Signed, Mary Frey (*1948) - Reading Raymond Carver - 2018

Take advantage of the rare opportunity to acquire the SIGNED copy of the title 'Reading Raymond Carver' by the prominent American photographer Mary E. FREY!

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Background information about the out-of-print, signed photobook 'Reading Raymond Carver' by the American photographer Mary E. FREY.

About the prominent American photographer Mary E. FREY (*1948)
Mary E. FREY is a photographer and professor of photography at the Hartford Art School in Connecticut. Her staged scenes of everyday middle-class life, featuring family, friends, and strangers, which at first glance appear documentary, explore the nature of the documentary image in contemporary culture.
In 1984, Mary FREY had a solo exhibition at the Hudson River Museum and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her works were featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (e.g., in the influential MoMA exhibition 'Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort' from 1991, which explored suburban life and included 62 photographers such as Mary FREY, Robert ADAMS, William EGGLESTON, Lee FRIEDLANDER, Nan GOLDIN, Sally MANN, Cindy SHERMAN, and Joel STERNFELD) and are part of the collections of the museum as well as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. After earning her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree, she taught photography for 35 years at the Hartford Art School of the University of Hartford, where she worked until her retirement in 2015.

Mary Frey has published a total of five photo books: the self-published book 'Imagining Fauna' (2014), as well as titles published by various publishers: 'Domestic Rituals' (2014), 'Reading Raymond Carver' (2017), 'Real Life Dramas' (2018), and 'My Mother, My Son' (2024).

Translate to English. Return only the translation:

When Mary FREY began in 1979 to photograph family, friends, and strangers in her immediate environment, she was herself in a state of transition. Having finished her studies, taken her first teaching assignment, and being pregnant—responsibilities, duties, worries—and the necessity to find meaning in everyday life. After a childhood marked by the feeling of an impending nuclear catastrophe, in an America where lifestyle magazines and television show how the Beautiful New World should look and function.

Content of the photo book 'Reading Raymond Carver' by Mary Frey.

The out-of-print photo book 'Reading Raymond Carver' by Mary FREY - edited by Hannes Wanderer, the Berlin publisher who died much too early, contains 'strange images' (Wanderer). 'Technically perfect, at the intersection between snapshot and staging, intimacy and distance, charged everyday scenes with children, teenagers, and adults, middle class, USA, in the 1970s and 80s. Not reportage, a psychogram. Stock photos that no magazine printed, that no agency would have used for a campaign. Weird.' (Wanderer)

In the end, Raymond Carver asks:
Would I live my life over again? Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
And how Raymond Carver responds to Mary Frey's images with his words: 'YES.'



Personal Statement by the American Photographer

Mary FREY's statement in her 2017 book 'Reading Raymond Carver' is a question she raises in the preface: 'Where does the significance of a photograph lie when the original intentions are forgotten?' This question is central to her project, which explores the idea that the meaning of a photograph is not determined solely by the creator's intention but is also found in the viewer's present experience with the image. She uses the book title to draw a parallel between her photographic work and Carver's short stories, as both seek to find and construct meaning in the everyday and the banal.

The book is equally an appeal to the viewer: a direct invitation to the reader to engage with the photographs, 'to look and see what these images do to us, what they evoke in us,' rather than focusing solely on the original intentions of the creator.

Translate to English. Return only the translation:

Peperoni Books Berlin, 2018. Second Edition.

Hardcover without dust jacket (as published). 265 x 235 mm. 96 pages with over 50 black-and-white photographs. With an introduction by Mary FREY and a poem by Raymond Carver – both in English.

Condition: The book is in very good condition both inside and out, with a slight scuff on the lower front cover. On the flyleaf of Mary FREY, written in thin pen with the full name, SIGNED!