Redeeming Indigo

A few weeks back we were pointed to an article written by Michael Taussig called ‘Redeeming Indigo’. The article was published by Theory, Culture & Society ((SAGE, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore), Vol. 25(3): 1–15)  back in 2008 but after a little research I found out it was a chapter of his book ‘What Color Is The Sacred’ published in 2009 by The University of Chicago Press.
Attracted by the subject and his lively kind of storytelling I bought the book and started reading.
It is an amazing publication linking together ideas, thinkers and things; jumping into the history of color to form an interpretation on why color surrounds us, and how that changed in history. As the New York Times put it together “…blending fact and fiction, ethnographic observation, archival history, literary theory and memoir, his book read more like beatnik novels than somber analyses of other cultures.” A must-read for everybody who’s working in the creative industry! Get the book at Amazon or as an ebook at ebooks.com
Images by Kees Sprengers: Indigo dying of cotton in a Lantien Village, Laos.
Black and white image: Mid-ninenteenth-century Bengalis in an indigo vat.

“The intense deep blue of the ocean in stormy weather”

— Grant, 1866