Playback of this video requires the latest Flash Plugin.
Please download the plugin.
Please activate javascript for reliable plugin detection.
Older browsers, also IE/Mac, are not supported. Please upgrade to a standards-compliant browser.
In “Decay” Cameras & Lenses Preserve what Time & Nature Destroy
January 29, 2009
Contact: Joel Samberg
Telephone: 973.857.8070
Mark Batty Publisher, a leader in distinctive books covering the graphic and communication arts, has released “Decay,” an absorbing photographic exploration of the specter and remnants of objects, both manmade and natural, that time has withered away into curiosities, question marks and memories.
Photographed by two accomplished lensmen, Nathan Troi Anderson and J.K. Putnam, “Decay” uses color and black & white images that are stark and uncompromising in the way they show the effects of what a contributing essayist to the book calls “the heavy boots of time.”
The images—from old stone walls to windswept landscapes, from collapsed signs to abandoned buildings, from rotting cars to rusted chains—are photographic stories about the natural state of decay. By turns peculiar and poignant, “Decay” easily invites reflections on the beguiling and sometimes oddly beautiful consequences that time and nature have on the observable world.
“Decay” also doubles as a source of patterns for graphic artists, with a high-resolution, royalty-free, 50-image CD that is included with the book. These images of decay can be used for a limitless number of graphic design applications.
Anderson, who last authored “Shadows of Time” for Mark Batty Publisher, and Putnam, who photographed “Green Design” and “CBGB: Decades of Graffiti” for the publisher, both contribute short essays to the book, as does an Iraqi university educator named Majeed, who is an acquaintance of Anderson’s. All three talk about decay as a major force that can be as emotional as it is visual.
