This weekend?s Automobiles section offers six brief reviews of recent books that readers may want to consider as holiday gifts or as additions to their own bookshelves. Covering a broad range of interests ? pop culture, famous racers and marque histories are among the selections ? they are evidence of a healthy ecosystem in the realm of automotive literature.
Among the books considered for review, one that did not lend itself to a conventional appraisal was ?Joe?s Junk Yard,? a 143-page volume of photographs by Lisa Kereszi (Damiani, $45). There are explanatory pages by the photographer, who is on the faculty of the Yale School of Art, but it is the images, and their supporting context, that provide the book?s main attraction.
Ms. Kereszi is not a disinterested observer here, an artist with a camera simply making well-imagined images of used-up vehicles. The junkyard was her family?s livelihood through three generations, founded by her grandfather in Pennsylvania and serving as a gathering place and her creative inspiration. There are pages drawn from family albums and scrapbooks, portraits of relatives and acquaintances, landscapes strewn with ruined sedans and blown-up engines. Some might be characters from a Bruce Davidson essay, and there are scenes that may remind you of Lee Friedlander?s work; Ms. Kersezi cites Walker Evans and Robert Frank among her influences.
I can well understand the attraction of the place ? many hours of my younger years were spent wandering grimy piles of cast-off vehicles ? but the draw was purely mechanical. I searched for a usable transmission that would work in my ?57 Bel Air, not a still-life composition of carburetors, fenders and bald tires.
The clarity with which Ms. Kersezi compiles images, family history and the decline of a way of life make ?Joe?s Junk Yard? a book that goes well beyond a photo collection. The individual pages are not all important works of creativity, but taken together with the words and the personal documentation, it is a volume worthy of examination.
Source: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/automotive-diversions-of-the-non-driving-kind/
seahawks new uniforms 2012 tornadoes in dallas anchorman 2 kentucky basketball oaksterdam the fray national anthem dallas tornado
No comments:
Post a Comment