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- © 2009 Best's Studio Inc DBA The Ansel Adams Galle...
- SHANNON SLAUGHTER
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- Robert Frank on NPR's All Things Considered
- Soul Rebel: An Intimate Portrait of Bob Marley
- FOUND & BOUND Self-assessments
- ART EVENT Response Papers
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- The Ethics of Photography
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February
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Monica Frantz
ReplyDeleteI think that my book accomplished its goals fairly well. Regardless of whether viewers of the book articulated my "thesis" verbatim, their comments reflected a confusion about meaning and a multiplicity of interpretation that is foundational to the book. I'm also aware that, because of the high concentration of text, the book requires more time to absorb and digest the information. And I'm not sure this amount of time or attention was available. Since hearing the comments in class, I've thought about whether I could have added a red pen so that the viewer could add their own "mark" to the book or if I should have trimmed down the amount of text in the book. But overall I am satisfied. I wanted to keep the crafted nature of the book obvious rather than creating pages that were shellacked or scanned to appear unified. The final photograph in the book surprised me by being particularly effective--viewers seemed to simultaneously understand the ambiguity and randomness, as well as the appearance of talking rather than text. The phrase "Grains of Sand" runs through the book by wasn't noticed as much. This could be because it was very small on two pages and there were so many pages. The book, in my mind, was successful. Even in its apparent lack of focus, it accomplishes it goal.
Found and Bound Reflection, Sarah Kramer:
ReplyDeleteBased on the responses of the class, I am happy to report that the theme I attempted to put forth through my book was evident. There were, however, many ideas which, whether for lack of necessary time or the words to articulate it, my classmates did not pick up on. The book was definitely about women, marriage, confinement, and struggle. I feel this was made especially evident to them because of the book’s overtly feminized appearance through the use of female fashion images, glitter, mirrors, and ribbons. The sense of entrapment and oppression was brought about by a combination of the headings I highlighted throughout the book and the cutting, ripping, and rather aggressive brushstrokes I incorporated into certain spreads. Though I am pleased that the class picked up on the underlying theme, I am a little disappointed that more of the narrative was not evident. Once again, this may be because we had many books to discuss and there just was not time to really pinpoint the details. It is also very possible, though, that I was simply not clear enough.
Perhaps the most detrimental short-coming on my part is that I did not clarify the relation between the two books. I should have placed dates or volume numbers on the binding to suggest that The Ground Nut Affair was in fact meant to be seen as a follow-up to Many Wives, Many Powers. This would have helped viewers to understand the cause and effect, transitional nature of the book as it exists in my head. I thought that by presenting them one on top of the other, viewers would understand that it was a sequence, but instead, they interpreted the second book as a pedestal for the first. I never would have thought that would happen, but I understand now that that is certainly what it could have looked like.
Another issue I have is that other than the consistent use of fashion magazines and select headings from the book, formally speaking, the book is a little everywhere. There is ribbon here and marker there and purple strikeout through a page of text with blue watercolor over top and gold glitter glue on the next page. It’s nuts! I guess I just wanted to get the project done in time, but I am disappointed that I did not manage to develop a more consistent style throughout the book. I think formal elements’ slight variation over the course of the book is a very subtle, yet powerful and effective means of expressing transition. A slow, back and forth, emotional transition is exactly what I meant to express. I got caught up in all of the possibilities and ended up with a comprehensible theme, but no sequential narrative. It is not horrible, but there is so much more to my interpretation of the book than I feel is actually evident to my viewers. It requires A LOT of reading into, I think.
Jen Yogi
ReplyDeleteHaving completed my first college art project (despite the whole mess of leaving important pieces of the book behind in DC this weekend...!), I can look back on it and see very clearly that there were successes and failures. On the one hand, I think that I wasn't off to a bad start, as far as the conceptual framework for the photobook was concerned. The book I chose, called "Profiles in Belief", gave brief summaries of the Holiness and Pentecostal Churches in the US and Canada - these churches are known for taking a distinct and fairly radical view of Christianity (i.e., speaking in tongues). The book, as it was originally, did in fact provide small profiles of these beliefs. I wanted to add another profile to this volume - one that directly contrasted to the small, intensely religious churches that were described in the book. To do this, I took a trip with a friend (from San Francisco, who just moved to DC a few weeks ago) to the National Cathedral. This DC landmark is more than an impressive spiritual site - it's also the place where presidents have their public funerals, where they visit during their inaugurations. It is open to the public, for mass as well as for sightseeing; the spiritual and the civic.
