https://coveringphotography.bc.edu/files/original/3/6818/Gibson-DeLillo72Box.jpg 7e32df41379662faba4e058c7cb0edd7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Covering Photography Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Photographer Photographer Gibson, Ralph Author Author of the book upon which the photograph appears DeLillo, Don Book Genre Novel Photograph Title Title of photograph Untitled (from the book Déjà Vu) ca. 1968 Notes Notes associated with the item Designer Michael Ian Kaye has cut up, partially duplicated and reassembled Ralph Gibson's mysterious image (the 'original' can be found in the book Déjà Vu, technically Gibson's third book of photographs, but the second from his seminal Black Trilogy) for the cover of Don DeLillo's classic Great Jones Street. Gibson has many book covers to his credit, in part because his imagery, while rooted in the real world, is enigmatic, rigorously composed and visually reductive enough to serve as template for a plethora of meaning, mostly assigned by the viewer. In Great Jones Street, the master wordsmith Don Dellilo riffs on rock 'n roll culture of the 1960s, as told through the voice of Bucky Wunderlich, a jaded and disillusioned rock star who has holed up in an empty apartment on the New York City street of the book's title. The book's plot references the notion of language on any number of occasions, culminating with the forced injection of Wunderlich with a drug that renders him incapable of coherent speech; he can only make sounds. Seen within this context, Gibson's photo compels the viewer/reader to consider the nature of letters, words, sentences, etc, in the construction of meaning. Added to this is designer Kaye's 'resectioning' of the photo, calling to mind the automatic writing and Exquisite Corpse techniques of André Breton and the Surrealists. In 1975, I attended a slide lecture by Ralph Gibson. He was articulate, perhaps a little glib, and had something to say about many of the images he projected on the screen. When he came to this photo, he said that he made a point of taking pictures of seemingly random, serindipitous groupings of text, thinking that when he eventually viewed them all together, they would somehow spell out the meaning of his life. Tongue in cheek, for sure, but it made me realize that with some artists, it is in the spaces between one work and another that meaning may be found. To view a very low-rez (but the only one I could find on the web) version of Gibson's original image, click <a href="https://www.artnet.com/artists/ralph-gibson/letters-in-window-sYmsr-Y-4RLdCrXndRkHVA2">here</a>. Photo Genre Genre of Photograph Documentary Designer Designer of book cover Kaye, Michael Ian Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Great Jones Street Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penguin Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1994