Published by Damiani, 2021
Text by Sylvia Plachy
Text by Sylvia Plachy
Annalisa and Pietro, Santa Marinella, Italy 2019
Photograph © Bonnie Briant
When you win the lottery you have two options, you can get all the money right away, but because of taxes you get less than if you’re willing to parse it out over time. Taking all the money right away but actually taking less is called taking the lump sum. The title is a comment on my constant, “I’ll have everything now, even though I know I should wait.”– Bonnie Briant
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Bonnie Briant’s personal collection of images in her first monograph, Lump Sum Lottery, transport us through the select world she inhabits outside the usual path of our ordinary lives.
She recently spoke to my SVA students advising they "look at the photographs of Sylvia Plachy, the photographer who wrote the short text for my book. She is the one who taught me so much about taking pictures; not needing rules and to just feel what you feel when you take a picture. Most of my pictures are blurry and handheld and low light; it’s about the space in-between moments, versus being very formal about it."
She went on to describe to them how she arrived at the brilliant cover image, Light through the door, Pattaya, Thailand. "One of my good friends is half Thai and his brother was getting married in Thailand, so I traveled over for the wedding. We had gone to their uncles house, and woke up in the middle of the night, it was 5am, so I guess early in the morning. I was a total mess because of the time change. So I just laid there staring at the ceiling and someone turned on the light in the hall."
I'm a big fan of this work . . .
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