If you're in NYC next Tuesday the 17th head along to Dashwood Books where from 6.30pm Jim Goldberg will be signing his Super Labo edition The Last Son.
The Last Son is Goldberg’s bildungsroman and the second book in Coming and Going, a personal three part series weaving together an assemblage of visual memories that chart his evolution as a photographer. In this mixed media coming of age story, Goldberg, the youngest son of a wholesale candy distributor, traces his dreams alongside his father’s as he traverses memory through ephemera. The precursor to Rich and Poor, The Last Son contrasts Goldberg’s ascent as an artist with his father’s decline into dashed and unrealized dreams. His father emerges as a Willy Loman-esque manifestation of unfulfilled American perseverance as his son exceeds the expectations of his role as family dunce.
Mixing photographs, collage, handwritten text and stills from home movies, Goldberg mines his archive to build a linear narrative of memories beginning with his first pictures. The dummy book is a wonderful sculptural stack of overflowing pages held together with post-it notes and tape that allows for an interactive physical process of narrative shifting. The Last Son is preceded by 134 Ways to Forget, a double-sided interactive poster/zine that juxtaposes Goldberg’s personal photographs with his own writing as he brainstorms ways to forget an ended relationship. The third installment in the trilogy will continue Goldberg’s rising narrative of artistic evolution as he follows his work to Asia funded by social security payments granted him on account of his father’s disability.
The Last Son by Jim Goldberg / Hardcover, 134 pages / $80
Dashwood Books, 33 Bond St., NY, NY 10012
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