by Ben Lerner
First published 2023
Daniel Slater teaches digital photography at UCLA, obsessively documenting urban landscapes through increasingly invasive camera technologies. When a student's experimental project reveals unexpected connections between street cameras, municipal networks, and private surveillance systems, Daniel becomes entangled in a complex web of technological observation. His own photographs—meticulously composed street scenes and architectural studies—begin to attract unusual attention from unknown observers. As boundaries between documentation and intrusion blur, Daniel must navigate escalating tensions between personal artistic vision and the pervasive digital gaze that surrounds contemporary urban life. What begins as academic curiosity transforms into a high-stakes exploration of visibility, privacy, and technological control.
Genres: fiction, art, contemporary, 21st-century, photography, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: high-stakes, unreliable-narrator
Setting: UCLA, Urban
Period: Contemporary
128 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux