Book of the day > Mona Kuhn: She Disappeared Into Complete Silence. Published by Steidl. “Acclaimed for her intimate nudes, Mona Kuhn takes a new direction into abstraction in her latest publication, “She Disappeared Into Complete Silence”. Photographed at a golden modernist structure on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, architectural lines, light reflections and a single figure have been carefully balanced against the backdrop of the California desert. The human figure in these images - Kuhn’s friend and collaborator Jacintha - emerges like a surrealist mirage, fragmented and indistinct, at times submerged in shadows or overexposed. The building’s facades of glass and mirrors serve as optical planes, an extension of the artist’s camera and lens. Light is split into refracting colors, desert vegetation grows sideways, inside is outside and outside in. Kuhn pushes a certain disorienting effect by introducing metallic foils as an additional surface, at times producing purely abstract results. The work marks Kuhn’s increasing use of techniques that appear to merge the figure, abstraction and landscape into one."