Stocks & Bonds -- Artist Book by Maureen Cummins

Stocks & Bonds, Artist Book by Maureen Cummins

Stocks and Bonds 2000 Eerily foreshadowing the Abu Ghraib scandal that was to come, the book Stocks and Bonds explores the relationship in Western civilization between profits and pain, the "business" of torture. Inspired by the fact that the phrase "stocks and bonds" also refers to, respectively, a medieval punishment and a physical form of restraint, the artist paired images of twenty-seven instruments of torture or restraint—from thumbscrews used by the East India Company to modern implements such as the straitjacket and electric chair-—with text describing their employment to enforce power and produce profits. The underlying printed and collaged elements are original stock tickets and trading records kept by the Manhattan Company, an early nineteenth-century stock brokerage firm.