Was Here. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2001.
Was Here. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2001.
Was Here. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2001.
Was Here. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2001.
Was Here. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2001.
Was Here. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2001.

Was Here.

Granary Books, 2001. Item #GB_91

10 3/4 x 13 1/4 in., 64 pp., cloth over boards.

Was Here takes photography and the book as distinct metaphors for History, playing them off one another to provoke and unwind their respective implications. As markers of a former presence and constellations of the unfulfilled, photographs punch holes in the book’s inherent pretenses of organicism and linearity, calling attention to the citational nature of the book’s very element, language. On the other hand, with its potential to carry out alternation and repetition over paginated time, a book can make tangible the temporal and ontological paradoxes at the heart of every photographic image. With obvious compositional and material attention to the medium (letterpress) in which both texts and photographs—labels and vignettes, captions and scenes, statements and evidence—are presented, Was Here seeks signs of the historical truths that link reproducibility and transcendence.”
–Emily McVarish

Designed and printed letterpress on Mohawk Superfine by Emily McVarish. This is from an edition of 50 copies, of which 10 are hors commerce and 40 are for sale; each numbered and signed by the artist. Out-of-print.





View the entry for this book on Artists Books Online.

Pictured: cover; pp. 2–3; 4–5; 26–27; 38–39; and 64–65.

Out of Stock