Photoanalysis, A Structuralist Play

Seoul, Korea: Duk Moon Publishing, 1978. First Edition. Softcover. Very good. 8.5" x 5.5", 114 pp, with many photographic illustrations. Light soiling and creasing to covers, lower corner lightly bumped, text clean. A review by Shelley Rice in ArtForm says: "Photoanalysis: A Structuralist Play is a re-creation, in book form, of a play by Michael Kirby, first performed in November, 1976. Kirby, who is best-known for his involvement with Happenings and avant-garde theater since the late '60s, chose a dramatic format in which three actors—a man and two women, positioned respectively in the center and on the two sides of the performance space—spoke directly to the audience and illustrated their words with a series of black-and-white slides projected onto screens behind them. The actors spoke alternately, each showing slides that related to his or her narrative, so that the spectator saw a continuous slide show while listening to three different, yet interwoven, monologues. The same basic format is retained in the book, which presents the same sequence of photographs, accompanied by expository texts and stage directions indicating which words were spoken by which actor....Considered alone, the pictures—of houses, people, street scenes, nature and common-place objects—are simply mundane (and not very interesting) snapshots, but taken as the basis of these three interpretations and modes of analysis, they serve to undermine the very credibility of photographic 'realism.'".