Society and space

James Ryan reviews Richard Quinney’s photographic book A Sense Sublime (Borderland Books, 2013).

Quinney is a sociologist by profession and he is known for his academic writings as well as for several books of autobiographical memoirs, which focus on his life in Illinois and Wisconsin. In this work, Quinney presents a series of photographs and short descriptive essays, or “field notes”, recording his life between 1983 and 2001 when he lived in the town of DeKalb in northern Illinois. Through this combination of photograph and text, Quinney invites the reader on a journey through his hometown and familiar landscapes at the end of the twentieth century. This is a very personal story. As Quinney explains in his introduction, during 18 years he lived in DeKalb, he underwent a number of major life changes including treatment for chronic leukaemia; retirement from his university post at Northern Illinois University; the death of his mother; the end of one marriage and the beginning of another; becoming a grandfather, and, finally leaving for Wisconsin. The work, perhaps unsurprisingly given such personal experiences, is animated by a self-consciously spiritual tone. Quinney’s camera and field notes are thus used in his determination to seek out a transcendental sense of beauty, to experience, as Quinney puts it, “the sublime in everyday life” (page 7). Continue reading James’ review here.

See also Sophie Leroy’s recent review of Yi-Fu Tuan’s 2013 book Romantic Geography: In Search of the Sublime.