Matthew Connors & Lucy Ives: The Poetics

A superbly made hybrid photobook on the stories that objects invite us to tell

In July of 2017, photographer Matthew Connors (born 1976) and novelist and critic Lucy Ives (born 1980) 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.