To display my photographs, I cut six small windows (about 30 pages deep) into the pages of the book. Though uniformly cut with an x-acto knife, the pages did not produce an even tear. Bits of words, fragments of pages, sneak into the edges of each photograph displayed. The intensely-spiritual, hyper-religious accounts of belief are meant to be juxtaposed with the intensely-personal, quasi-religious experience of my trip to the National Cathedral. The quotes I choose ("the spiritual & the civic", taken from the National Cathedral's own literature about itself as an institution; Jack Kerouac's quotation about boys and girls in America; Frederick Douglass' quotation about praying with his legs; and the excerpt from Philip Larkin's "High Windows" poem) were all meant to categorize the specific experiences that were being had within the photograph presented.
Ultimately, seeing the other photobooks and hearing the class' critiques and reviews made me realize that expressing these intentions could have been done more forcefully, while still maintaining the subtlety I was striving for. I initially decided to do as little physical destruction to the book as possible, outside of creating the windows through which to look at the photographs, because I wanted the experience of the book's original "profiles in belief" to remain intact for the reader. At first, I had added the quotations to the photographs themselves, rather than on the book's pages. However, I think that my project could have benefited from more alteration. If I could do my project over again, I would retain much of its conceptual structure, but I would have worked on how better to guide the reader through these juxtapositions in experience and belief, rather than rely on ambiguity to convey a subtler message.
Shannon Slaughter
ReplyDeleteMy photobook almost reached to the point that I wanted it to be but did not quite make it. I believe I asked too much of it, or myself. I wanted it to be interactive, which I did achieve but I wanted almost every page to be like that. After the class discussion, I realized that I was not trying to make a book. I was trying to make a toy that had a literary element to it. I feel as if this project pushed my imagination but possibly too far. What I learned the most from this project is to set limits. In other words, I should do my best but not over do it. This line can be very blurry but if I want to be happy with the upcoming projects I must figure out the distinction soon.
I am not trying to be extremely critical of the book because it did exceed in someway. People did enjoy looking through and I was very happy to make something that “readers” can be active in. It was also nice to know that my idea came through clearly. It was fun and hectic making the book. It was very time consuming but it was also meditative. Most of all, the book was excuse to take all the clutter that I never use and apply it to something. That included, tracing paper, magnets, sheet of tones, color pencils, unread magazines, watercolor paint, and much more. It was painful mutilating books at first but soon I stopped thinking about it.
In conclusion, I did expect a little more from my book but I do not think it’s a disaster. It’s a good example of keeping limits and be creative around those limits.
Dan B
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing some of my classmates' books I felt quite unimaginitive, and that maybe I hadn't followed the guidelines for the project. However, I got to feel comfortable in the darkroom again after a winter break, and created a photo album from my Mum's old, dirty negatives that she might really like. The contrast was unavoidably low due to fact i was using colour negatives and B&W procedures, and the negatives were so damaged and dirty that I couldn't restore them to a good condition. These factors did result in a feel to the prints that i quite liked. They appear old and battered, as if they have been discovered under a pile of boxes in my gran's attic -which is where I found the negatives. There weren't enough negatives to make fifteen full prints so some pictures are reproduced, zooming and focusing on parts of the image that intrigued me. I maanged to make 15 small prints, about the size of real family snaps. the roll of film was taken at my cousin's cristening I think. I got to see -and make- pictures that i would never have seen. The book I chose to contain the album was slightly random, but I liked the tint of the the cover and the subject of tea and breweries. The juxaposition of family photos and African company profit margins amused me. The chairman's statement quite often was a baby or a kitten.
