Two recent reviews:
Josef Chaldek: This is a “destroyed” book, a book in which a bullet has been shot through the pages. There are portraits in the book. These heads within the book are of Disney comic characters paired with the heads of multi-national arms corporations and they are all rent asunder by a gunshot – that would be the summary of Brad Feuerhelm’s latest work. It’s not a classical photobook, more of an artist’s book. The images used are all pixelated and from different sources, the reason could be to disguise the persons shot in order to make the “shooting” more bearable or maybe more banal. Or perhaps, the images were not available in sufficent quality. Flipping through the book is an aggravated adventure due to the sticking together of the pages from tthe damage of the bullet , which in the end justifies the repulsive “content”.While so many photobooks these days drown themselves in gimmickry, superficially seen you could be tempted to put this one there as well – but to be honest, except mean this one is mean and evil only – and brilliant! Feuerhelm makes a strong statement here, without any words (ok, there is a booklet – but you don’t need that really to get the point), this is a rare thing.
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Colin Pantall: So then, here’s Brad Feuerhelm’s new book, Let us Now Praise Infamous Men. The book is a bunch of screenshots of multi-national arms dealers. What are they like?
Nasty is what Feuerhelm thinks. So nasty he gives them a taste of their own medicine. He shoots them in the head. Not really in the head, but their pictures in the book – he shoots the whole edition of 200 in the head with a glock .45. It’s “possibly the first book” to be shot in such a manner it says in the blurb. Yep, I’ll give you that.
So there’s another new gimmick. It’s the shot book, the book of people who sell things that shoot people getting shot in the head. A lot of people are down on gimmicks but I’m not. Not when it fits so well with the concept and the content of the book. There’s a glorious symmetry to it that is both fun and a bit disturbing. It’s like photobook slapstick, cartoon violence (and Mickey, Snow White and half of Disney get it too). Cartoons aside, who these people are, I have no idea (there are no captions identifying them and maybe that’s half the point) so I’ll take it all at face value. I’m placing Let us Now Praise Infamous Men with Chris Anderson’s Stump. The one should be merged with the other.
