Luke Stettner – History Database

SPBH 2016

There is no single interpretation of History Database. Through hundreds of found and produced photographs, drawings, xeroxes and pictograms, the book investigates notions of mortality, the measurement of time (through the formation and erosion of both bodies and geology), and the technology and distribution of pictures. Its imagery is splintered: a hand reaches across the face of a scored rock, ISIS bombers destroy The Temple of Bel, a long shadow slants across an ancient grave. A treatise on cultural, corporeal and academic preservation and destruction, History Database prompts: what is left behind after bodies disappear?