John Yang: Mount Zion

Sepulchral Portraits

Introduction by John Yang.
Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.

Mount Zion refers to an Orthodox Jewish cemetery in Queens, New York, built in 1893, sandwiched between a New York City Sanitation plant and the Long Island Expressway. ''Sepulchral portraits'' refer to miniature photographs once placed on many of Mount Zion's tombstones, a custom brought over by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. These images--often heavily retouched--were burned onto porcelain or metal tablets, and then glazed. The process was, at the time, advertised as permanent; but the ravages of the elements, pollution, and vandals have transformed these portraits into something else altogether. What remains of them--and what has become of them--is what John Yang has set out to portray in his own series of photographs, taken between 1994 and 1998. The result is a fiercely moving document, a meditation on morality, memory, the urban landscape, and the photographic process. Much like his subject matter, Yang's photographs are themselves memorials--to Mount Zion, to its urban environment, to its occupants, to the gesture of its sepulchral portraits, and to photography itself.

D.A.P. CATALOG: SPRING 2001

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JOHN YANG: MOUNT ZION
$35.00 |

U.S. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00
CANADIAN PRICE: CAN $42
ISBN: 9781891024238
FORMAT: Hardcover, 7 x 10 in. / 112 pgs / 88 color.
PUBLISHER: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
DISTRIBUTION: | RETAILER DISC: TRADE
PUBLICATION DATE: 3/2/2001 | Active
AVAILABILITY: Not available