unlike the benevolent orphan found in charlie chaplin's the kid or the sentimentalized figure of little orphan annie, the orphan in postwar eastern european cinema takes on a more politically fraught role, embodying the tensions of individuals struggling to recover from war and grappling with an unknown future under soviet rule. by exploring films produced in postwar hungary, the german democratic republic, czechoslovakia, romania, and poland, parvulescu traces the way in which cinema envisioned and debated the condition of the post-world war ii subject and the "new man" of soviet-style communism. in these films, the orphan becomes a cinematic trope that interrogates socialist visions of ideological institutionalization and re-education and stands as a silent critic of the system's shortcomings or as a resilient spirit who has resisted capture by the political apparatus of the new state.

a stunningly illustrated look at how blake's radical vision influenced artists of the beat generation and 1960s counterculture

in his own lifetime, william blake (1757-1827) was a relatively unknown nonconventional artist with a strong political bent. william blake and the age of aquarius is a beautifully illustrated look at how, some two hundred years after his birth, the antiestablishment values embodied in blake's art and poetry became a model for artists of the american counterculture.

this book provides new insights into the politics and protests of blake's own lifetime, and the generation of artists who revived and reimagined his work in the mid-1940s through 1970, or what might be called the "long sixties." contributors explore blake's outsider status in georgian england and how his individualistic vision spoke to members of the beat generation, hippies, radical poets and writers, and other voices of the counterculture. among the artists, musicians, and writers who looked to blake were such diverse figures as diane arbus, jay defeo, the doors, sam francis, allen ginsberg, jess, agnes martin, ad reinhardt, charles seliger, maurice sendak, robert smithson, clyfford still, and many others. this book also explores visual cultures around such galvanizing moments of the 1960s as woodstock and the summer of love.

william blake and the age of aquarius shows how blake's myths, visions, and radicalism found new life among american artists who valued individualism and creativity, explored expanded consciousness, and celebrated youth, peace, and the power of love in a turbulent age.

exhibition schedule:
mary and leigh block museum of art, northwestern university
september 23, 2017-march 11, 2018

the miracle of analogy is the first of a two-volume reconceptualization of photography. it argues that photography originates in what is seen, rather than in the human eye or the camera lens, and that it is the world's primary way of revealing itself to us. neither an index, representation, nor copy, as conventional studies would have it, the photographic image is an analogy. this principle obtains at every level of its being: a photograph analogizes its referent, the negative from which it is generated, every other print that is struck from that negative, and all of its digital "offspring."

photography is also unstoppably developmental, both at the level of the individual image and of medium. the photograph moves through time, in search of other "kin," some of which may be visual, but others of which may be literary, architectural, philosophical, or literary. finally, photography develops with us, and in response to us. it assumes historically legible forms, but when we divest them of their saving power, as we always seem to do, it goes elsewhere.

the present volume focuses on the nineteenth century and some of its contemporary progeny. it begins with the camera obscura, which morphed into chemical photography and lives on in digital form, and ends with walter benjamin. key figures discussed along the way include nic phore ni pce, louis daguerre, william fox-talbot, jeff wall, and joan fontcuberta.