A poetic artists book of found photographs from the early to mid20th century sequenced thematicallyPhotographer and bookseller Melissa Catanese has been editing the vast photography collection of Peter J. Cohen a celebrated trove of more than 20000 vernacular and found anonymous photographs from the early to midtwentieth century. Gathered from flea markets dealers and Ebay these prints have been acquired exhibited and included in a range of major museum publications. In organizing the archive into a series of thematic catalogues she has pursued an alternate reading of the collection drifting away from simple typology into something more personal intuitive and openly poetic. Her magical new artists book Dive Dark Dream Slow is rooted in the mystery and delight of the found image and the snapshot aesthetic but pushes beyond the nostalgic surface of these pictures and reimagines them as luminous transmissions of anxious sensuality. Through a series of abandoned visual clues from the sepiainfused shadow of a little girl running along a beach to silhouettes of a group of distant figures pausing upon a steep and snowy hill a dreamlike journey is evoked. Like an album of pop songs about a girl or a civilization hovering on the verge of transformation the book cycles through overlapping themes and counterthemesmoon and ocean violence and tenderness innocence and experience masks and nakednessthat sparkle with deep psychic longing and apocalyptic comedy.