There is a moment that strikes me in Jarrett Earnest’s slight but mighty book Valid Until Sunset—a book of sixty images taken with Earnest’s Fuji Instax mini camera, images that are paired on facing pages with spare, meticulous prose of 250 words each.
I first came to this book with the intention of simply lifting everything that I found to be authentically Smithian. I realize now that would be as impossible as separating Smith’s interests from each other, as if I could lift the occult instances from the film work, or his collections, etc. Indeed, there seems to me a definitive magical quality in all his doings, even the most scholarly. His awareness of the larger significance of images and patterns and their historical appearance (and ahistorical entitlements), creates significance in the least of his actions.
The Republic of Fiume, AKA Free State of Fiume, AKA Last of the Pirate Utopias. Sept 1919 - December 1920 (Currently the city of Rijeka, Croatia). Led b.