Don't know if you bothered watching the video (in the previous post) featuring John Gossage talking about The Pond. To be sure, the book doesn't exactly contain the most exciting photographic imagery ever produced, although quite a few of the photos do sustain a rather hypnotic allure about them. But Mr. Gossage does impart a sizable chunk of photographic wisdom to those willing to listen, while also revealing (amongst other things) that the number of people that approached him at his first book signing amounted to exactly... zero. Oh, and it was the first photo book to not include a photo on the cover (I just caught up to that trend... last year!) and was conceived to be a book only- he turned down Mr. Castelli's request for an actual exhibit (can't tell ya how many times I had to turn him down).
The Pond is loosely inspired by Thoreau's Walden; truth is, it's not even the actual Walden Pond, in fact- some of the pictures contained within the essay are taken in different countries! Gossage did not care about remaining true to documentary constraints, he was concerned about remaining true to his own vision...
"A photo is a fiction. It's not the fiction that implies a lie, it's the fiction that describes the experience you're getting is fleeting, transitory and at the same time, permanent. It is not reality as we normally navigate it."
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