Black Paper

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A01=Teju Cole
activism
aesthetics
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Teju Cole
automatic-update
blackness
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BM
Category=DNC
Category=DNF
Category=DNL
Category=JBSL
Category=JFSL3
collection
collective past
confrontation
connotations
COP=United States
darkness
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
essays
ethical questions
ethics
human beings
humanity
Language_English
literature
meanings
morality
morals
nigerian american
PA=Available
photography
political upheaval
Price_€20 to €50
private
PS=Active
pubic
race
recognition
shadows
social aspects
society
softlaunch
understanding
unsettling art
visual artwork
witness

Product details

  • ISBN 9780226641355
  • Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
  • Publication Date: 27 Oct 2021
  • Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

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“Darkness is not empty,” writes Teju Cole in Black Paper, a collection of essays that meditate on what it means to keep our humanity—and witness the humanity of others—in a time of darkness. Cole is well-known as a master of the essay form, and in Black Paper he is writing at the peak of his skill, as he models how to be closely attentive to experience—to not just see and take in, but to think critically about what we are seeing and not seeing.   Wide-ranging in their subject matter, the essays are connected by ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognizing how our individual present is informed by a collective past. Cole’s writings in Black Paper approach the fractured moment of our history through a constellation of interrelated concerns: confrontation with unsettling art, elegies both public and private, the defense of writing in a time of political upheaval, the role of the color black in the visual arts, the use of shadow in photography, and the links between literature and activism. Throughout, Cole gives us intriguing new ways of thinking about the color black and its numerous connotations. As he describes the carbon copy process in his epilogue: “Writing on the top white sheet would transfer the carbon from the black paper onto the bottom white. Black transported the meaning.”
Teju Cole is a novelist, photographer, critic, curator, and the author of six books, which include Open City, Blind Spot, and, most recently, his photobook Fernweh. He was the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine from 2015 until 2019. A 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard.