Barbara Kruger

Pictures/Readings 

[Self-Published], 1978 First edition. 

Softcover. White lettering on blue card covers. Full page photo-reproductions to one side only, with text on the opposite page. Slightly signs of use to covers, otherwise, near fine condition.

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Completed in 1978 and self-published, “Picture/Readings” combines images, largely of the exteriors of houses in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Deerfield Beach, Florida, with texts of filmic, novelistic, and melodramatic ambitions. Rather than short bursts of words scattered among images, the stories in Picture/Readings are long by comparison to Kruger’s more famous work and unceremoniously formatted in blocks. If one wanted to write a dissertation on “Picture/Readings,” one could certainly argue for the importance of architecture in Kruger’s photo-collages, since they are themselves syntactic architectures made from blocks of text and image building upon each other.

[Source : Flast Art]

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) is an American artist whose work uses bold graphic language, appropriated imagery, and declarative text to question power, identity, consumerism, and mass media. Emerging from a background in graphic design and magazine publishing, Kruger became iconic for her black-and-white images overlaid with red, white, and black text—works that confront the viewer with direct statements about desire, control, and ideology. Her practice spans print, installation, video, fashion, and public space, and her work is held in major museum collections worldwide.