A taxonomy we didn't know we needed for identifying and cataloging stray shopping carts by artist and photographer Julian Montague. Abandoned shopping carts are everywhere, and yet we know so little about them. Where do they come from? Why are they there? Their complexity and history baffle even the most careful urban explorer. &nbsp; Thankfully, artist Julian Montague has created a comprehensive and well-documented taxonomy with The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America. Spanning thirty-three categories from damaged, fragment, and plow crush to plaza drift and bus stop discard, it is a tonic for times defined increasingly by rhetoric and media and less by the plain objects and facts of the real world. Montague's incomparable documentation of this common feature of the urban landscape helps us see the natural and man-made worlds--and perhaps even ourselves--anew. &nbsp; First published in 2006 to great perplexity and acclaim alike, Montague's book now appears in refreshed and expanded form. Told in an exceedingly dry voice, with full-color illustrations and photographs throughout, it is both rigorous and absurd, offering a strangely compelling vision of how we approach, classify, and understand the environments around us. A new afterword sheds light on the origins of the project. &nbsp;

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

Arts & Photography

Montague, Julian

Graphic Design

University of Chicago Press

A must-have for anyone with a passion for shopping carts and a love of the great outdoors. In The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America author Julian Montague has created an elaborate classification system of abandoned shopping carts, accompanied by photographic documentation of actual stray cart sightings. These sightings include bucolically littered locations such as the Niagara River Gorge (where many a cart has been pushed to its untimely death) and mundane settings that look suspiciously like a suburb near you. Working in the naturalist's tradition, the photographs depict the diversity of the phenomenon and carry a surprising emotional charge; readers inevitably begin to see these carts as human, at times poignant in their abandoned, decrepit state, hilariously incapacitated, or ingeniously co-opted. The result is at once rigorous and absurd, enabling the layperson to identify and classify their own cart spottings based on the situation in which they were found.

Individual Artists

Abrams Image

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Montague, Julian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Montague, Julian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Montague, Julian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification