Glen Rubsamen: Rhynchophorus ferrugineus

Text by Matthew Licht, Alexander Stille. Interview by Caroline Soyez-Petithomme. 80 pages / illustrated throughout. Glen Rubsamen’s latest book is an extension of his new body of photographic works. It revolves around the Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, better known as the Red Palm Weevil--an insect with Asiatic origins that has moved quickly westward over the last century, aided by technology and globalism. The weevil’s arrival in Southern Europe has devastated palm trees around the Mediterranean, a development Rubsamen describes as a case of “globalization eating colonialism,” as many of the affected palms were planted in the last century for touristic and political reasons. Rubsamen depicts a process by which romantic elements in the landscape change meaning as things disappear from the mix; it is an investigation of a subtractive aesthetic event. In addition to the photographs and collage endpapers designed by the artist, the book contains an explanatory text by Stille, fiction by Licht and an interview by Soyez-Petithomme. The book is blind stamped with limp cloth binding.

Featured image is reproduced from Glen Rubsamen: Rhynchophorus ferrugineus.