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THE PUBLISHER'S DELIVERY IS PLANNED FOR OCTOBER 2023; PRE-ORDERS ARE ALREADY POSSIBLE!
Background information
"‘I may pay rent to a friend for my place in Greensboro, but the South’s my landlord; and I’m trapped in its stomach trying to get to its brain. Here, I see butterflies with Confederate flag-grown wings and minstrel vestiges of Daddy Rice collecting dough. I can’t move because I’m stuck in Aunt Jemima’s syrup.’ The photographic volume 'Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body' is the highly anticipated first book by artist, filmmaker, and writer RaMell ROSS.
Content
Bringing together his large-format photographs, sculptures, conceptual works, and selected films, together with illuminating texts by RaMell ROSS and a host of writers, the ambitious publication 'Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body' presents a chronicle of the American South that is both mysterious and quotidian, a historical document and a radical imagining of the future.
The book opens with a series of illuminating colour photographs from Hale County, Alabama, hi’s adoptive home and the setting of his Academy Award-nominated documentary 'Hale County This Morning, This Evening' (2018). It then moves through a series of photographic and mixed-media works and writings that examine, deconstruct, and rewrite visual representations of the South. Amidst these works, at the book’s heart, is his film 'Return to Origin', a remarkable conceptual work in which he freight ships himself in a 4x8-foot box – a nod to Henry Brown who shipped himself to freedom in 1849. With the book 'Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body', RaMell ROSS creates a new visual narrative of the South, freed from its iconic meanings to reveal the earth, dirt, soil, and land beneath. With texts by RaMell ROSS, Tracy K. Smith, Richard McCabe, and Scott Matthews." (© Mack books, 2023)