TINTED LINES

torch press is pleased to announce the release of Fumi Ishino’s third monograph, Tinted Lines, in April 2021. Following his 2017 publication, rowing a tetrapod, published by MACK books, and his limited-edition artist book, Index of Fillers (2021), co-published with Assembly, Tinted Lines extends Ishino’s interest in cultural intersection, displacement, hybridity, and the gaze, through a walking tour of Los Angeles. Through his distinctive use of sequencing, lighting, and composition, Ishino questions the discourses of space, ownership, and belonging. From gated communities, redevelopment areas, public facilities, museums, and suburbs, to neighborhoods segregated by race or ethnicity, concealed boundaries form layers of social constructs that limit access to outsiders. Ishino’s photographs argue that the contour of these borders can be redefined by repositioning one’s body, and that photography can act as a witness to this process while it smudges the specification of socially categorized spaces. These photographs portray words and spaces that indicate social belonging, power, and control. By rendering them in an inverted context, as unfamiliar visual languages, Tinted Lines questions how these dislocated codes reframe the discourse of ownership when the paradigm of inside and outside, private and public, is ripped, overpainted, and collaged.