The Modern Spirit is Vivisective (signed)

by Francesca Catastini

Photographs: Francesca Catastini

Text: Federica Chiocchetti

Publisher: AnzenbergerEdition

112 pages

Pictures: 50

Year: 2016

Price: 34 €

Comments: 23 x 16 cm, hardcover with embossed cover picture, Swiss brochure, Edition of 500 copies including 25 collector's editions with a print.

This book won the 1st Prize of the ViennaPhotoBookAward at the ViennaPhotoBookReview of the ViennaPhotoBookFestival in June 2016. It was selected by the following jury: Gerry Badger, Andreas H. Bitesnich, 
Josef Chladek, Roger Eberhard, Nela Eggenberger, Brad Feuerhelm, Peter Gössner, Rob van Hoesel, Espen Krukhaug, Calin Kruse, Harald Latzko, Corinne Noordenbos, 
Andrew Phelps, Klaus Pichler, Hannes Wanderer.

www.viennaphotobookfestival.com

“The modern spirit is vivisective. Vivisection itself is the most modern process one can conceive. The ancient spirit accepted phenomena with bad grace. The ancient method investigated law with the lantern of justice, morality with the lantern of revelation, art with the lantern of tradition. But all these lanterns have magical properties: they transform and disfigure. The modern method examines its territory by the light of day.”

So said the modernist manifesto of a young James Joyce, a former medical student, in his Stephen Hero, offering a portrait of the artist as vivisector, a carnal voyeur whose victim suffers his gaze as she does the surgeon’s scalpel.

Photo-artist Francesca Catastini explores vivisection as an aesthetic performance. Acting as both the victim and the artist, she dissects the very notion of scopophilia, blindness and the human quest for knowledge.

Presented as a cornucopia of materials, her found photographs of old Anatomy lab and blind school students mingle with appropriated frontispieces of Renaissance Anatomy manuals and her austere yet ironical photoworks to form a telescopic structure divided into overlapping sections – the chapters of her forthcoming book: on looking, on touching, on cutting and on discovering.

Federica Chiocchetti, The Photocaptionist

> book review by Gerry Badger for the magazine 1000 Words

More books by Francesca Catastini

• 

  The Modern Spirit is Vivisective (book + print - last copies)
  by Francesca Catastini
  Euro 100

• 

  The Modern Spirit is Vivisective
  by Francesca Catastini
  Euro 29

• 

  The Modern Spirit is Vivisective (signed review copy)
  by Francesca Catastini
  Euro 34 27.20

• 

  Petrus
  by Francesca Catastini
  Euro 38.50

• 

  The Modern Spirit is Vivisective (book + framed print - last c...
  by Francesca Catastini
  Euro 280

more books tagged »medicine« | >> see all

• 

  Will (signed)
  by Reiner Riedler
  sold out

more books tagged »Italian« | >> see all

• 

  Urbanism 1.01
  by Marco Citron
  sold out

• 

  Spasibo
  by Davide Monteleone
  Euro 58

• 

  Hidden Islam (signed)
  by Nicolo Degiorgis
  sold out

• 

  Somnambulism (signed)
  by Lara Ciarabellini
  sold out

• 

  Radicalia (signed)
  by Piero Martinello
  sold out

• 

  Heimatkunde (signed)
  by Nicolo Degiorgis
  sold out

more books tagged »conceptual« | >> see all

• 

  It Could Have Been Me
  by Sonia Lenzi
  Euro 80

• 

  Eclipse
  by Antoine d'Agata
  sold out

• 

  Works
  by Michael Wolf
  sold out

• 

  Skin Memories
  by Thomas Mailaender
  Euro 77

• 

  Go to Become (signed)
  by Jörgen Axelvall
  Euro 62

• 

  New Horizons (signed)
  by Bruno Van Den Elshout
  Euro 250

Random selection from the Virtual bookshelf josefchladek.com

• 
  Shomei Tomatsu - Okinawa, Okinaw...
  
• 
  Hans Richter - Filmgegner von He...
  
• 
  Daido Moriyama - Japan: A Photo ...
  
• 
  Erich Mendelsohn - Russland, Eur...