Photography-Embedded Fiction & Poetry 2012

Here is my list of works of fiction and poetry published in 2012 containing embedded photographs.  You can see all of my previous lists here.   I’ve updated a number of the annual lists recently, usually thanks to readers who point me in the direction of books I’ve overlooked.  If you know of a book that I have not mentioned, please let me know in a comment.  [Updated January 11, 2013.]

Drndić, Daša.  Trieste.  London: Maclehose Press.  English translation Ellen Elias-Bursać.  First published in Croatian in 2007.  Contains numerous unattributed photographs.

Hunt, Laird.  Kind One.  Minneapolis: Coffee House Press.  Contains six uncredited photographs.  See my review of this powerful novel here.

Kirin, Miroslav.  Iskopano.  Zagreb: Vukovic & Runjic.  Essays, poems and short stories arising from the discovery of family photographs that were excavated upon returning to a home after years of forced exile.  The numerous photographs were naturally distorted and chemically altered by their burial in a dunghill.  In Croatian.

Kluge, Alexander and Gerhard Richter.  December: 39 Stories 39 Pictures.  London: Seagull.  English-language translation by Martin Chalmers. Originally published in German in 2010.  Contains thirty-nine photographs of winter forest scenes by Richter and thirty-nine short pieces by Kluge.

Meno, Joe.  Office Girl.  NY: Akashic Books.  Contains photographs credited to Todd Baxter.

Otto, Whitney.  Eight Girls Taking Pictures.  NY: Scribner.  Contains eight photographs by various female photographers, including Imogen Cunningham, Grete Stern, Ruth Orkin, Camile Solyagua, et., with each photograph serving as the inspiration for a short story.

(Seers, Lindsay) and Ole Hagen.  Nowhere Less Now.   London: Artangel.  This book was given to everyone who attended Nowhere Less Now, a film installation conceived by artist Lindsay Seers and held in London at the Tin Tabernacle from September 8 through October 21, 2012.  The book, which is a marvelous fictional text about memory, codes, shipping, and much more, includes many photographs from private collections and public archives.  A digital version can be downloaded for free (iPads only) here.

Spivak, John L.  Hard Times on a Southern Chain Gang.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.  This edition includes a facsimile reprint of Spivak’s novel Georgia Nigger, originally published in 1932, and a new introduction by David A. Davis.  John Spivak (1897-1981) was a left-leaning journalist who used his first-hand research to create a fictionalized account that exposed the terrible condition of Georgia’s prison system and chain gangs and the cruel treatment of African American prisoners eight years ago.  The novel contained a photographic frontispiece.  In addition,Spivak felt compelled to add an appendix because, as he put it in his Postscript to the book, “the scenes described are so utterly incredible that I feel an appendix of pictures and documents are necessary in this particular work.  The pictures I took personally …”  To my knowledge, this was the first work of fiction published in the United States to include photographs.  Needless to say, copies of the 1932 edition are exceedingly hard to find these days.

Stoner, Jess.  I Have Blinded Myself Writing This.  Ann Arbor: Short Flight/Long Drive Books.  Numerous illustrations, many altered, some photographic.

Wilson, James.  All the Colours Fade.  Miami: Neverland Publishing.  Prose poems inspired by the band the Stone Roses, illustrated with forty photographs.