Rabbit/Hare by David Billet & Ian Kline
“Rabbit/Hare” available for pre-order now!
Alumni and 2017 Jan Meyer Traveling Fellowship Recipients' Ian Kline and David Billet made the pictures in Rabbit / Hare on a road trip to Texas. And right away that statement is going to create a certain set of expectations among viewers of this book. Perhaps no other region in the United States comes with such a strong set of preconceived notions. So yes: you’ll see ten-gallon hats, a wayward confederate flag. Even a baptism in a watering trough.
But the real glory of Rabbit / Hare is how surely its makers have defied easy stereotypes: these pictures do not derive their palpable life from mere subject matter. In this book, butterflies and back hair are equally magical and mundane, as they should be. Qualities of light are equally qualities of sensibility. The human beings in the pictures gently revel in the pleasures of riding horses, or smoking cigarettes, or exposing skin to sun and air.
And similarly we see Billet and Kline revel in their intuition and in the quality of their inquiry. They share not only their delight in seeing a cat or a bird enjoying the light, but (somehow) also the very delight experienced by the animal itself. We understand the intimate physical communion of some ragtag street wrestlers not because of the description but rather because of the evocation of sweat and muscles and asphalt.
Rabbit / Hare will not tell us anything about how to evaluate any particular state or region or electorate. What we see instead is how to meet the world with open minds and open hearts and to make something lasting of that meeting.
“We wanted to look for ourselves to see what it meant to us to be a man in America today. The two of us wanted to see, as singular people and as partners, where we fit into this landscape that held so much influence to our understanding and our elders’ understanding of masculinity, America, and life.”
Articles about their project can be seen on Booooooom or Ain't Bad! Scroll down for information on how to order!
   
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DAVID BILLET & IAN KLINE - RABBIT / HARE
Essay by Tim Carpenter
72 Pages
Duotone Offset (B&W),
9” x 11”
Edition of 750
ISBN: 978-0-9998298-6-8
$45, Shipping May 2020
The book published by Deadbeat Club and available now for preorder.