In this book, historian of photography and visual culture Emily Doucet examines the historical and technological modes of representation of the world, and the cultural rituals of image production as a vehicle of knowledge. In response to the guest author's ideas, Milly-Alexandra Dery, curator at Fonderie Darling, focuses on the conditions of emergence of the works and contextualizes Jeanette Johns' production within a broader social and artistic history. Using an intuitive selection of images produced by the authors and the artist, the ideas presented in the text are thus made to relate to the works in a non-chronological, open-ended, yet synchronous manner.
Designed to emphasize the spirit of continuity between the past and the present, this exhibition and publication project highlights the coherence of an artistic practice that navigates between several mediums and disciplines, always with the objective of achieving complete technical mastery. Divided into five sections beginning with the interrogative adverb "how" - How to see in space, How to draw a line, How to build a staircase, How to know a place, How to make an image of things as they happen to be - each booklet of the publication is wrapped with silkscreen prints produced by the artist.