Dog Ear (Hardcover) (Second Edition)

Author: Erica Baum

Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse (2016)

First published in paperback in 2011, Erica Baum’s (born 1961) much-acclaimed Dog Ear is now reissued in a beautiful hardcover edition with a wraparound poster cover. The concept of Dog Ear is simple and straightforward: dog-eared pages of mass-market paperbacks are photographed to isolate the small diagonally bisected squares or rectangles of text. The photographs are formally quite neutral and sedate––cursorily reminiscent of Albers’ Homage to the Square series––but the text also demands attention and is what allows or coaxes the viewer to linger. 

"[Baum's] word play is at once both deeply contemporary and achingly nostalgic, a mourning for a more physical relationship to knowledge."

–International Center of Photography

"The work in Dog Ear seamlessly integrates process, visual poetics, fragmentation, and the use of found texts, four of the major currents in the past half-century of avante-garde poetry."

–Sam Rowe