€24,00
Kim Jong Il Looking at Things
by João Rocha
Essay by Marco Bohr
Collection Follow Me, Collecting Images Today
190 pages
16,7 x 24 cm
Graphic design by Renaud Othnin-Girard
Bilingual edition English and French
ISBN: 978-2-36568-002-8
First published in 2012
📖 « [The book] ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, but the unconscious humour in the images derives from the fact that, no matter how humble the object, each picture has been given the same portentous, formulaic treatment. »
– Martin Parr and Gerry Badger in The Photobook : A History Volume III, Phaidon Press Limited, 2014, London
📰 « The spare, almost clinical look of the images (…) coupled with the often profoundly mundane nature of the objects at hand lend the entire portfolio a tone that is one part humorous and three parts crazy. […] Fortunately for all of us, the Dear Leader lives on in Rocha’s book, where we can look at him looking at things to our collective hearts’ content. »
– Time
🗞️ « Are these pictures the works of North Korean photographers? Of Joao Rocha? Or of the web swarm that shares, reblogs, and forwards them? Memes owe their existence to multiple authors, while the book as a definite composition necessarily has an identifiable author. »
– Texte Zür Kunst
🇬🇧 [About]
Kim Jong Il Looking at Things is one of the most followed, shared and imitated monothematic Tumblr in recent years. Uninterrupted series of photographs of North Korea's Dear Leader looking at things, this series fascinates with its formal rigor and intensity.
Without removing these photographs their primary function - to raise Kim Jong Il to an iconic rank - this series forces a shift in the purpose of propaganda. The icon changes to taxonomy, the viewer is being watched, and the meaning of this images breaks away.
Accompanied by an essay by Marco Bohr entitled Looking at Kim Jong Il Looking at Things, the book reveals the springs of our fascination for these accumulated images on the Internet - these memes - analyzing how a series of apparently innocent photographs become viral and attractive. By publishing Kim Jong Il Looking at Things in the collection FOLLOW ME, Collecting Images Today, Jean Boîte Éditions continues to highlight another art scene, which establishes the online collector as a creator, and the ephemeral in the perennial.
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🇨🇵 [À propos]
Kim Jong Il Looking at Things est l’un des Tumblr monothématiques le plus suivi, partagé et imité ces dernières années. Suite ininterrompue de photographies du Dear Leader nord-coréen en train de regarder des choses, cette série fascine par sa rigueur formelle et par l’intensité des imaginaires qu’elle véhicule.
Sans enlever à ces photographies leur fonction première - élever Kim Jong Il au rang d’icône - cette série déplace le sujet et les enjeux de la propagande. L’icône devient taxinomie, le regardeur est regardé, et le sens des images ne cesse de se dérober.
Accompagné d’un essai inédit de Marco Bohr intitulé Regarder Kim Jong Il regarder des choses, l’ouvrage dévoile les ressorts de notre fascination pour ces images accumulées sur Internet – ces mèmes – en analysant la façon dont une série de photographies apparemment innocentes devient virale et attrayante.
En publiant Kim Jong Il Looking at Things dans sa collection FOLLOW ME, Collecting Images Today, Jean Boîte Édition poursuit sa mise en lumière d’une autre scène artistique, qui établit le collectionneur en ligne comme créateur, et installe l’éphémère dans le pérenne.
