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Rating: 
Summary: Absorbing Examination of Forty Contemporary Image-Makers
Review: This is a great book. It is the catalog of an exhibition (the first in a planned series of triennials) held September-November 2003. The curators "realized that many artists were leaving the studio and going out into public to engage people who were unknown to them as part of their art-making activity" and hence titled the exhibition "Strangers." The exhibition was "largely planned and carried out in the period following September 11, 2001, when the issue of fear and trust among people in public spaces seemed unavoidable."
The 40 artists (not 50 as stated in the Synopsis and Product Description above) are Francis Alÿs, Olivo Barbieri, Yto Barrada, Chien-Chi Chang, Leif Claesson, Nancy Davenport, Luc Delahaye, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Harun Farocki, Coco Fusco, David Goldblatt, Renée Green, Julie Henry, Bill Henson, Ben Judd, Justine Kurland, Jana Leo, Liu Zheng, Tim Maul, Susan Meiselas, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Matthias Müller, Shirin Neshat, Yoshua Okon, Richard Renaldi, Julika Rudelius, John Schabel, Collier Schorr, Zineb Sedira, Kiki Seror, Bruno Serralongue, Efrat Shvily, Eyal Sivan, Joel Sternfeld, Beat Streuli, Fiona Tan, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Sharon Yaari, and Shizuku Yokomizo. They were born between 1930 and 1979 with an "average" of 1959. It's an international group, with 15 born in Europe, 14 in North America, and the others in Australia, China, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Japan, South Africa and Taiwan.
The 248 pages (not 288 as stated in the Product Details above) alternate between essays (pages 12-18, 60-63, 105-136 [older writings on strangers printed on yellow-green background], 178-184, 226-230) and "artist pages" (20-59, 64-103, 138-177, 186-225). For each artist, one page is devoted to a review of his/her recent work and a description of the works in the exhibition; three pages are devoted to reproductions of the works themselves. Between the well-chosen images and the well-written text, I felt I had a pretty good idea of the artists' works. The medium for each work is given in the back, as are a list of exhibitions and a bibliography for each photographer or video artist.
Some of the works stretch the theme of the exhibition; for example, Davenport's and Shvily's architectural shots do not show any people in them, so it's a leap to say that they concern "strangers." Nevertheless, the book is attractively designed and fascinating, and makes me interested in seeing the next International Center of Photography triennial in 2006. Purchase this book from Amazon.com!
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