Photographs and text by David Maisel
Essay by Robert Sobieszek
56 pp., 14 x14 inches, casebound with dustjacket
Published by Nazraeli Press
Publication Date: 2004
ISBN 1-59005-071-1
“…David Maisel has fashioned an incredibly forceful and convincing documentation of some sublime, terminal vistas that may be located just East of the Sierra Nevadas, but exist somewhere beyond our imaginations and within what (JG) Ballard called ‘inner space.’ These are not normal landscapes with Albertian vanishing points, orthogonals, and horizon lines. They lack nearly all scale references that might ground the viewer into comprehending their geographical coordinates. There is no foreground, middleground, or background. There is no secure footing from which we perceive the land. There is only the ground seen from a low-flying aircraft, a ground and surface practically synesthetic with malignant colors that nearly taste, incredibly complex textures that one can almost feel, and delicate mineral traceries that appear like organic arteries, tendrils, or ganglia to some geophysical unconscious. Before these scenes, we can only ask, in the words of Samuel Beckett, ‘is not this rather the place where one finishes vanishing?”
The Lake Project is currently out of print. A few rare copies of the Limited Edition and the trade version are available for purchase through David Maisel Studio. The Limited Edition includes a signed copy of the book and an original signed print from The Lake Project, housed in a specially made clamshell box. Please inquire here.