Nicholas Kahn & Richard Selesnick: City Of Salt

by Sarah Falkner, Erez Lieberman, Nicholas Kahn (Photographer)

Panoramic photographs of fantastical landscapes make a bizarre Baedeker to alternative realities in City of Salt , by Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick. The second volume, after Scotlandfuturebog , in an intended trilogy of such otherworldly guides juxtaposes those scenes with similarly inspired Sufi tales, the writings of fabulist Italo Calvino, and parables by the artists themselves. The strange deserts, marshes, sandy shores, villages and fields are often traversed by wandering figures, frequently in peril or precariously alone. Kahn and Selesnick's process combines sculptural and photographic media. The artists first construct the intricately detailed worlds in three-dimensional miniatures and dioramas, then digitally photograph the scene and populate it with characters in allegorical, though intriguingly puzzling, tableaux.

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2005

About the author

Falkner's first novel "Animal Sanctuary" was selected by Stacey Levine for the 7th annual Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction in 2011; Falkner is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist and enjoys collaborating with other artists, including the REWILDERMENT cycle of performance and installation with Ryder Cooley; Ghost Prairie, to accompany Jen P. Harris' painting series; and channeled, poetic guidebooks to accompany Kahn and Selesnick's Carnival At the End of the World Tarot and Tarot of the Drowning World.