The Human Condition Catalog

Book Details: 
Hardcover: 47 pages Produced by: Crudeoils Bound by: Mechling Bookbindery Language: English Dimensions: 6 x 9 x .75 inches

Limited Edition: 300 numbered copies
features essays by Gregg Bordowitz and Victoria Pass, with an introduction by Sheryl Ridenour and book design by Eric Von Haynes.

This forty-seven page limited first edition hard cover catalog by Wafaa Bilal features essays by Gregg Bordowitz “Paper Thin Line” and Victoria Pass “Hope of Beauty” along with a foreword by Sheryl Ridenour and exclusive book design by Eric Von Haynes. Full color reproductions of Lamda print photographs and video stills from the 2005 retrospective The Human Condition printed on 80 lb. Luna mat cover paper through Infocomm on a HP Indigo 3000. Vellum pages between each color image, with separate title pages and charcoal gray end pages. Text printed on gravel and cement colored text papers. Professionally bound with a two-tone linen cover. Details include black foil stamp on black linen book cloth and black foil stamp on English tan linen spine. (Acid-free)

Foreword 
By: Sheryl Ridenour

Much as an expression expands greater than vision, the image draws the line on the surface, the place to begin. Take the first of several fields, the first of several steps, a setting with or without the sun setting, the walk from traditional landscape photography to the more tenuous emotional landscape. Forage into the terrain, the external that surrounds, the internal that seeps. Perhaps direction, cause and connection, find a way to closer, a closer look to find the way. For this moment, stand your ground at the bank of a river never seen.

It’s no accident that Wafaa Bilal hails from Babylon, the birthplace of language, the written word on the surface, a sense of surface, to surface from within and erode underneath.

This selection of works offers a new cuneiform, “The Human Condition” as witness, an invitation to view, a language to seek. The five years of transfer and transference reflect more than season, more than edits and editions, more than triptych of time, memory, and place. A map of sorts, of source, more than hoped for intimacies of the voyeur’s chronic state. Between geography and home, a sky to north, our own fragile strength. The phrase extends a stretch of earth, a reflection to bend, parallel at eight degrees. A layer surrenders, a filtered sleep.

Upon first view, one may seem idle and still, until the image meets the gaze. Between views, the self interviews, the chronicle of choices and dates. A pause with no return, in turn, frames for 2000-2005 meant not to hide, to speak. As layers, each piece matters, each piece of matter,to refuse and throw, to re-fuse and keep. Put back together, imbue and infuse, hue and hewn, dry and damp, saturate and sate. In the silence,heard in the quiet, the reward worth more than haste.

Take the first look, promise and permission, time to surface, a sense of grace