Index
A project where, because it didn’t have one, I typed up Susan Sontag's book of essays, On Photography, into a searchable text document and learned how to make an index using The Chicago Manual of Style.
In constructing this index and situating it outside the form of the book*, I tried to consider many of my own attractions and repulsions with the ways western cultural canons are formed, presented, and maintained, and assess how the recognizable look and design of an index for this specific book makes legible and explicit the otherwise latent image of a structure that in turns subliminal and literal, transmits ideas of art canonicity, processes of inclusion and exclusion, and modernity’s shortcomings and historic failures.
*July 2020. In quarantine and had time to reformat it into a zine. Thinking about teacher friends and our collective need for online schooling. No idea if this book is still taught at university, but may be of some utility.
Zine free for anyone to download. More info at the bottom of the page.
Interview
A conversation with art historian Lauren Richman for the art website Coronograph, on the occasion of an exhibition of Index at the Reading Room in Dallas, TX, in 2016.
We discussed aspects of process behind the project, as well as the central role of subjectivity in creating something that’s so embodied with the look of objectivity.
“Something I learned late in the project was The Chicago Manual of Style’s insistence on understanding and taking into account the subjective but decisive role of the indexer in determining inclusion or exclusion. I must have glossed over this fact a hundred times before its perspective made sense for the work. My frustrations and worries about the project were so closely related to making an accurate and all-inclusive index, that it was both a relief and a let-down to find that my approach could be otherwise. ”
Installation views
Arts and Culture Texas Review
Jennifer Smart, on the occasion of Index at The Reading Room, Dallas, TX, 2016.
“Tibayan, by indexing the cultural context of Susan Sontag, allows us to consider a wealth of historical figures from Ansel Adams to Bertolt Brecht to Elvis Presley side by side, inviting an occasionally confusing, often inspiring opportunity to consider a diverse array of “historically important” figures and thinkers side by side, while prompting viewers to reconsider what “historically important” means in the increasingly globalized, and as a result, increasingly diversified intellectual world of the 21st century. Who have we left out? And what are the consequences?”
Index (Zine/Insert), 2020
Feel free to download PDF copies of Index for yourself.
I consider this work independent of the book—and fascinating to read on its own (YMMV)—but if you’re actually trying to use this as an index for On Photography, please note that I’ve made it for the version I own (ISBN-10: 0312420099).
I’m providing two layouts, both sized for US Letter (8.5”x11”). Both are also provided as is, and may include spelling and type errors as well as inaccuracies, like any book index. :)
The first is a zine format where I’ve prepared the page imposition. So if you can print double-sided, you should be able to just fold it all in half and you’re set. If you want to jam/glue it into the back of your copy of On Photography, you’ll likely want to rip out some of the blank pages at the back of the book, and trim the top of the zine to stay flush with the paperback.
You may need to test scale, orientation, and rotation stuff, but this is how I printed my double-sided version.
The second version is provided without page imposition and useful for single-sided printing. This layout is also the one to use if you’re just referencing it on screens.
You may need to test scale, orientation, and rotation stuff, but this is how I printed my single-sided version.
Notes
Krauss, Rosalind. Notes on the Index (Part 1).
