josef chladek

on photobooks and books

Paschalis Zervas - To Night. Albedo. Pharmacies., alloglotta, 2011, Athens

Softcover, edition of 70 numbered copies, signed.

The book consists of three consecutive parts. Original and borrowed materials are re-modeled to shape the narrative structure of the subject-matter: the presence of the human illness, which is here manifested in the form of an active abandonment of the artist-author. The core of this book is the photographic recording of acts and objects of art.

It is a book in which no work of art is presented but which is rather a work of art itself. The words, the images and all the material that are used for its construction constitute those fundamental elements of the structure that we call a book. Consequently, it defines a complete-in-itself field of expression that cannot be reduced to any other expressive form or structure.

Page 29, translated

To be ill is a sort of resentment in itself. Against this resentment the invalid has only one great remedy — I call it Russian fatalism, fatalism free from revolt and with which the Russian soldier to whom a campaign proves unbearable ultimately lays himself down in the snow.*

Order at "alloglotta".

Pages: 72
Place: Athens
Year: 2011
Publisher: alloglotta
Size: 12 x 17 cm (approx.)