Independence Day

Paperback, full color, 116 pagesISBN: 978-1-947322-90-5Cover Price: $40.00   An asteroid, volcano, tsunami or alien army draws near and the camera cuts away to pan across groups of people looking towards catastrophe. Intermittently montaged amidst the progressing apocalypse, each clip lasts for a few seconds. All peoples in the world—that is the movies’ extras—look up and expect to die; this is all the movie demands its audience to know. These extras work partly like an index finger: they direct us to look at something. They proceed to tell us how to look [unblinkingly] and how to feel [scared, adrenaline-charged]. Greg Curtis pulled stills from such fifteen-or-so-year-old disaster movies. His/this book’s photographs slice still images out of these moving films, to focus on these extras, spectators-of-their-own-deaths. The camera rested on their faces for less than a second in the movies, but Greg’s still slices allow more sustained looks. Main characters embrace each other and their d