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Skip.
Photographs and text by David Newsom.
Perceval Press,
Santa Monica,
2005.
41 pp., color illustrations throughout, 6x9¼".
ICP's email newsletter contains a “Photo Tip of the
Month, which this past October was all about
collecting photobooks. Daniel Thiem (web coordinator
and senior sales manager of the ICP Store) suggested
that with so many books on the market it basically
comes down to taste, collectibility and price. True
enough. And for me, this little gem of a book fits the
criteria. I could get lost in the photographs of snowcovered
thistles that blanket the endpapers, the warm
sunlight and blue skies. But the heart of this book is the
story of Skip, a 50-something-year-old child who has
finally found his place in Idaho, and of a family who has
finally found a sense of peace. SKIP, in many ways, is a
personal letter with photos from actor and photographer
David Newsom to us, his audience. He
describes the book as a kind of poem in
images and words, about [his] oldest
brother, [his] family, and the pursuit of
home. It is also a flat out love letter to the
Teton Valley in Idaho. The vibrant color
photographs taken over a span of ten years
portray a world of reverie that the lens of his
plastic Holga camera enhances. Skip, a man with
mental disabilities, probably never knew the beauty that
would await him in Idaho. There is such a stark difference
between the walls of institutions and group homes of
New Jersey and the majestic landscape of the West, and
clearly the influence of the expansiveness of the
landscape has done wonders for him. David and Skip—
brothers who grew up divided by fourteen years of age,
geography and understanding—exist in the exact same
world of the eternal moment of the photograph. With a
print run of only 1000, Perceval Press has indeed made
this personal and visual narrative a collectible.-LARISSA LECLAIR
Read Publisher's Description.
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