RENESSA’S SELF-ASSESSMENT ON FOUND AND BOUND
ReplyDeleteHaving completed the Found and Bound project I learned that subtle changes can in actuality have a great effect. For this project I really wanted the book to in its appeal remain as unchanged as possible. As the reader perused the book I wanted by changes to be little surprises to the viewer. I chose to do simple but noticeable changes. My aim also was to maintain the flow of the book and the combination of text and imagery. To accomplish this I used four different paint colors, red, yellow, orange, and blue, which I chose because of the symbolic meaning that has been attached to them in our society. I also wrote poetry to reflect either how I felt looking at a particular image or what I saw in that particular image. The last thing I did was to take photographs and juxtapose them with images that had similar content. I wanted to interject some of my eye and ideas into the book but in a subtle and unobtrusive way.
I think that goal of my project was accomplished, not only did I create a book that basically in its appearance from the outside looks unchanged by my hand but inside the 'surprises' that I included all reflected some aspect of my opinion and voice, and personal reflection. After reading through the comments of my fellow classmates it also appears that they were able to grasp the motives of my book to.
Reflecting on this project I really wanted to keep the book as unchanged as possible because the way that the author presented his information with both text and imagery really appealed to me. I was really captured by the natural and real images that he chose to display the culture in West Africa. I chose the images that I did because I wanted to show that no matter where you are there are always similarities in cultures, whether it be in structures or in people. This idea was similar to why I chose to write poetry. I wanted to relay to the viewer that there are more similarities in cultures than differences, which are in some cases only surface differences.
Rachel Reckling
ReplyDeleteProf. Colby
Studio Art
Project 1 Assessment
Overall, I think that everyone in the class got the point of my Found and Bound Photobook. I think that I was able to show anger in a creative way. At first I just wanted each page to focus on things that make me personally angry. For example, maybe page one would be about betrayal, page two would be about liars etc. Then I thought, what if I took things that usually make people happy and turn them into angry statements. I think that idea worked better because it gave more meaning to my book. I think that if I had stuck with my original idea, my book would be too cliché. I wanted something different. Although I think that my point got across well, I’m not sure that everyone understood that was trying to show that just because you are happy on the outside, it doesn’t mean that you are actually happy. I think that most people thought that I was just making contradictions between happiness and anger. Although that was some of what my book was about, I was really trying to make happiness dark. I hope that at least some people within the class understood that.
If I had to change something about my book I think that I would’ve incorporated more of my own drawings. I had so many ideas and I felt that I had to limit myself. I should’ve just went for it. I would’ve tried to draw two hands holding each other with the caption: “Anger never lets go” but I was not sure if I could draw very well or if that statement was good enough. I think that I would have also drawn my own portrait at the end but I chose to put a photograph of myself to balance all of the other photos within the book.
In the end I liked my book a lot. With minor changes maybe it would’ve been better but I think that I was able to get my point across pretty well.
Glencora
ReplyDeleteThe execution of my book was simple in practice, basic cutting and pasting, but the outcome, I found to be thought provoking. I began with two books, one which documented the lives of the indigenous people living in Otovalo Valley in South America and another which recounted the lives of a fictitious, domestic, French family. My goal was to converge the two disparate lifestyles into one. Could they cohabit?
I was surprised how easily the French figures blended in with their foreign surroundings. It seemed peculiar that bold and bright caricatures could complement the black and white photographs, instead of being distracting. I attribute this partially to how long I spent pairing specific figures with specific pictures, placing them logically so that they became a part of their surroundings and involved in action occurring, rather than idle observers. In this element I think I was successful.
The meaning that I had initially intended to be derived from the book was one of contrast. The images and their lifestyles were dissimilar and I was hoping an interesting dynamic would emerge. However, as I continued to assemble the book, I felt as though I was villainizing the children. The children, by our standards, were participating in normal healthy childhood activities and chores, whether they were rollerblading, making funny faces or helping to serve dinner. None of these are activities I would discourage a child form doing in the appropriate situation. Yet, it seemed as though the French children were taking “the easy way out” or were idle and oblivious in the face of hard work and bad fortune. Clearly, they came out as the spoiled, carefree ones, while the indigenous children were seen as much more hardworking and active in community welfare. So not only does it show how different our lifestyles are, but both how spoiled and charmed our lives are. I came to conclude one is not better than the other just unalike.
