Museum of Complaint
Matthew Bakkom, editor
Steidl, 2009
Before blogs and tweets and digital petitions, the letter was the primary vehicle for voicing dissatisfaction. This book features some 132 letters written to the Mayor of New York between 1751 and 1969, which chronicle, both individually and collectively, the kinds of absurd problems that faced metropolitain dwellers in an earlier, arguably cell phone and email-free time. This beautiful book offers up a side of material culture not frequently seen — or imagined — and obliges us to reconsider the lost art of letter-writing in a new and unusual way. [JH]
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Perspecta 44: Domain
Tala Gharagozlou, David Sadighian & Ryan Welch, editors
The MIT Press, 2011
The latest edition of the distinguished journal from the Yale School of Architecture centers on a question: How do we establish the domain of architecture? [NL]
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The Cruel Radiance
Susie Linfield
University Of Chicago Press, 2010
Brilliantly crafted, exquisitely written and exceptionally powerful in its argument, Susie Linfield looks at our complex relationship with what are essentially disquieting images: pictures of war, of violence, of unthinkable terror. Linfield debates theorists and critics from Charles Baudelaire to Walter Benjamin and fearlessly takes issue with Susan Sontag whose seminal 1977 book On Photography is reconsidered with fascinating new insight. [JH]
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