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Design Category
Book design, 2002
Design firm
MIT Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Collection
(2003) 50 Books/50 Covers of 2002
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Although this collection of Douglas Crimp’s eloquent writings on the politics of HIV and AIDS contains mostly essays from the late ’80s and early ’90s, the goal was for the book to have a fresh and sensitive look. The text was designed with classic simplicity as a showcase for the sometimes provocative imagery. The Felix Gonzales-Torres installation piece for the cover perfectly captured the author’s message: that the gradually waning militant response to the AIDS epidemic is a symptom of Freudian “melancholia” that reveals a dangerous identification on the part of gays with a moralistic homophobia still prevalent in wider society.