I did have a chance to read one of the comments a group had written in response to the viewing of my book. They mentioned a theme of white dominance. This was not a response I had expected. I understand how they arrived at that conclusion since I am literally imposing white western figures onto a non-western world. Furthermore, one of the captions particularly alluded to this theme, in which it spoke of the indigenous tilling the fields for their white, wealthy patrons, it was the valley of the white man. I chose an image of an extremely looking Aryan child peering over the mountain, almost like a sun, to compliment this picture. Also I have a police officer directing pedestrian traffic. These could have served as stronger statements than I intended. Aside from this image, I cannot recall others that show that the western culture actually in charge of what is going on, only participating in it. I prefer to think of the two distinct cultures living in some kind of bizarre symbiotic relationship.
To improve this book I would fix technical errors, I wish the book was a little less messy. It doesn’t look as polished as I would like and I think that detracts from continuity of the contrasting. Furthermore, I would like it to have a stronger storyline about how the two societies interact, since I have a limited number of images, perhaps it would be more conducive to have text of some sort. Or if I did have a wider variety of image choice, perhaps then I could create a stronger story line outside of this is how I live, this is how you live. Ultimately, I am pleased with the final product.
Megan Kelly
ReplyDeleteI feel that overall my project was successful. Originally, I wanted to create a mash-up of children’s stories, based on the story “Where the Wild Things Are.” I was not able to do this however, because I did not get the book in the mail until the weekend before the project was due, after I had started on a different idea (which I like much better).
The object of my project was to pervert a children’s book, expressing childhood as a phase which we all grow out of due to life experiences. I added humor to this by using the subcategories of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, taking common childhood images and altering them to fit them into these categories.
In these different categories, I set the dividing pages up by photo shopping them, making them stand out from the rest of the pages on which I copy and pasted images and text. I wanted these pages to stand out from the rest so that the readers could see that they were categories of the book. Following each of these pages, I used nursery rhymes that I felt related to that different section. The meanings behind these nursery rhymes in the case of the “Sex” and “Drugs” sections were perverted, adding to the general theme of growing up… stressing how meanings behind so many things that were once familiar to us change over the years in which we grow up. This being said, and as was stated in class, it was de-familiarizing the familiar and giving a new view, or calling to attention a new view that one has developed.
The class seemed to get my project pretty well. If anything, they found more meaning behind it, which I felt enhanced my project even more. Everyone understood that I was using sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll to emphasize growing up. A couple things that no one really commented on were the nursery rhymes that were used and how they relate to the idea of perverting childhood books, but this may just be due to us not having too much time to review each book. To reflect on that for one moment, for instance, the opening rhyme was about “doing what is right” and then it leads to a little girl claiming “I’m no longer a baby!” The closing poem, with the moon also takes us a bit back to the innocence of childhood, as it bids us to bed, but now, going to bed may have an entirely new meaning in our adult lives. The moon is also a bit creepy looking.
I definitely feel that this project was a success. I liked to have the opportunity to take the innocence out of childhood stories which we all have read and loved. It was a bit hard cutting up Dr. Seuss’ book, but I feel that it was well worth it. This was a very fun project, and I enjoyed exploring what can be done with books other than reading them (which seems a bit boring now, ha!).
For my project I hoped to mock the idea of self-help books. With the overwhelming amount of advice that's out there, it's silly that so many people have so much to say about how you should live your life. Even sillier is that people take this advice. Why the hell is there such a market for this? Why do we always feel the need to change ourselves? To think that a stranger - just because they have a Ph.D. in who knows what - could have any authority on how you should live your life is ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteTo illustrate my point, I complied the most outlandish advice I could find. I found advice that was based on outdated gender views, lists of what one can and cannot eat, exercises one should do and should not do, and diagrams on what one's life should be like. I wanted to compile this as if it were an actual self-help book, but did not want to hide the fact that this was a silly book not to be taken seriously.
