Recovering Place: Reflections on Stone Hill

In this affecting hybrid work of art, photography, and meditations on place, Columbia University religion professor Taylor (Rewiring the Real) documents his two decade love affair with Stone Hill, located in the Berkshire Mountains, where nature, education, religion, and art converge. Taylor builds upon Hegel’s idea of translating art and religion into philosophical concepts. Reflection, Taylor believes, is “to apprehend what thought cannot comprehend in figures that only the imagination can trace.” The book is broken up into numerous pithy chapters covering topics such as: Displacement, God, Sense, Time, Inhuman, and Burial. These musings, when paired with the author’s own color photos, read as poetic and verbal artifacts, transcend both location and time: brickwork illustrates the deliberate patience of a craftsman; the vibrant face of a flower represents folly, which corresponds to wisdom; a bird whose beak is open mid-song signifies the impossibility of sharing because our unique identities are idiomatic and thus untranslatable. The book will inspire readers to pause, look, and consider. 135 color photos. (Feb.)