Computer Graphics by Melvin L Prueitt

Another junk shop find, this book dates from 1974. Strange how we once saw these stark, forbidding, monolinear landscapes as presages of a dystopian future. Now they seem more like the daubings of aboriginal songlines; the first flickerings of an intelligence in its nascent state.

Some of the work here is two dimensional pattern-making, or directed to a specific end, such as the attempt at an American flag shown above, but in the bulk of the book the overriding mood is one of absence; of the missing observer.

Many of the graphics are enclosed by a wireframe 'room', a construction of undefinable dread which calls to mind Giorgio de Chirico's pregnant landscapes, forever frozen at the point of breach.

Who is the shadowy observer? In the final analysis we know it to be ourselves, and our existential anguish comes from the knowledge that we can never step beyond this point, however far we recede. The great Guy Bourdin knew this, and explored the theme often in his photography. That he frequently did it under the guise of the fashion shoot shows that personal vision and commercial work need not be mutually exclusive.