A Suspension of Memory

"When we're out together, the torsion of the night almost pulls our faces off. Everything seems so electric that I’m really no closer to understanding my companions. I’m forced to confront the inscrutability of rationale, the impenetrability of the human skull—starting with mine. And even this may not be redeeming, but there’s the impulse to seize something palpable from the jaws of this frenzy, a wisp of this unimaginable experience in order to interpret it. But that trace means that I can’t forget it either, even though the only thing I want to do is leave this all behind." http://www.daylight.co/editions/DD1316 A new multimedia project with video and images by Ken Schles, text in collaboration with Alan Rapp, produced by Daylight Digital. My East Village Alphaville. Ken Schles’ Invisible City was published in 1988 to wide acclaim, both for Schles’ remarkably strong personal vision, and for its seminal description of New York City’s East Village in all its decaying glory. It was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and included in the MoMA’s 1992 exhibit More Than One Photography. Vince Aletti (in the New Yorker) recognized the book as “hellishly brilliant.” Long out of print, a new edition of Invisible City is forthcoming from Steidl, along with a new book of Schles’ work from the same period, Night Walk, expanding Schles’ intimate chronicle of New York’s last pre-Internet bohemian outpost. This new Daylight Digital edition presents images from both works: selections from Invisible City in addition to premiering select work from the yet-to-be-released Night Walk — synthesized together for the first time with a collaborative text by Alan Rapp in an original multimedia presentation.