ZA :

In a recent sale of an age-old bookstore in Bombay, I came across your cheeky (if I may) book titled How to shoplift Books (2019). In it, you give insightful anecdotes on the delicate art of stealing books. Right from- photographing every page of the book with a digital camera, to stealing the book one page at a time from different stores, you seem to have thought of it all! Could you tell me what brought about the idea of the book, and if you have indeed taken your own advice on any occasion?

DH :

Haha, if you want the full story, there are so many layers to it. It all began as a conversation during The Printed Matter Book Fair in 2012. There is always a bit of satellite programming, and I said- why don’t we talk about stealing books? This was born from those conversations. It was originally published by an Italian publisher, and so I thought it would be a good idea to translate it from English into Italian too. Then came the French, Polish, Danish, Spanish, and Malayalam translations. Eventually, my publisher, Editions Taube, decided to co-produce the book with local publishers worldwide. So, we have the English version with Editions Taube and Printed Matters, the French version with Yvon Lambert, and the Italian version with Mousse Magazine for example. What’s interesting is that each translated version is different. I call it a ‘cultural translation,’ where there are specific references made to the culture they belong to. For example, in the Albanian translation by a person from Kosovo, there was a reference about ‘banana candy, that is given as common change at a store/supermarket. It isn’t necessarily something that an American would pick-up on. So, the references keep evolving, and are very niche.

ZA :

Coming to one of my personal favourite books by you, Nostalgia, as a writer-photographer myself, I find a photobook devoid of photographs rather curious. It reminds me of Photographs Not Taken (2012) by Daylight Publishers, which consists of 25 essays by phenomenal practitioners about moments that never became a picture. Now, in our overtly visually dependent world, how do you think Nostalgia’s relevance has heightened?

DH :

So, the origin of this project was made from me deleting photographs. A form of erasure. The words that you read are memories of photographs that I've erased. We are flooded and inundated with imagery in all aspects of our life. We’re constantly photographing, but then by photographing, we’re also accumulating. For me, it’s almost like a source of cultural anxiety. Here, I was trying to erase as many personal images, but write about them so that the reader might formulate their own image in their head. Through my descriptions, maybe they’re thinking about a photograph they might have made, or possibly imagining the photograph I might have made and then deleted.

ZA :

Precisely, when I read the words in your book “A photograph of water over sand, the oceans in a moment of time,” I’m instantly transported to a similar image I made of trellises of waves across the sand, which also reminded a curator of the delicate works of Indian artist, Nasreen Mohamedi. It makes me think of the number of versions that might exist in a singular frame. Moving on to your edit, how does one make a sequence of a photobook which is purely made of words? Was there a plan in mind during the placement of the text?

DH :

Well, at first I thought of sequencing it chronologically, but then it ended up being through intuition. It’s interesting because sure, you're editing images in a way, but really, you're editing language. So, we almost have to consider how it sounds, and the rhythm that comes with it.

ZA :

And where does the project end? Something like this almost feels infinite…how do you decide that this is it?

DH :

Honestly, it was a conversation I had with my publisher, Edition Taube and Gato Negro. Initially, it was an 80-page book, but my version published by Yvon Lambert was made with 300 “photographs.” It would have been interesting to do it the other way around too, where I started writing it as a novel, but then where would it end? I’d probably get overwhelmed and never finish it. So, picking a number felt like the best choice.

ZA :

I was recently gifted your book-length poem, Adjust the Level of the Sea, which consists of one hundred and fifty-six poetic actions in conversation with the sea. It seemed fitting since I’ve grown up by the Arabian and have had a long-standing relationship with it. Did you have a similar experience with the sea/ocean? I notice its appearance in quite a few of your works including Public Access (2011), and The Distance of a Day (2013).

DH :

This work was specifically commissioned for a museum known as The Villa Carmignac that was by the Mediterranean Sea. Since I’ve grown up in California, I’ve always had a connection with the ocean. It was the setting I was exposed to, and eventually the setting where I would make work. Different projects use the ocean in different ways, with diverse ideas at play. Like in The Distance of a Day (2013) that I made in collaboration with my mother, I asked her to watch and film a sunset near her California home, as I stood on the coast of The Maldives, capturing a simultaneous sunrise halfway around the world. Placed side-by-side, it’s a moment in time. From one perspective, one video is ‘tomorrow,’ and the other is ‘yesterday.’ In Public Access, over roughly two weeks, I drove along California's coast from the Mexican border up through the Oregon border. Along the way, I stopped and took pictures of myself looking out at the beach and then uploaded these photographs to the Wikipedia entries for these locations, adding new images or replacing existing images. Many of these so-called ‘public beaches,’ were out of bounds. Eventually, my images were deleted and even cropped by Wikipedia’s administrative board, which made me think of the policing that exists in both worlds. I am no longer the author of my images who has control over where they land. Sort of like driftwood? You don’t know where it’s going to end up.

ZA :

Lastly, since you deal with so many different forms in your visualisation of ideas, I wanted to ask if you had an opinion on AI generated imagery, or if you’ve thought of inculcating it in your work in any way?

DH :

I’m working with a facial recognition software, which I’m not sure is considered as AI or is just based on pure algorithm. I’m collecting images using the software that locates photographs of your face online. Essentially, I’m collecting photographs that are not me, but the software mistakes the person to be me. So, to break it down, I’m collecting an archive of errors. For more insights, visit www.davidhorvitz.com