Although I used pages from found books – I hoped to have a voice in the matter. To do this, I created the book jacket with made-up quotes and I scanned the pages in so that it had a page-on-top-of-a-page look. I blacked out what was not relevant and left in the most ridiculous statements I could find. I also created author bios, indicating that the authors did not exactly “have it made” and know how to conduct their own lives – much less your's. I also started with the end to play with the format of the book, but to also let the viewer know that they should not even start to get caught up in this bullshit.
I think I illustrated my point pretty well, and I'm happy with how my project came out. I think the class understood it for the most part – that it was a hodge podge of ridiculous advice meant to be a little ironic and “tongue and cheek.” I liked the interpretation that it was ridiculing those who looked for a “cheap fix” to happiness, though I meant to be more general than that. Where are you getting your advice, and why eat it up blindly when it could be from someone who was homeless for 4 years and then happened to get published?
The only thing I regret is that the author bios were not as prominent. This part of any book is often overlooked, though, I feel that it was an important part of mine, as I hoped to not only mock the available advice, but the fact that this advice could have been coming from anywhere. However, I'm not sure there is a way I could change that using the format that I did. I guess it's just something that the reader has to find..
Another thing I liked was that the class got confused about where the book started, as my first page was “The End.” Although it's logical that one would respond this way, I did not anticipate it. This goes along with the theme of bad advice and a lack of seriousness. It's like it doesn't even matter if you open the book or not because it's full of crap anyway.
Jordan Grant
ReplyDeleteDoesn’t everybody like rocks?
At the beginning of this project, impressed by the zeal of my classmates, I tore a stack of “found” books into pieces: photos from Africa stacked into one pile, geology maps into another, odd bits of verse in still another. The concept of my project - rocks existing alone vs. rocks shaped and used by humans- sprung wholesale out of these original piles.
I set out to create a tight, focused book that tried to play with this rock v. human theme. Working on the project was a pleasure. Since it was our first book of the semester, I decided to approach the book from a “summer-camp craft” angle – more glue and paper than chemicals and digital printers. As a result, I feel much more comfortable in the art spaces of Monty, an exacto-knife in my hands. Frightening, huh? Yes, but it’s precisely where I want to be as the semester starts rolling.
After our time in class, I was pleased by my book’s small successes. The class easily seized upon the underlying theme of the book, which relieved some of my fears. Looking back, I almost wish that the book was a less explicit with its theme; a more mysterious concept would have given readers the space needed to formulate their own ideas.
On a formal level, the project succeeded on many fronts. Several people enjoyed how the “human” half of the book forced readers to literally turn the book, switching from a vertical to a horizontal perspective. Other approved of how the solitary, upright images on the covers –a natural stone pillar on one side, a carved feminine figure- hinted at the book’s underlying battle between humans and rocks. (One even pointed out how one image was inherently phallic while the other celebrated the pregnant female form – a dichotomy that even I missed. Perhaps the book’s theme had a bit more play than I first believed). As I was constructing the project, my greatest fear was that the original text of my book would bleed through the background and images I had pasted over it. Fortunately, no one in the class mentioned this problem.
For a final thought, I believe I made two great missteps with this project. First, the rock I attached to the book, while interesting in concept (making the book’s theme tangible), never worked as well as I liked. My ignorance of knot-tying led to an overall flimsy design, and I worry that the rock gave the whole book an almost “overworked” feel – more kitsch than crafty. Secondly, I feel that, on some level, I was disingenuous towards the book I selected. While others in our class manipulated an existing text, often very subtly, to brilliant ends, I outrightly mutilated my “found” book, turning it into little more than a canvas. If I work with “found” books again, I hope to show a little more restraint and, dare I say it, respect.
