Tangentially Parenthetical is an anti-thematic compilation of photographs from Ed Templeton’s vast back stock of street photography—curated, arranged, and then rearranged by the man himself. A slight jump-off from his most recent book of photos (Wayward Cognitions, 2014), Tangentially Parenthetical picks up where Templeton’s previous collection ended. By combining the intimate, the accidental, and the unconnected into one linear piece of work, he tells hundreds of new stories through the thoughtful arrangement of semi-related, yet completely unfastened imagery.
“I’m out there shooting photos all the time that don’t necessarily fall under any theme other than general life,” says Templeton, “which is a lame title for a book.” So with a wink to the ridiculous, sandwiched between a cover of patterned parentheses, and with an afterword built from his own stream-of-consciousness story telling, Templeton delivers a visual mountain from an archive of stunning molehills—gathered at home, shuffled by hand, and laid out with a dueling sense of wonder and of humor.