trans/literate
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
A Western Approach to Zen; An Inquiry, Christmas Humphreys
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Amerika, Franz Kafka
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Moby Dick; or, the Whale, Herman Melville
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Orlando, Virginia Woolf
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
The Holy Bible
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
The Odyssey, Homer
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
The Stranger, Albert Camus
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
The Trial, Franz Kafka
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Beloved, Toni Morrison
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
49 1/8 in. × 21 3/4 in. diptych. Archival pigment print with Braille. 2013.
trans/literate
Detail of Braille at Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA
trans/literate
Installation View at Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA
trans/literate
Installation View at Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA
trans/literate
Installation View at Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA
trans/literate
2013
With trans/literate, volumes of braille texts are presented as diptych typologies; an image of the closed book on the left with its accompanying open pages and embossed braille on the right.
trans/literate continues Wagner’s investigation of cultural archives that use unique systems to transfer knowledge. Each book is broken into macro- and micro-abstractions. Viewed at a distance, the diptychs are color fields, revealing only the color of the cover and the white page of an open book printed in braille. The photographs convey a strong understanding of physical loss, documenting the books as flat surfaces that create a sculptural illusion of punched relief, with a distance that reinforces the irreplaceable loss of a physical dimension.
Braille has remained a constant, unchanged language since its invention in 1834. Books in general have long been fetishized as tactile, almost sensual objects. This context transcends the world of the blind. In a literal sense, the growing prevalence of auditory materials is a harbinger of reading itself entering a retreat into history and memory.