Recovering place : reflections on Stone Hill / Mark C. Taylor ; photographs by Mark C. Taylor.

Includes bibliographical references (page 157).

Print version record.

Indescribable ... it contains some of the finest prose and photography you'll find anywhere. A weird, wonderful, wallop-packing work of untethered spirituality. Beautiful images of the natural world paired with introspective musings on life's greatest mysteries fill this wondrous compendium ... Recovering Place makes an excellent and unforgettable giftbook nature lovers especially will enjoy browsing its insights. [Taylor's] musings, when paired with the author's own color photos, read as poetic and verbal artifacts ... The book will inspire readers to pause, look, and consider. Thomas Krens, director emeritus, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation New York:Taylor has created a work that is simultaneously stunningly direct and sensually complex. Its natural, spatial, analytical and temporal dimensions combine to perhaps surpass even his most brilliant and well reasoned texts in its capacity to draw the viewer/reader into a visceral and theoretical discourse at the very same moment. Recovering Place is about time, the ceaseless contemplation of which is at the root of all of Taylor's work. The originality of both his art and his writing are drawn together in this beautifully elegant book, which will, without doubt, generate pilgrimages to 'the Place.' Steven Holl, architect:One of our most important philosophers of culture, Taylor frames his poetic and passionate argument with a very personal reflection, not unlike Thoreau. Stone Hill, Taylor's Walden Pond, gives a visual identity to his important words. His poetic manifesto of place is a joy to read its timely urgency is a gift to students in philosophy, art, architecture, and cultu.

Mark C. Taylor recounts a poignant love affair not with a person but with a place that, paradoxically, cannot be easily localized. For many years, Taylor has lived in the Berkshire Mountains, where he writes and creates land art and sculpture. In a world of mobile screens and virtual realities, where speed is the measure of success and place is disappearing, his work slows down thought and brings life back to earth to give readers time to ponder the importance of place before it slips away. Taylor extends reflection beyond the page and returns with new insights about what is hiding in plain sight all around us. Weaving together words and images, his artful work enacts what it describes. Things long familiar suddenly appear strange, and the strange, unexpected, and unprogrammed unsettle readers in surprising ways. This timely meditation gives pause in the midst of harried lives and turns attention toward what we usually overlook: night, silence, touch, grace, ghosts, water, earth, stones, bones, idleness, infinity, slowness, and contentment. Recovering Place is a unique work with reflections that linger long after the book is closed.

Introduction -- Stone Hill -- Capital -- Globalization -- Modern -- Mobility -- Displacement -- Place -- Non-Place -- Orientation -- Posthuman -- Nihilism -- Project -- Philosophy -- Nexus -- X -- God -- Art -- Craft -- Imagination -- Disfiguring -- Faults -- Dawn -- Night -- Night Vision -- Gardens -- Placement -- Folly -- Abstraction -- Body -- Flesh -- Parasite -- Sense -- Color -- Touch -- Smell -- Apprehension -- Thinking -- Surface -- Seaming -- Appearing -- Human -- Real -- Grace -- Bliss -- Point -- Particularity -- Photographing -- Wildflowers -- Infinity -- Invisibility -- Holes -- Shadows -- Near -- Tracks -- Ghosts -- Not -- Distraction -- Boredom -- Slowness -- Revelation -- Fuzzy -- Compliance -- Time -- Complacency -- Snow -- Winter -- Spring -- Summer -- Fall -- Excess -- Indifference -- Inhuman -- Abandonment -- Cultivation -- Practice -- Raking -- Walking -- Stones -- Granite -- Marble -- Moraines -- River Stone -- Walling -- Elemental -- Earth -- Air -- Wind -- Fire -- Water -- Rain -- Ice -- Wood -- Forest -- Flows -- Hardsoft -- Silence -- Solitude -- Waste -- Pyramid -- Pit -- Sign -- Sacrifice -- Burial -- Bones -- Relics -- Death -- Prayer -- Creativity -- Economies -- Waiting -- Idleness -- Dwelling -- Contentment -- Notes -- Acknowledgments.

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