Recipes for Disaster
Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman
Self-Published
English
Softcover, Spiral bound
Edition 25 of 150
68 Pages
209 x 260 mm
2020
ISBN Not available
Recipes for Disaster is a 68 page book confronting the climate crisis, as told through risk-laden desserts. Alarmed by the assault on science-based climate facts, we recorded the toxic conditions that are leading us toward environmental disaster. Scaling down the enormity of critical climate issues into literal, bite-size landscapes, we constructed darkly humorous recipes with accompanying ingredients and instructions. Recipes for Disaster prompts the reader to consider the consequences of what and how we consume.
About the Artist
Barbara Ciurej is a Chicago-based photographer and graphic designer. She has a BS in Visual Communications from the Institute of Design+Illinois Institute of Technology. Ever looking to the art historical past to invoke order and harmony, her search for narratives to explain how we got here has fueled 30+ years of making pictures.
Lindsay Lochman is a Milwaukee-based photographer and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin /Milwaukee. She received her MS in Visual Communications at the Institute of Design+Illinois Institute of Technology. In her quest to organize the natural world, she is inspired by the intersection of science, history and the unconscious.
Our collaborative practice began from our work at the Institute of Design and developed in the alternative art world of the 1980s. We were asking the same questions about finding our place in the world and using photography to examine those questions. On a practical level, working with a collaborator provides critique, a willing model, a road trip companion, an assistant, an editor. On a conceptual level, it challenges the notion of the primacy of the individual artist’s vision, the artist/model relationship, and ownership of the final work. Collaboration opens the possibility of moving beyond personal stories and into the realm of collective experience. It has been the core of our practice and mirrors the fluid and mutable ways of storytelling traditions.
Depending on the project, we shoot together or separately and when necessary, model. Each body of work evolves through research and debate, editing and compromise. To bridge the distance between two cities, we rely on virtual communication, our online notebooks as well as studio practice.
Over the years, we have been fortunate to be part of communities where the exchange of ideas rooted in collective action fostered our own process: Artemisia Gallery, The Dinner Party Project in Chicago and Ragdale Foundation.
ciurejlochmanphoto.com
