Handbook of the Spontaneous Other

Book excerpt: In 'Handbook of the Spontaneous Other', Aikaterini Gegisian brings together a diverse range of found photographic material produced in Western Europe and the USA during the 1960s and 1970s. Composed of a series of 59 collages, the book playfully recontextualises images from popular culture that Gegisian has sourced from pornographic magazines, tourist catalogues and National Geographic spreads in order to subvert the way that the body, nature and pleasure have been represented in Western capitalist fantasies. Divided into nine chapters that follow a metaphysical narrative of colour and sensation, the book ultimately seeks to locate a 'spontaneous other'; a notion of the self and of pleasure that exists beyond the confines of popular culture and its dominant modes of representation.