Conductors of the Moving World

Brad Zellar

Little Brown Mushroom Books

In House of Coates, writer Brad Zellar pieces together the story of legendary recluse Lester B. Morrison. Working from a handful of encounters and contradictory conversations, a sketchy paper trail and often confounding interviews with individuals who may or may not have been "associates" of Morrison (including Morrison's former collaborator Alec Soth), Zellar attempts to reconstruct one episode from Morrison's decidedly episodic life. In the winter of 2011, Zellar finally crossed paths with his evasive subject, and was -with Morrison's permission- granted access to the results of an MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) test that Morrison submitted to in August of 2009, along with the administrating psychiatrist's copious notes. Finally, in late December of last year, Zellar received in the mail a duct-taped shoebox -marked "PERISHABLE"- containing almost two hundred photographs that Morrison termed "disposable documents of the approximate period in question." From these raw materials designer Hans Seeger has assembled a book that Morrison himself has pronounced, "Probably close enough to what might or might not have happened, and that's as much as I've learned to expect from the so-called 'real world.'"

House of Coates

Little Brown Mushroom

<p>Clothbound hardcover with tip-on image on verso 92 pages 50 color plates 9 x 11.25" The images in Driftless were made by Jason Vaughn during a period of life that found him wandering for a year in a region of Wisconsin known colloquially as the Driftless Area, named for the rugged terrain formed by a lack of pre-Illinoian continental glacial ice flow ("drift"). Vaughn's temporary home seemingly describes the landscape as much as its human inhabitants. While living in a rented apartment off the Mississippi River, awaiting the birth of his second child, and at the beginning of a second life chapter following a tenuous bout with cancer, Vaughn attempted to establish community despite his status as temporary visitor. During this in-between state his daily walks not only nurtured his art practice but also allowed for moments of clarity and belonging to seep into that practice. Continuing in this spirit of a shared yet transient experience, the final image edit was given to author and journalist Brad Zellar, to lend his own verbal meanderings to the images, embedding a dueling but complementary narrative to the book. An otherwise charged photograph of birds mid-flight, no doubt bound for a warmer and more hospitable climate is subdued and balanced by the caption "hey, options." Amongst his words, casual, yet world weary, we find a sense of sophisticated levity, fostering feelings of the hope over despair. While creating the images for Driftless, Vaughn intimates that living next to the river allowed him to contemplate the human experience in a new way and to meditate on "the process by which people can drift through a space, sometimes becoming lodged, sometimes becoming permanent, and sometimes breaking free and moving to a new location." As a duo, Vaughn and Zellar assist one another in weaving a narrative until their voices seem one. Each fleeting moment adds a layer of meaning, transforming, over time, from a conversation to a shared story.</p>

Driftless by Jason Vaughn

Jason Vaughn

Tbw Books

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Books by Brad Zellar