Lacuna Park: Essays and Other Adventures in Photography - Nicholas Muellner

Photography, philosophy, and random adventures fill this book of essays. As a non-photographer, I thought it might be interesting to explore this art medium in a more theoretical plane.

Some essays were more interesting than others. As I have found the case to be with most essay compilations, it is hard to maintain quality and cohesion across an entire book. And I don’t think Lacuna Park does. The photography-centered chapters are quite insightful and are almost a contrast to more personal-based chapters describing the author’s experiences. Although those link to photography as well, it is in less direct ways that aren’t as clear to me.

The writing style I find/is overly complex, including the vocabulary usage which borrows terms from various fields. That being said there were some essays that I enjoyed and would recommend (they should also be available standalone, somewhere online):

  • I. Making Doubles
  • II. Color Correction
  • VIX. The New Interval

Motivation to pick up the book

I came across this book in the discounted section of an art-focused bookstore around SoFo, Stockholm. The cover and essays I opened at random caught my attention enough to spend a few bucks.