Elementary Calculus by J. Carrier
A photobook by American photographer J. Carrier.
Carrier has lived a nomadic life, moving from Washington, D.C., to Ecuador and on to Africa and the Middle East. With each relocation, he found himself becoming both physically and psychologically more distant from friends and family. During his time in Israel, Carrier began to feel a strong affinity with immigrants who had drifted into the dusty city of Tel Aviv. As a foreigner living far from home, their condition overlapped with his experience.
Through a sequence of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, Elementary Calculus quietly observes those “public yet private” moments in which people in transit attempt to recover a connection to their homeland. Recording the lives of immigrants and refugees in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Carrier explores the distance between reality and desire—between longing for what once was and hope for what might still arrive, tracing how we move back and forth between the unknown and the unknown.
His photographs resonate with the sensation that, once placed in a foreign land, geographical distance loses any clear measure, and “home” begins to feel like a vague memory, a half-forgotten dream. Carrier’s restrained yet affecting images of Israel and the West Bank pose more questions than they offer answers. In a nation defined by competing claims over ethnicity and ownership, what does the arrival of foreigners signify? How does this complex situation impact the lives of the new types of refugees? For them, does this land hold promise?
After earning a degree in biological sciences, Carrier became a drummer in a punk rock band. He subsequently spent nearly a decade living and working in Africa and Israel and is now based in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife. In 2010, he received the Fine Art Award at the New York Photo Awards and the Grand Prize in National Geographic Traveller/PDN's World in Focus. In 2011 he was nominated for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography.
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Title: Elementary Calculus
Artist: J. Carrier
Publisher: MACK, September 2012
Format: Embossed hardcover
Size: 210 × 250 mm
Pages: 112 pages
Language: English
Edition: First edition
ISBN: 9781907946233