Shimon Attie: The History of Another

Shimon Attie: The History of Another
17 x 14 inches
19 Four-color Plates
48 Pages, Hardcover
First Edition, 1,000 Casebound copies
Designed by Jack Woody ISBN: 1-931885-31-1
Publisher: Twin Palms (May, 2005)

Shimon Attie’s The History of Another is a lavishly illustrated book of his photographs taken by projecting historical photographs of Roman Jews onto Roman ruins, investigating the complicated layers of history and trying to bring out buried layers of memory. MoCP Executive Director Natasha Egan writes, “using modern Rome as his backdrop, Attie projects fragments of historical photographs of Roman Jews taken between 1890 and 1920 onto the city’s ancient ruins and excavation sites. Uncovering and re-contextualizing archive photographs that represent a moment of Jewish history in Rome’s long, cyclical history of persecution, Attie’s Roman Jews act as a metaphor for the outsider, the stranger, the immigrant- the individual who has an ambiguous relationship to and status within the grand history of the West.” In the nineteen 17 x 14 inch color plates, Attie captures the intricate detail and beauty of these modern ruins while also creating his own multifaceted interpretation of the history that existed there, the projections of people long since deceased hovering in a ghost-like fashion on the building facades and tucked into their hidden corners, forcing us to remember their existence and the troubled history it represents.

The History of Another was published by Twin Palms Publishers and the MoCP and coincided with Attie’s exhibition at the MoCP from May 6 through July 2, 2004. The large book includes "Shimon Attie: Projections in Rome" by Natasha Egan and "The History of Another" by Alexander Stille, as well as an afterword by Rod Slemmons.

Shimon Attie was born in 1957 in Los Angeles, California, and received a B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley (1980), an M.A. degree from Antioch University, San Francisco (1982), and an M.F.A degree from San Francisco State University (1991). His work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the International Center for Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Maison Europeene de la Photographie, Paris. Attie has been the recipient of fellowships from notable organizations including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York Foundation for the Arts; and the Prix de Rome Visual Artist Fellowship, American Academy in Rome.