Sophie Ristelhueber: Details of the World. - book review

Afterimage, March, 2002 by Johanna Mizgala

Cheryl Brutvan

Boston, MA: MFA Publications, 2001

A lavishly illustrated and elegantly designed publication entitled Details of the World accompanies the major survey of work by French contemporary artist Sophie Risteihueber organized by curator Cheryl Brutvan of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Over the past two decades, Risteihueber has earned international acclaim for her photographs and photo-based installations, such as "Beirut, Photographs" (1984) and Fait" (1992), that investigate the detritus of human experience on war-torn landscapes, architectural ruins and terrains, as well as her more introspective works such as "Interieurs" (1981) and "Vulaines" (1989), which explore memory and its indelible link to place. In addition, Ristelhueber is well known for the production of artist books that frequently are created in concert with the photographic series. In this particular instance, Ristelhueber was responsible for the design of Details of the World.

Scale is a key element in Ristelhueber's photographs; she often enlarges aerial views and other scenes to a size at which the viewer feels unbalanced due to the lack of recognizable perspective. In the context of her books, she shifts direction, relying for Details of the World on diminutive proportions to accentuate the preciousness of the book and its contents. The size of the volume (7 x 4 inches) corresponds to that of a prayer book, a collection of poems, or perhaps a journal, as though Details of the World was designed to be carried in a pocket and reflected upon repeatedly.

The Museum of Fine Arts postponed the opening of the exhibition and very nearly cancelled it as a result of the events of September 11 (the shipping of the photographs to Boston was jeopardized by disrupted air traffic). And there is an uncanny relationship between Ristelhueber's subject matter and the images that have been filtering through the mass media after the World Trade Center collapsed. The mounting war on terrorism has added an undeniable resonance to Ristelhueber's photographic series, making it almost impossible to look at her photographs of Beirut, Sarajevo and Kuwait without adding in one's mind a further body of images that could be created around New York, Washington and currently Afghanistan.

Brutvan's text for Details of the World is engaging and insightful, thoughtfully tracing the development of Ristelhueber's artistic production. It explores the artist's uncomfortable associations with landscape photography and documentary photography, and scrutinizes the points at which Ristelhueber's photographs diverge from these two traditions into something unique. As such, one small but vital criticism of Details of the World is that its design, albeit beautiful, nonetheless works at odds with Brutvan's essay. The images reproduced throughout the book, some of which are previously unpublished, have a flow all their own, neither punctuating nor following the chronological sequence of Brutvan's discussion. Such incongruities provoke a desire to pour over the images at the expense of the text. Ironically, this apparent contradiction is entirely appropriate to Ristelhueber's work, in light of the artists' avowal that the written word pales in comparison to the "breadth of understanding afforded by images.

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