Thirteen one-page poems that particularize intriguing male characters in odd places by Barry Wallenstein, with twenty-eight contrapuntal pictorial and street photographs by Barbara Rosenthal.
Barry Wallenstein says: In 2020 Xanadu Press published my chapbook, Time on the Move, a collaboration between my poems and surreal photographs by artist Barbara Rosenthal. The dominant theme of those poems, as I neared my 80th year, was age-appropriate: one’s mortality through the passage of time.
Now, five years later, I’m still attached to those themes but have been able to escape them by developing character sketches. Parts of me are no doubt, in many of these individuals, but they are there without conscious decision. These characters are all fictitious but for the penultimate poem, "The Chief." I wish that one were a made-up character.
Barbara Rosenthal says: A l l p h o t o s a r e 3 5 m m f u l l - f r a m e , s h o t b e t w e e n 1 9 7 0 - 2 0 2 5 , t h e b l a c k- a n d - w h i t e s primarily on the streets of Manhattan, the color everywhere else. The years and places are noted in their titles, with file numbers as month.year.roll.frame, or sometimes digitized index number. Very few of these have been published previously, although several have been fabricated as 11" x 14" selenium toned gelatin silver editions of six, and/or pigment prints.
It is unusual for me to make public my "street photography." I usually publish and exhibit either "surreal photographs," as were included in Time on the Move, Barry Wallenstein’s first chapbook with Xanadu, or "surreal-to-conceptual wall works," which incorporate them.
Needless to say, I’m both grateful to Barry for asking me to collaborate once again, and excited to be bringing out this somewhat hidden aspect of my work, one that fits relatively neatly into the usual canon of photography.
About the Press: Xanadu Press i s t h e m i x e d i m a g e /t e x t - b a s e d o f t h e t w o i m p r i n t s p u b l i s h e d by invitation within Homo FuturusTM Editions at eMediaLoft.org. These are books in which pictures and texts are imaginative and visually linked. Our other imprint, Washington Street Press, produces visual art monographs and text-based books of fiction and non-fiction. Both are designed and edited by media artist/writer Barbara Rosenthal. Her periodic column of philosophy about the interconnection of art and artist, A Crack in the Sidewalk, has appeared in Ragazine and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. Her bookworks are in the collections of The Whitney, MoMA, Tate, Berlin Kunstbibliotek, Artpool Budapest, et al, and available from Printed Matter under the trademark she’s used since 1982.
eMediaLoft.org is located in the neon-effused live-work loft Rosenthal shared with our late Director Emeritus, Bill Creston, within the Westbeth Arts Complex on the Hudson River in the Highline / West Village neighborhood of NYC. It is a privately funded loose consortium of artists and who create hard-to-place, hard-to-categorize works, primarily using replicable or recordable media (camera and electronic arts, performance, audio and writing) with a strong conceptual base and discernible philosophical perspective.
Barry Wallenstein is the author of eleven collections of poetry, most recently It's About Time [New York Quarterly Books, 2022] and Time on the Move [Xanadu Press, 2020]. His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals, including Ploughshares, The Nation, American Poetry Review and Manhattan Review. Of special interest is his presentation of poetry readings in collaboration with jazz. He has made twelve recordings of such, the most recent being Lisbon Sunrise (2022) and Lisbon Sunset (2018). Barry is Emeritus Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the City University of New York, an editor of the journal, American Book Review and advisory editor of BigCityLit. Since retiring from CUNY, he's been part of the faculty at the Center for Learning and Living, a continuing ed program for seniors.
Barbara Rosenthal is the author/photographer of five solo books and five collaborations with poets: Cluesto Myself, Sesations, Homo Futrurus, Soul & Psyche[all Visual Studies Workshop Press], Wish for Amnesia [Deadly Chaps], Weeks, with poet Hannah Weiner [Xeoxial Editions], and, by Xanadu Press, Sitting Book with Bonny Finberg, Party Everywhere and Erato's Inbox with Jeffrey Cyphers Wright. They are in the collections of MoMA, Whitney, Tate, Berlin Kunstbibliotek, Artpool Budapest, et al. For twenty-two years she taught Writing at the City University of New York, and concurrently for twelve, Photography at Parsons School of Design / The New School. Her papers are archived at CUNY/QueensCollege.
