shashasha

“Rabbit / Hare” by David Billet and Ian Kline was shot on a road trip from Pennsylvania to Texas. But it is neither the road trip nor Texas that are the true subject of the book but rather the pictures themselves; the significance, the creative power and the joy of looking, of taking photographs, and of looking at photographs. Without resorting to cliches or stereotypes, Billet and Kline capture a remarkable range of subjects and scenes – cowboys riding horses, rave-like dance parties, a half-naked man seemingly shadowboxing in an office, an acrobatic cat lunging after a bird, a baptism in a watering trough, trees in a park glowing in the morning light, the asphalt-flattened emptiness of a Texan city – shot with ambiguity, humor and an earnest eye for the joy of living. They are not only able to see the bliss of an animal enjoying the sunlight but to share in it, to depict it in images, too.

“[H]ere’s the thing: these photographs do not derive their palpable life from mere subject matter. Rather, they are charged by the sensibilities of their makers, as those makers came to account of their intuitions with clarity and resolve through the act of making.
Which is to say that the things in this book are pictures. And thus not wholly describable in words.”
― from Tim Carpenter’s afterword