BOOKS - SELF-PORTRAIT
This is a one-of-a-kind, hand-bound book containing seventy-eight photographs taken in and around Taughannock Creek and one of its tributaries (Trumansburg, New York) between 2020 and 2025. Each image was printed in the studio and hand-spliced onto the page. The book is 13.75 x 13.5” and 2.25” thick; open, its wingspan is 27.75”.

SELF-PORTRAIT presents a body of artwork—in this case, seventy-eight photographs—that convey a message made explicit by an introductory essay contained in a booklet that is an integral but removable part of this large, one-of-a-kind book. This message, present in all of this author’s previous books, seeks to uncover the chronic division, conflict, and pain we collectively and personally suffer, along with the responsibility each of us bears for their tragic continuity. The root problem of being human lies in the conditioning of the brain by the cumulative record of precultural and prepersonal experience, the historical experience of each culture, and the biographical experience of each individual. In other words, memory holds the species' most primitive instincts, the traditions that characterize each group, and the more distinctive, consciously reactive traits that make each person who she thinks she is. True, the ability to accumulate and project knowledge made possible the survival and development of humanity, but it also rendered all the cultural and personal entities that constitute it incapable of living in peace with each other and in harmony with the rest of the biosphere. The challenge posed by SELF-PORTRAIT is fundamental: can the human mind detect—and thus deactivate—the harm and danger that arise from extending thought into the realm of personal identity and relationships? We cannot ignore this challenge, for it poses an existential threat. Unless a critical number of us cease to identify with exclusive cultural traditions and equally divisive and antagonistic physical traits and mental habits, our splintered humanity will only continue harming itself and degrading its natural environment until our presence is made no longer viable by life itself. Mentally, we are the pitiful result of a permanent failure of love, and only a perception not mediated by thought of the entirety of this tragic reality can free the mind from the tribal and personal isolation that fragments and undermines it. The fantasy of a proprietary personal life cannot survive the incandescent attention of an all-inclusive love.

$1,500.00 (For a remote purchase, please contact me and use a check or PayPal (Fernando Llosa / f@unboundart.com). As soon as I receive your check or verify your money transfer, your piece will be shipped.)

ISBN for the print-on-demand edition of this book, published and distributed by LULU: 979-8-9883822-7-0
https://www.lulu.com/shop/fernando-llosa/self-portrait/paperback/product-95eynq8.html? q=Fernando+Llosa&page=1&pageSize=4

(Please click on the thumbnails to see the image in full.)