Erica Baum: The Naked Eye

Erica Baum’s (born 1961) The Naked Eye is the first exhaustive monograph on the artist’s eponymous series (2008-present). The volume features a suite of 58 color reproductions of Baum’s celebrated photographs, which capture slices of imagery and text within the pages of illustrated books. Essays by French writer Jean Max Colard and American curator Cathleen Chaffee elucidate the work, considering its context and relevance. A precise, economical storyteller, Erica Baum has become internationally known for her photographic work of the past two decades, which mines found sources of text and image, from art-historical indices and library card catalogues to esoteric illustrated parlor games. In this volume, Baum photographs old softcovers from their sides, revealing their fanned-out, aging pages as opposed to their spines. Without caption or context, the sliced and fragmented text of these pages creates a new narrative, one made abstract in Baum’s imagery.