SANTA FE, NM.- Radius Books announces the release of Barcelona (November 2013) by photographic artist and writer Janelle Lynch. The 112-page monograph features 50 photographs, a short memoir titled "The Window," and additional introductory texts written by Lynch. Barcelona was recently named a finalist for The Cord Prize 2013, an international contemporary art award juried by Charlotte Cotton and Diana Edkins, and has been described by LensCulture magazine as "Exquisite ... fascinating."

While living in Spain from 2007-2011, Lynch explored the fallow landscape outside of Barcelona. With her 8x10 Deardorff camera and a portrait lens, she photographed traces of existence - pylons, puddles, leaves, and litter - as metaphors for absence and presence, mourning and remembrance. Five series of images are featured in Barcelona; four in color plus the artist's first black-and-white project. They show the terrain around the Llobregat and Rubí rivers - unpeopled yet layered with palpable suggestions of life, past and present.

"Barcelona extends my long-term interest in representations of the life cycle in the landscape," Lynch said, "to an inquiry about what remains after absence and loss, what persists in being, what intangible presence continues despite a physical absence?"

Interwoven throughout this new project are the artist's writings in English and Spanish. The book begins with "The Window," a short memoir about how Lynch, as a child, learned from her grandmother to observe and appreciate nature. Text written by Lynch precedes each series of photographs and offers insight into the artist's subject matter and influences. Notes about mourning by philosopher Roland Barthes informed Lynch's new conceptual investigation. Artist Charles Burchfield's tendency to animate the landscape in his paintings inspired her vision. And an essay by writer Wendell Berry, about approaching the natural world with respect and humility, transformed her process.

Barcelona follows the artist's first monograph, Los Jardines de México (Radius Books, 2011) which was named to PDN's Notable Books of 2011 list. Photographs from that project are currently on view at Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin, Germany, while her River series photographs are on view at the Newark Museum in Newark, N.J.

Barcelona
12.75 x 10 inches
112 pages
39 color and 11 duotone illustrations
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-93445-68-7
$55