{"product_id":"the-eye-of-history-when-images-take-positions","title":"The Eye of History: When Images Take Positions","description":"\u003cdiv title=\"Page 1\" class=\"page\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"layoutArea\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"column\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHardcover | \u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e18.57 x 2.03 x 23.83 cm | 282 pp\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMIT Press | 2018 | 9780262037877\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe second book of the RIC Books series co-published by the MIT Press and The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eexplores the interaction of aesthetics and politics in Bertolt Brecht's “photoepigrams.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrom 1938 to 1955, Bertolt Brecht created montages of images and text, filling his working journal (\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eArbeitsjournal\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e) and his idiosyncratic atlas of images, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eWar Primer,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e with war photographs clipped from magazines and adding his own epigrammatic commentary. In this book, Georges Didi-Huberman explores the interaction of politics and aesthetics in these creations, explaining how they became the means for Brecht, a wandering poet in exile, to “take a position” about the Nazi war in Europe. Illustrated with pages from the \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eArbeitsjournal\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e and \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eWar Primer\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e and contextual images including Raoul Hausmann's poem-posters and Walter Benjamin's drawings, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Eye of History\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e offers a new view of important but little-known works by Brecht.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDidi-Huberman shows that Brecht took positions without taking sides; he used these montages to challenge the viewpoints of the press and propose other readings, to offer a stylistic and political response to the inescapable visibility of historical events enabled by the photographic medium. Brecht's montages disrupt and scrutinise this visibility by juxtaposing representations of war found in magazines with his own epigrams―a “documentary lyricism” that dismounts and remounts modern history. The montages created meaningful disorder, exposing the truth by disorganising―a process Didi-Huberman calls a “dialectic of the \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003emonteur\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e.” These works are examples of “the eyes of history”―when seeing may simultaneously deepen and critique historical knowledge. The montages Didi-Huberman argues, are Brecht's most Benjaminian works.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43717940248834,"sku":"BK-MIT-EOH-001-T","price":15.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0401\/6226\/3204\/files\/IMG_1352_58dfa32c-4c59-4ee8-88bb-e6da40ea6d28.jpg?v=1775738232","url":"https:\/\/www.booksaboutart.co.uk\/products\/the-eye-of-history-when-images-take-positions","provider":"Books About Art","version":"1.0","type":"link"}