After being able to read through the other books and see the other ideas and how my classmates presented their books and the topic in a very orderly way i started to wonder if picking the format i did was the best idea, mainly cause it caused confusion and there appeared to be a loss of topic. Even though that was the point looking back i wish i had of picked three books for the inside that were a little more child aged. instead of having an african, native american and 300 level biology book i should have looked harder to find simply language arts book, history or social studies and basic math or algebra. I feel like if i had of thought about that before hand the book wouldn't have come across as something serious or having any kind of a hidden meaning or important point. Second i would have liked to have been able to put more into the books when it comes to destruction from a kids point of view. I would have liked to have asked a few kids other than my cousins who just tear the books...not helpful. Other than that i am very pleased at the way the book turned out with the three books under one cover and the black acrylic added a very nice texture to the inside of the book cover that seemed at first to be boring and took possible pizzazz away from the over all look. Also it took some serious binding switching but i am glad i ended up moving the inside of the books i wanted to the colorful books covers that matched the green outer cover better. overall i really like how the project turned out and like the overall look and ridiculousness involved in the inside of the three inner books.
ReplyDeleteRowan Copley
ReplyDeleteI made the book that was about Obama.
On the day we turned in our books, I realized that mine stood out from all the others because of its shoddy implementation. Since I hadn't been able to print out the pages until the morning the books were due. I didn't have time to glue the pages in, of course, so I decided that stapling them in was the only alternative. This meant that there was rather a disjunct between the book I had designed and what the book looked like in its manifestation. I mean, it feels like a book... a heavy tome at that. But it feels a little tacky. I kind of wish I had come up with a better way of integrating the pages I had created with the book. Or maybe it was a mistake to completely design my own book for this project, which was admittedly more about changing our conceptions about what a book can be rather than how to make one. But what the hell, I felt like doing this project. You only live once.
I liked laying out this book a lot. I followed politics obsessively during the election, and enjoy reading news articles online. So I naturally chose a close study of Obama, the figure that everyone in the world loves. I got the idea of making it a propaganda piece for Antichrist theorists by having a conversation over coffee with someone who actually seems to believe this. I decided to see what the internet had to say about this, and of course it had rather a lot to say about it because the internet lets anyone post whatever shit they want while providing anonymity. But my purpose with this book was to be much more clever than these people and try to deceive the reader, at least at first, as to the book's true intentions. I really have no idea as to whether this made sense to other people.
But basically what I am illustrating is a basic photographic concept - that while what you see you think is an unadulterated snapshot, it is in fact carefully selected from what was available. Same with what I did - I carefully pruned words and photos I found on the internet and laid them out next to each other to imply something insidious.
While I am rather proud of most of the layout of my book, its physical realization is far less impressive. So it goes.
Found and Bound Assessment – Rachel Mendy
ReplyDeleteThe outcome of my book and what I initially wanted were two different things. Although my book was not selected during the class discussion, I was able to see the group comments made about it, and was satisfied with the reviews I received.
The book entails various art forms and half way through, it had to be flipped and started from the other side. I used a lot of images, paint and other forms of artistic things. I enjoyed making the book but however it required a lot of time in it especially the folding and gluing of the pages. Sadly the only thing I was unable to achieve was the pop up images I wanted to add for the sculpture and architecture sections. I also wanted to cover the book in a fabric with prints/stamps on them.
However the end result was a fun, bright and colorful book. I wished it was more playful because that is what I believe art to be. I guess that’s why there is always next time. I have decided to make another in my leisure time just because I am fascinated by this idea and how there is hardly any limitations to it.
Jenny Metz
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I was not able to share my book with the class, and thus I did not see how a viewer would respond to the book and its themes. I took a more subtle approach with my book, only adding words, phrases and simple marks, and subtracting only a few words. I felt that although my book may not have been as showy as others may have been, I feel that a new reader would definitely be influenced by how the previous “reader” placed a part of themselves into the book.
This book was inspired a random remark in another book I found: “I can question nothing in anyone.” This phrase is repeated throughout my book and I think it makes an impactful statement no matter how absurd, random, or thoughtful the highlighting of the text or notes in the margins may be, you can’t judge anyone. The goal of my book was to carry this statement through my book without making it overly complex, and I believe I accomplished that. Some additions to the book were completely random, others were more thought out.
I didn’t want to guide the reader through the book in a particular way; part of what makes books unique is that everyone approaches them differently. I wanted to alter the book just enough to impact how the reader viewed the material of the book, but in a way, I wanted the reader’s focus to remain on the book as a whole, not just parts thrown together. This concept was a challenge, especially without another person viewing the book.
