The Poetics

Photographs by Matthew Connors
Text by Lucy Ives
Design by Elana Schlenker
Image Text Ithaca Press,  2019
Softcover, 188 pages, 5.25 x 8 in.
Edition of 600

Publisher’s Website

In July of 2017, photographer Matthew Connors and novelist Lucy Ives embarked on a strange project: to remove and catalog all the contents of Connors's car, a 1992 Volvo 240 station wagon.

Although the New York–based duo began the endeavor without knowing where it would lead, their investigation—of parts, tools, ephemera, litter, personal items, unidentifiable disjecta, among other objects—lasted more than two years and resulted in a series of photographs by Connors and an essay by Ives on narrative forms and temporalities inherent to contemporary media.

This collaborative publication, designed by Elana Schlenker, poses questions about where narrative originates and how we establish our stories in relation to the objects and timescales that carry, ground, and surround us.


Press

Review by Chris Campanioni, The Brooklyn Rail

Review by Olga Yatskevich, Collector Daily