Consume Me, by Marti Eisenbrandt

I really enjoyed Marti's book, Consume Me. It is an 8x10 softcover landscape with 11 color pictures and an excerpt from a poem by Walt Whitman. Her pictures are not straight photographs; they are actually collages created using pictures she has taken. Almost all of the pictures include a photograph of the same girl; however, in every picture she looks very different. In her introduction, Marti wrote about how advertisements and magazines transport her from reality to somewhere else, and I think that the poem and the pictures capture this dream-like place very well.

I think that the pictures show a young woman who is struggling to understand and create her identity amidst all of the advertisements and images from magazines that she is bombarded with. Every picture seems to show a different aspect of this girl, and a different part of her identity. The collages seem to be very influenced by the look of magazines and the way that the girl portrays herself in many of the photographs seems as though it is influenced by the type of photography that one finds in a magazine. The choice to make the book softcover, like a magazine, reinforces how important images from magazines are to this work.

I also liked Marti's decision to intersperse a part of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass with the photographs. I felt that the text went very well with the photographs and that a lot of care was taken in matching particular photographs with lines from the poem. This made the book flow very well. The poem is somewhat ambiguous, which I felt went well with the photographs. To me, the poem seems to be about individuality and being yourself, which I think is an important aspect of the book. The girl in the photographs seems to be trying to find out who she is and attempting to be that person without apology.


Overall, I felt that this book was very thoughtfully created and I am glad I had the chance to see it.


I hope everyone has a great summer!