Editorial Reviews Book Description A shard is a fragment of broken pottery, often used by archaeologists to reconstruct objects from past civilizations. In Shards of America, Canadian photographer Phil Bergerson has gathered richly detailed images from neglected corners of American's towns and small cities, and created a fascinating mosaic. Businesses, religious sects, and community groups announce their presence, offer their services, and pitch their messages, while commercial signs, graffiti, posters, and public notices blanket the surfaces of buildings and public spaces. Paintings and movie posters, dime-store novels and daily newspapers, figurines and mannequins, decals and stenciled graffiti, and children's letters and drawings are laid out as artifacts of a greater whole.
Patriotism, consumerism, censorship, nostalgia for a simpler past coupled with a desire for a less complicated present...touching on all these themes, Bergerson's quietly ironic but empathetic tone encourages the reader to imagine how our own ordinary world might appear to viewers in a hundred or more years' time. 119 color photographs. About the Author Phil Bergerson has been a professor of photography at Ryerson University in Toronto since 1975. His work has been widely exhibited internationally and can be found in many prestigious collections including the National Gallery of Canada and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. A travelling exhibition of images from Shards of America, organized by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, will tour North America beginning in September 2004. David Harris is an independent curator and photographic historian. He is the author of Eugène Atget: Unknown Paris, Eadweard Muybridge and the Photographic Panorama of San Francisco, 1850-1880, and other books.
Shards of America,Phil Bergerson,David Harris,Quantuck Lane Press,1593720106,General,Media Studies,Photography,Pictorial works,Show windows,Signs and signboards,Social life and customs,United States
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