The Library is Open 12: Into the Quiet and the Light

For the twelfth installment of The Library is Open, Virginia Hanusik discusses her new book Into the Quiet and the Light (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2024) in conversation with CBAC editors Joanna Joseph, Isabelle Kirkham-Lewitt, and Meriam Soltan.

Virginia Hanusik is an artist whose work explores the relationships between landscape, culture, and the built environment. Her projects have been exhibited internationally and supported by the Graham Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Pulitzer Center, and the Mellon Foundation, among others. She writes about landscape representation, extraction, and the visual narratives of climate change, and has been featured in the New Yorker, the Oxford American, the British Journal of Photography, and National Geographic. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water—and the history of controlling it—is omnipresent. Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana glimpses the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe and the fallout of the fossil fuel industry—past, present, and future. The book sustains our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Unfolding alongside and in dialogue with Hanusik’s photographs, these reflections soberly and hopefully populate images of South Louisiana’s built and natural environments, opening up multiple pathways that defy singularity and complicate the disaster-oriented imagery often associated with the region and its people. In staging these meditations on water, life, and land loss, this book invites readers to join both Hanusik and the contributors in reading multiplicity into South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes. With texts from Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

Learn more about Into the Quiet and the Light.

The Library is Open is a lunchtime series featuring recently published works and their authors, curated by Bart-Jan Polman, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programming and Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia GSAPP. Hosted in a central location in Avery Hall, the LiO series honors GSAPP’s historical connection to Avery Library, the world’s largest Architecture library.**

Columbia University campus access is restricted to Columbia affiliates (with a valid CUID) and to pre-approved guests. To attend an event at GSAPP, please register through the link below at least two business days in advance of the event to request campus access and bring your ID. Learn more about the current Columbia campus access.

Register here to attend the Library is Open 12