A Dozen Failures

Press

Houston Center for Photography

While walking with (podcast)

A Dozen Failures is both a singular statement as a photobook and a commentary on a life spent making some of the classic photobooks of our time, among them The Pond, There and Gone, The Romance Industry, and Berlin in the Time of the Wall.

Every photograph is in some way perfect (as a technical feat) and in another way a failure (as representational “residue”). So what makes a picture a “failure” – something worthy of further contemplation? It goes far deeper than merely being a mistake. Failures teach us about life and the self in ways as powerful as – and far more confoundingly than – successes.

Or, as Gossage says, they show us “a love lost through lack of skill and misunderstanding.”