Born Free, Born Equal
Will be published approx. on 21. December 2023
Book
Hardback
184 pages
978-1-7340180-9-7 (ISBN)
Description
For this new edition of Joseph Maida's ongoing collaboration with Ansel Adams' Manzanar archive, Maida pairs his first Act, the 2018 edition of his book Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal _______________- Americans, with his second Act, Printed Media x Printed Justice: Exhibition-in-a-Box, an adaptable, modular, DIY exhibition of political posters in a box, from 2020, which he gifted as a call to action to institutions with a longstanding commitment to Adams' work including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Six months after the publication of Maida's first edition of Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal _______________- Americans, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned her dissent in the case Trump v. Hawaii, which restricted travel into the United States by people from several nations, or by refugees without valid travel documents. She stated that the Court's 5-4 ruling "redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu [v. United States, 1944, upholding the exclusion of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II] and merely replaces one gravely wrong decision with another." Sotomayor's words echo the perspective of Maida's 2018 monographic work from earlier that year, which also parallels recent immigration bans based on nationality to the experiences of Japanese-Americans in the United States during World War II, reiterating the value of revisiting Ansel Adams' most political project in the present.
In October 2020, on the eve of the U.S. Presidential election, Maida deployed political posters he created through the reworking of the pages of his first edition of this project by introducing political documents from all branches of the U.S. government. Maida mailed his posters directly to the institutions with a longstanding commitment to Adams' work. Through this call to action, Maida extended his individual reconciliation of the history of the medium of photography to these museums and their own records and holdings.
With Born Free, Born Equal, Maida continues to illuminate the past's timely relationship to the current social and political climate, highlighting the importance of revisiting historic art and archives with the knowledge and resources of today.
Six months after the publication of Maida's first edition of Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal _______________- Americans, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned her dissent in the case Trump v. Hawaii, which restricted travel into the United States by people from several nations, or by refugees without valid travel documents. She stated that the Court's 5-4 ruling "redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu [v. United States, 1944, upholding the exclusion of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II] and merely replaces one gravely wrong decision with another." Sotomayor's words echo the perspective of Maida's 2018 monographic work from earlier that year, which also parallels recent immigration bans based on nationality to the experiences of Japanese-Americans in the United States during World War II, reiterating the value of revisiting Ansel Adams' most political project in the present.
In October 2020, on the eve of the U.S. Presidential election, Maida deployed political posters he created through the reworking of the pages of his first edition of this project by introducing political documents from all branches of the U.S. government. Maida mailed his posters directly to the institutions with a longstanding commitment to Adams' work. Through this call to action, Maida extended his individual reconciliation of the history of the medium of photography to these museums and their own records and holdings.
With Born Free, Born Equal, Maida continues to illuminate the past's timely relationship to the current social and political climate, highlighting the importance of revisiting historic art and archives with the knowledge and resources of today.
Reviews / Votes
I grew up at the time of World War II. The irony was we were fighting a war against racism and yet by an Executive Order of President Roosevelt people who had done nothing wrong except they were of Japanese ancestry were interned in camps far from their homes. That was a dreadful mistake. - RUTH BADER GINSBERGMaida's overlays and interventions onto the catalog's original sequence amplify the prophetic nature of this historic story. It is both a sensitive reanimation of a still-resonant chapter in American history and a hard-hitting meditation upon photography's complicity with its outplaying. - CHARLOTTE COTTON
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Illustrations
Photographic Collages
Dimensions
Height: 279 mm
Width: 213 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
998 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-7340180-9-7 (9781734018097)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Joseph Maida is an artist, writer, and educator based in New York City. Having studied under Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Gregory Crewdson, Catherine Opie and Thomas Struth, Maida's perspective uniquely navigates the intersections between photographic ideologies of the American Northeast (Walker Evans), West Coast Conceptualism, and the Duesseldorf School. Maida has taught at Yale University, Parsons the New School, SUNY Purchase, and is on the faculty at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), where he is Chair of the BFA Photography and Video department. Maida earned his BA summa cum laude from Columbia University in architecture and art history and his MFA in photography from Yale.
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 - April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist. Adams began to photograph professionally in 1930, and in 1932 was a founding member of the f/64 group in San Francisco, California. In 1940 he created the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, New York, along with Beaumont Newhall and David McAlpin. From 1942 to 1944 Adams acted as the photographic adviser to the United States Army and photographed at the Manzanar Relocation Center. In1944, his work from this project was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and published in the book, Born Free and Equal. In 1962 Adams moved to Carmel, California where he founded the Friends of Photography in 1967. He continued to document the landscape of the American West.
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 - April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist. Adams began to photograph professionally in 1930, and in 1932 was a founding member of the f/64 group in San Francisco, California. In 1940 he created the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, New York, along with Beaumont Newhall and David McAlpin. From 1942 to 1944 Adams acted as the photographic adviser to the United States Army and photographed at the Manzanar Relocation Center. In1944, his work from this project was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and published in the book, Born Free and Equal. In 1962 Adams moved to Carmel, California where he founded the Friends of Photography in 1967. He continued to document the landscape of the American West.