A Certain Logic of Expectations
A Certain Logic of Expectations
Artist: Arturo Soto
Publisher: The Eriskay Connection
EUR 28
– Concept and Photography: Arturo Soto
– Text: Arturo Soto
– Design: Rob van Hoesel
– Book Size: 160 × 220 mm
– Pages: 160 pages
– Binding: Hardcover
– Print: Offset
– Language: English
– First Edition: 600
– ISBN: 978-94-92051-72-1
A Certain Logic of Expectations proposes a counter-narrative of the British city of Oxford that resists the visual imperatives of its ancient university. For the past five years, Arturo Soto (MX) explored the longstanding division between town and gown through a careful selection of spaces and objects. His visual narrative is loosely structured around the following thematic strands: notions of home and homelessness, the looming presence of Brexit, the conflicted local economy, and the diversity of the city’s neighbourhoods. In short texts Soto describes his experience of the city and his fascination with its history and myths. The work challenges an easy judgment on Oxford and its established narratives of tradition, influence, and power. In his photography as well as his written observations, Soto proves that his pen is as sharp as his eye.
About Arturo Soto
Arturo Soto (1981) is a Mexican photographer and writer interested in exploring the relationship between landscape and state of mind through sequences of images that capture the social values located in the urban environment but that also reflect his thoughts and desires. His artistic practice owes a great deal to the work of the French writer Georges Perec, whose fragmentary and often absurd projects offer a methodology for the study of the infraordinary, the term he coined to describe the nothingness that comprises the bulk of our lives. Perec highlighted the complexity of micro-events and banal spaces, exposing the partiality and selectivity of our attention and making us question why we grant significance to certain things while overlooking others. Perec’s writings provide a fitting analogy for documentary images, which give a realistic impression of the world while also connoting an authorial vision.
Arturo Soto holds a PhD in Fine Art from the University of Oxford, an MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and an MA in Art History from University College London. He has previously published the photobook In the Heat (2018) with The Eriskay Connection.
About The Eriskay Connection
The Eriskay Connection is a Dutch studio for book design and an independent publisher. They focus on contemporary storytelling at the intersection of photography, research and writing. In close collaboration with authors they make books as autonomous bodies of work that provide us with new and necessary insights into the world around us. The key for The Eriskay Connection is to convey the essence of their work through high quality editing, design and production. Their editions are mainly offset printed and bound in The Netherlands and they strive to work with local producers and sustainable materials as much as possible.
More information: eriskayconnection.com
