James Casebere

This fascinating book on the highly acclaimed visual artist James Casebere presents work drawn from all periods of his explorations of the relation of images, identification, and ideology. Since the mid-1970s, James Casebere has produced a diverse body of work involving photography, sculpture, installation, and film. Casebere gained renown as a pioneer of a type of constructed photographic tableaux, which derive exclusively from meticulously planned architectural models that he conceives, fabricates, and photographs in his studio. He has created his own distinctive visual language through a unique cinematic and architectural approach. “I am trying to create something that embodies or dramatizes the kind of psychic space that exaggerates certain ideas and experiences,” Casebere says, describing his pictorial method, a strategy in which the models exemplify what might be characterized as the architectural unconscious of a given spatial system. Featuring more than 70 works produced in a variety of formats and techniques, the book covers all periods of the artist’s four- decade long career from black-and-white silver gelatin prints to large single and multi-part color photographs. In addition it includes newly commissioned works which appear in print for the first time. Working models and sketchbooks, source materials, and numerous Polaroid studies offer valuable insight into Casebere’s artistic process.