from issue 40

PhotoGraphic Encounters: The Edges and Edginess of Reading Prose Pictures and Visual Fictions

William F. Garrett-Petts

University of Alberta Press and the Kamloops Art Gallery

PhotoGraphic Encounters: The Edges and Edginess of Reading Prose Pictures and Visual Fictions (University of Alberta Press and the Kamloops Art Gallery) contains much promise of “edginess” and “subversion,” once the great virtues of the postmodern age (which surely is over by now) and now the empty jargon of art critics. The book is evidence of the great wall dividing the Art World from the world.

More Reviews

Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism

Rose Burkoff

Young James Laxer prayed for a normal life. He grew up in a committed Communist household, an experience he describes in Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism (Douglas & McIntyre). Laxer’s parents were true believers and his father worked full time for the Party, a...

The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets

Carrie Villeneuve

This year, January in Vancouver was one long, dark rainy day. Thankfully the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival offered a variety of performances that piqued my curiosity enough to seduce me out of the house, away from the comforts of Kraft Dinner and CSI...

Chomsky and Co.

Leah Rae

Rule number one for aspiring filmmakers: filming the street though the dirty windshield of your car on the way to the interview is not interesting, even if your subject is. Rule number two: if you happen to have an interesting subject for your film — Noam Chomsky, for...

From Bruised Fell

Patty Osborne

From Bruised Fell by Jane Finlay-Young (Viking) is a dark and unrelenting story of two sisters whose lives are dominated by their crazy mother, who abandoned them years ago but who still haunts their thoughts. The older sister, Missy, narrates the story, which takes her and her sis...

Your Secrets Sleep With Me

Kris Rothstein

Kris: In the not-too-distant future, American refugees stream into Canada, populating shelters and dilapidated warehouses. Racial tension, skittish police, a powerful elevator operators’ union and flying teens are all factors in the skewed reality of Your Secrets Sleep With Me...