27 Contexts: An Anecdotal History in Photography

27 Contexts: An Anecdotal History in Photography is a series of linked essays that examine how photographs are inextricably bound in our personal and collective histories. Beginning with his childhood obsession with his parent’s wedding album through a lifetime making photographs, teaching, and writing about photography, Durant’s narrative weaves memoir with photographic history and theory.

Illustrated with a broad spectrum of images from family snapshots to Hubble space imagery, to the work of artists such as Josef Koudelka, Julia Margaret Cameron, Larry Sultan, Maya Deren, Odilon Redon, Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz and Chris Marker, 27 Contexts describes a life immersed in the quotidian, the political, and the enigmatic aspects of photography.

“Mark Alice Durant is an artist, performer, writer, and critic. He has an acute eye and fertile mind, and a beautiful writing style. Durant’s writing is drawn from experiencing art and life; in his vivid appreciations, I feel a lusciousness of observation. In observing the world around him, he makes his own world, one that is always pleasurable and enlightening.”
— Lynne Tillman, novelist / cultural critic.

“Durant’s writing—his storytelling—is often thrilling, wrenching, beautiful.”
— George Baker in 4Columns.