American Cockroach

It might seem odd--if not implausible--for an artistic medley of photographs to take the reviled cockroach as subject and inspiration. But the artwork and essays in this slim volume actually manage to humanize these ""flat, twitchy, squishy, spine-legged"" but often innocuous pests. Chalmers unleashes a remarkable creative energy on her spindly subjects, often gussying up their carapaces with paint and even rhinestones as she positions them against rich backgrounds--from exotic flowers to a living room couch--in photographs that encompass a broad range of moods. Some of the extreme close-ups, like one where a cockroach peers through a kitchen window, portray an inquisitive, harmless creature that could star in children's books. Up close, we glimpse the spindles on its legs, the breadth of its shell, its comically large antennae. But the starker black-and-white photographs showing dead cockroaches lashed to a plank or dangling like clothespins send shivers down the spine. In each instance, the magnified images and their incongruous elements force readers to confront a creature that they shrink from and seek to kill--thereby wrenching ingrained disgust into consciousness. 50 four-color and duotone images.