YANNI FLORENCE
ISBN: 978-0-6482588-6-5
‘Geometries of segregation are also bodies in the world.
The trees as tall below as above strain for the centre’
Justin Clemens, from the poem Trees and Fences
‘Musingly looking at these photographs of trees and fences caused me to recall the following well-known statement from Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” Aren’t the particular spatial confabulations and inexorably slow tussles being played out between nature, represented by the tree, and property, represented by the fence, in these photographs, illustrative of Rousseau’s argument against claiming nature for one’s own? That in suburbia with all of its comforting banalities and slight deviations we can observe the somewhat warped, myopic, and ultimately unhappy consequences that claiming to own property has both upon humans and the world?’
Marcus Bergner, from untitled text
Yanni Florence: Trees and Fences
Published by M.33 Melbourne
Design by Yanni Florence
Poem by Justine Clemens
Text by Marcus Bergner
106pp
297 x 210 mm
Hard back swiss bound
Edition: 50
$68.18 (plus gst in Australia)
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