Camera Work (Revised Edition): 35 photographs by John Fraser

This revision transforms the mundane into the poetic, intertwining past and present, nature in all its forms, and striking imagistic contrasts. Scenes range from a sunlit urn among cypresses to a wintery grave in Minnesota, populated by enigmatic figures and expressions of life in motion. Beyond mere documentation, it explores symbols, moods, and the possibilities of every moment. From serene sunsets to the dynamics of love, it's a vision that evades the ordinary, capturing fleeting connections in dreamlike settings. A journey beyond the everyday, by the author of "Atget and the City."

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About the Author: John Fraser
John Fraser was born in North London in 1928, went to a provincial grammar school, won a scholarship to Balliol College, has degrees in English from Oxford and the University of Minnesota, and taught for thirty years at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. He was married to the artist Carol Hoorn Fraser (1930–1991). His widely reviewed Violence in the Arts (1974) and two other print books were published by Cambridge University Press. His major article “Atget and the City” was reprinted in Studio International. He has a large website, www.jottings.ca, and has authored or co-authored a number of eBooks. He started carrying a camera and doing darkroom work in Minneapolis in the 1950s, with occasional tips from Jerome Liebling, Allen Downs, and Robert Eugene Wilcox. He always used the workhorse 50mm lens, black-and-white film, and available light. Several of his slim photocopy Throwaway Books are in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He put away his camera in 2000.
A major revision, the merely documentary gone, the symbolist-poetic intensified. Past and present, nature raw and cooked, imagistic juxtapositions, sunlit urn with cypresses, flames glowing as the ground thaws for a midwinter Minnesota grave. Enigmatic mannequin, pensive boys, racing girls, sentinel in the sky.

You don’t need specific locations. This is all about possibilities, emblems, icons, moods, never settling down into a single mode, a single statement. Everything is in motion or with motion latent. The lyrical calms of sunset grass and pristine pebbled beach are sites for couples. not death-wish yearnings. There’s a lovely wedding kiss. The cover’s key-setting figure with bike at that dreamlike empty intersection has the potency that comes when the eye has fastened on something without the mind fully knowing why.

Escapes from “the malady of the quotidian.” Lyrical/dramatic compositions. By the author of “Atget and the City.”

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Available in the following formats: .epub, .pdf, .mobi

Price: $9.95 USD

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