a book, like those reproduced in this catalogue, which, after having "spoken" from the walls of the gallery, prepare themselves to be examined in a more private and intimate reading space. Such a distinction could seem banal, basically extensible to any work presented in an exhibition and in the relevant publication. In this case, however, it serves to draw attention to the double level of reading, that of the image apart (which dominates in the large format, at the exhibition) and that arising from its combination with the word, paradoxically rendered more accessible in reproductions of reduced size. Glancing at Jill's works means to perceive an unusual dimension, that of a kind of illustrated etymological dictionary for adults, which combines linguistics with visual art at the crossroads between photographic poetics and conceptual valencies.

Sabrina Zannier, May 1999
(From the essay of the book )