Reading the Glass: Management of the Eyes, Moderation of the gaze
Charles Barber, Sharon Kivland and Conrad Leyser (1991)
‘This book occupies an uneasy space. It is neither academic text nor an artist’s book and yet shares something with both. It might sit on a shelf or be equally appropriate in a pocket. It might remind one of many things − missal, rhetorical guide, a treatise on aesthetics. If it belongs in no one place, well, that is somewhat its intention − a kind of homelessness.’
Reading the Glass addresses the question of the gendering of the gaze through a series of words and images, exploring the act of looking, illustrating the difference between the male and female gaze, and speculating on whether a space that is not gendered can exist within an image, within language.
Eight people were invited to contribute to the book, grouped into pairs, woman-man, and artist-theorist. Each pair enter into a dialogue with each other through image and text; the sections are self-contained but each has a complex relationship with the overall design of the book.
