YEAR ZERO: Lockdown Journal

Reviews / Votes

"Richard Edson's Year Zero Lockdown Journal is a dramatic
eyewitness account of 2020-21 in Los Angeles, his observations matched by a
cavalcade of images, turns moody, haunted, ominous, meditative, and
reassuringly banal--then the police riots following the murder of George Floyd
turn the mode to combat photography. This book is terrific, the pictures and
design are perfect."- Lucy Sante (Writer, Critic, and frequent contributor to
the New York Review of Books)



"Richard Edson's Year Zero Lockdown Journal marks a unique
and riveting addition to the genre of Covid Lit. With a voice all his own and
photographs that capture the dark heart of plague-time Los Angeles, Edson's
vision is evocative of work as diverse as Bill Owens, WB Sebald, or Bukowski if
he owned a camera. Edson's text and photos make this the perfect tome to curl
up with and ride out the next pandemic.- Jerry Stahl (Novelist & Screenwriter of
Permanent Midnight)



"Richard Edson has always expressed a contemplative nature
laced with humor, mostly at the absurdity so rife in the human condition. It's
what you see in his photography, glean from his words, and hear in his music.
You certainly see it in his evocative and beautiful visage. The pandemic year
seems like a bad dream we've all woken from and do not want to hear about
again. But, in Richard's photo-journal, initially recounting a frightened
and confused state - as so many of us were in - leading into conflicted
feelings of self-regard through forced isolation, and then to the group
activism spurred by the police killing of George Floyd, the power of resistance
refuting the discombobulation of community, Richard encounters his essence-
that of positive vibrations, the manifest of his drums, his trumpet, his poetry
and prose, alive in conversation, in exchange, sharing, caring, daring, and
staying aware - come hell or high water. This is a magnificent read."- Thurston Moore (Guitarist and Founding member of Sonic
Youth)



"During the pandemic, Richard Edson chose to venture out
daily, with bicycle and camera, to discover once-familiar, even mundane details
now transformed by a new, unpredicted perspective. Finding a quiet beauty in a
world suddenly stopped, and later a turbulent energy heightened by social
disturbances and the powerful BLM movement, what accumulates is a very moving
personal document but one resonating with planetary implications." - Jim Jarmusch (Film Director, Screenwriter and Producer of
Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, Ghost Dog, and Only Lovers Left Alive)