Trip

by Frederick Barthelme, Matthew Drutt (Afterword), Susan Lipper (Photographer)

trip is celebrated Grapevine photographer Susan Lipper and distinctive prose stylist Frederick Barthelmes new, conceptually ambitious artists an assembled narrative of a fictional road trip in America, destination and starting point unknown. Adrift. The date is the present, but only slightly so. The viewer is cast without aid amongst snatches of text and vernacular objects, staged or found, that render the landscape neither familiar nor foreign. Semiotic interplay is introduced with seemingly objective signs and symbols, readable in a traditional sense, yetwhat meanings do they serve here? Re-appropriating the documentary tradition of road photography, Lipper and Barthelmes "trip" is a new American narrative, perfectly suited for our hyper-mediating times, and is by turns arcanely sophisticated, solipsistically funny, resolutely urbane, and grammatically hokey. An accessible joyride on many levels, trip is destined to become a landmark photography book. trip will be the subject of an exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art in November, 1999.

Genres: Photography, Art, Art and Photography

112 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1999

About the author

Barthelme's works are known for their focus on the landscape of the New South. Along with his reputation as a minimalist, together with writers Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Mary Robison, Barthelme's work has also been described by terms such as "dirty realism" and "K-mart realism."He published his first short story in The New Yorker,and has claimed that a rotisserie chicken helped him understand that he needed to write about ordinary people.He has moved away from the postmodern stylings of his older brother, Donald Barthelme, though his brother's influence can be seen in his earliest works, Rangoon and War and War.
Barthelme was thirty-three year editor and visionary of Mississippi Review, known for recognizing and publishing once new talents such as Larry Brown, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Amy Hempel early in their careers.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nostalgia, dark humor, beauty, whispers. Transmitting, ordinary, secular and spiritual. This collection of photographs and paired writings is a beautiful work of art in itself. The duo truly brings the collaborative effort to a new height. Barthelme's words add greatly to Lipper's shots.

[Pia · Rating 5 out of 5]

FB's so tender with the ordinary. His words and Lippert's photos remind us to scratch beneath the surface of what would be easier to ignore.