Catherine Wagner Place History and the Archive
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Place, History, and the Archive' provides a forty-year survey of Catherine Wagner’s
photographic work. This is the first volume to contain Wagner’s major bodies of work, dating from 1974 to 2016, in one compelling publication. This publication surveys nineteen series and includes early projects in which Wagner began working with strategies she calls “archaeology in reverse”. 'Early California Landscape' (1974), 'Moscone Site' (1978), and '1275 Minnesota Street' (2016) in which physical and cultural architecture along with its core materials, are reimagined as metaphors for how we construct our cultural identities. Wagner further extends the notion of construction as she examines institutions as various as art museums, science labs, classrooms, the home, and Disneyland. Scientific, cultural, and natural histories are key realms of this exploration. Wagner has explored scientific inquiry deeply throughout the years. Projects such as 'Re-Classifying History' (2005), 'Rome Works' (2014), and 'A Narrative History of the Light Bulb' (2006), recontextualize archives and collections of various cultural and historical institutions; questioning the representations of how history is recorded. 'Reparations' (2010), and 'Trans/literate' (2013) investigate the processes of cultural change and redefinition by looking at collections of medical splints and Braille books, respectively. The book includes texts by Associate Curator at Tate Modern Shoair Mavlian, and a conversation between Catherine Wagner and Stephen Shore.
photographic work. This is the first volume to contain Wagner’s major bodies of work, dating from 1974 to 2016, in one compelling publication. This publication surveys nineteen series and includes early projects in which Wagner began working with strategies she calls “archaeology in reverse”. 'Early California Landscape' (1974), 'Moscone Site' (1978), and '1275 Minnesota Street' (2016) in which physical and cultural architecture along with its core materials, are reimagined as metaphors for how we construct our cultural identities. Wagner further extends the notion of construction as she examines institutions as various as art museums, science labs, classrooms, the home, and Disneyland. Scientific, cultural, and natural histories are key realms of this exploration. Wagner has explored scientific inquiry deeply throughout the years. Projects such as 'Re-Classifying History' (2005), 'Rome Works' (2014), and 'A Narrative History of the Light Bulb' (2006), recontextualize archives and collections of various cultural and historical institutions; questioning the representations of how history is recorded. 'Reparations' (2010), and 'Trans/literate' (2013) investigate the processes of cultural change and redefinition by looking at collections of medical splints and Braille books, respectively. The book includes texts by Associate Curator at Tate Modern Shoair Mavlian, and a conversation between Catherine Wagner and Stephen Shore.