It is difficult to write a self assessment without having my piece critiqued by the class. I missed valuable insight about how I could have possibly improved my book, which is an immense challenge for an artist when he has to stand back and take the role of an outsider to critique his piece. I believe to make my book better, there were some parts I could have left out of the book and still had an impact, such as the words I removed with an X-acto knife and pasted to a different part of the page. I feel like I also could have added more notes to the margins, possibly to make the viewer feel like the artist/previous reader had a stronger voice.
Found & Bound: Self Assessment
ReplyDeleteThis assignment has played an important role in in the past several weeks of my college career. Though I never intended to spend as much time on this project as I ultimately did, several milestones in the creative process revealed how manual bookmaking demands great investment, and as a result I learned the real value of a finished book.
I believe that my progress in this project was largely determined by the momentum gained while brainstorming and rummaging through the used books at the SMCM library. The crowded, seemingly frantic process of opening banker's boxes and selecting free books was in fact very healthy in opening my mind, and resulted in a much better collection of material than what would have resulted from a search for second-generation online images.
While I'd hate to equate used book perusal with searching through a junkyard, one interchange between Colby and me asserted my attitude and approach toward the rest of the project: Me: "It's wild that we're taking what could have been someone's life work and tearing it apart". Colby: "Welcome to the post-modern age".
Knowing that I would harm no one through my brutalization of perfectly decent, but otherwise unwanted books, I took my small collection of Afrocentric books across the snow to my room, where I processed them like vegetables: I peeled off the outer layer, revealing that some books were full of fresh material, while others seemed to be rotting with age. As I destroyed layers of old glue in the spine of every book, I discovered how books were put together, and broke down the content to individual pages. Without this violent initial step, I would have never produced my final book in the same way.
Nearly eight hours at a paper cutter familiarized me with what each page contained, and as cut and re-cut each image, I began a formal decomposition of a pile of book debris. Deciding on what cover would ultimately contain my pages, I had my parameters set, and I proceed to cut and order my images into several sets of sizes and formal qualities.
No book that I found had strong enough pages to support the massive amount of gluing and varnishing that I planned to execute, so I decided to create entirely new pages. This not only allowed me to organize the content of my book, but also forced me to decide the physicality of my finished product. By this point, I had already laundered the fabric cover of my book, ironed out the cardboard backing, reattached the two with dry-mount tissue, and stenciled the African continent on the front and rear. When the time came to adhere my precisely cut images to the pages I created, my cover was waiting patiently for its new contents.
As all forty 9"x7" folded pages dried after being varnish-soaked, I realized that my pages would explode from the small cover that I had so painstakingly recreated. This was a fact that I learned to accept, and finally appreciate. My last step before binding was to coat the fabric of my cover with some Burt's Bees hand salve, which contained enough natural oils to produce a very travelled and worn effect on a piece of fabric that I had both washed and dried.
My only regret in the end was not sewing the pages together, as I initially considered doing. This book was ultimately bound by blasting inch-long staples through the edge of the pages with a pneumatic staple gun. Stiffening the outer edge of the book quite dramatically, this did not help the pages flip any easier, but I have come to accept this physical limitation.
I hope everyone enjoyed seeing my book, and I look forward to taking photos for our upcoming projects.
I am disappointed in my book, and in myself. I had an idea in my head that I don't think was able to be portrayed in the setting I had given myself. I wanted to show the progression of science both in the natural world and in the study of the natural world. On one side of the book I had a basic evolutionary time scale (bacteria, plants, birds, mammals). If the book was flipped over and set up "backwards" the viewer would see the advances in technology especially in relationship with science.
ReplyDeleteI know that the images were in order however I am not sure the book I chose was the most appropriate setting. I liked the cover of the small green book and I'm afraid that my love of the cover prevented me from fully expanding on the text portion of the book. I was limited in text due to the actual book.
I see more problems in my project than I see values. I am not happy with the end result and if I could do the whole project over again I would, most likely starting from scratch.