While I had numerous ideas for my book through the semester, I ended up scaling back my concept (for now) and decided to do something more unusual and experimental– a portfolio of images in the form of an accordion fold book. I chose this form as I wanted to mimic the way people viewed photographs in the past– this includes the clear wallet foldout that everyone would keep snapshots in before the digital age AND the souvenir picture postcard folder that includes 10-15 connected postcards that fold out of a cardboard folder.

To create my 20-image accordion book I resized my images to 5 x 7 and included a half inch border of white around each image. I put them all together on a 115-inch long strip in Photoshop and printed them on a roll of Epson matte paper. The strip didn’t take long to print, under an hour for the entire book.

The printing and setup were relatively quick and straightforward, the most difficult part was the actual folding of the strip. As it was so long it was cumbersome and I had to do it all by hand using a bone folder and two metal rulers. I also had to be extremely exact with measuring as if I got even a 1/10th of an inch off it would throw the whole book off. After a lot of frustration with my first strip of photos I ended up printing a second strip and had my classmate, Brandon, walk me through the best method to fold the paper. After his mini tutorial I managed to fold the second strip into a book. For class I presented it in a sky blue paper pocket/pouch but in the future I’d like to make a matching 3-D envelope or box and to experiment with its presentation (perhaps hanging it on the wall and letting it cascade to the floor).

It’s definitely a different way to approach the idea of a book or a portfolio, I’m thinking about taking my accordion book with me on a trip to L.A. to show to gallery owners as it makes for a handy, portable way to show many of my images at once.

It can be difficult to ‘view’ books online and to share the experience through the Internet as books are usually dependent on the physical turn of the page and are laid out in spreads. The photo book blog, 5b4 has been able to communicate effectively by scanning spreads of each book or magazine and posting them online. Amazon also now has a preview feature that’s a virtual tour of the publication that often includes the front and back cover, the index, even a chapter that’s ledgible enough to read.

I’m including two magazines, Esopus and Found Magazine, in my selection as they have been treated more like a book in terms of the quality of the publishing, the length and presentation (as opposed to ‘throwaway’ weekly magazines). They both incorporate a wide range of materials that include vernacular photographs, found letters and scrapbook pages and artist projects. While presented in a traditional format (ie the form of the magazine) they get away from the basic image/text layout and incorporate collage, pull-out pages and spreads that mimic the form of the art.

The third is a photo book from a photographer I’ve long admired– Stephen Shore’s “American Surfaces.” I was particularly intrigued by the imaginative packaging that takes the form of a Kodak film sleeve and the way he arranges the photographs on the page in grids.

My high school best friend, Jade, and I always joked that we would pick up any book that incorporated pastel colors, something shiny or whimsical illustrations on its cover. Of course these were ‘beach reads’ or ‘chick lit’– not serious literature but it was the first time I took notice of how publishers targeted their audiences through their cover design.

When designing my own book it’s hard to know how much to show– to either go minimal and more abstract (like a plain black cover with just the title) or to give all the attention to a single photograph. I also want to incorporate a vintage element so I’ve considered gutting an old scrapbook and just using the front and back covers with my own content inbetween. This obviously would be a unique, one of a kind object so I’d either have to find more scrapbooks and alter the size of my content accordingly OR scan the front and back covers to make a more commercial Blurb-style book.

In my slideshow I included a book from my teen years– Harry Potter, I’ve always admired the illustrations and before the moves it was the only visuals we had of the characters. Jessica Hefland’s book “Scrapbooks: An American History” incorporates scans of actual scrapbooks and materials from these historic treasuries so could be an example of how I use vintage material in my own project. Adam Bartos also matched his cover to his content by making his cover look like a tattered cover you might find at a yard sale– the topic of his project. Martin Parr has increasingly appropriated kitsch into the presentation of his own materials– like the holographic cover of his book “Mexico.” Eggleston’s “Guide” has one of the most iconic covers in the photo book world and he just uses one image paired with the title in a unique font.

While gathering covers I also came across a video on Amazon of Jessica Hefland paging through the actual scrapbooks that she scanned and wrote about,here is a link for viewing it on Amazon.

FORGET ME NOT STATEMENT

When we die, what happens to our most prized possessions? In the case of an estate sale, a home and its contents, an entire life, is for sale. Anyone can rifle through what once were private spaces—the bedroom closet, the medicine cabinet; even the underwear drawer—nothing is sacred.

An estate sale is a space in transition—no longer inhabited but not yet disassembled and abandoned. Some of the homes are destined to be sold, gutted and remodeled; while others will be pulled down to make room for condos, removing all evidence of what was once there. The setting for this project ranges from turn-of-the-century brownstones to 1950s bungalows, but they housed a generation that was less transitory. Unlike today, where on average families move at least every 10 years, individuals of this era spent their entire adult lives in one home.

There’s a sense of permanence to the spaces I photograph, many of their previous owners were first-time home buyers, who took pride in where they lived. In my exploration of the basements and attics of homes across Chicago and its suburbs, I’ve discovered interiors that have remained unchanged for decades; here several generations entertained at Tiki bars, wallpapered the ceiling of their bathrooms and selected kitchen design schemes of orange and avocado green. The experience of these settings are mediated through memory—of childhood or visits to grandma’s—and through pop culture, reruns of T.V. shows like I Love Lucy and The Brady Bunch. Domestic settings, unlike idealized Hollywood sets that never age, experience the ravages of day-to-day life. The worn surfaces and fading of the once vibrant colors reference the aging of the generation and allude to a presence now absent from these rooms.

At estate sales, treasure seekers encounter once-beloved personal and utilitarian objects that lose their original meaning when stripped of their context. Through my arrangement of the spaces and possessions found in each home, I counteract the impersonal nature of an estate sale and the way it distances us from death. Attention is paid to physical markings of the environment and the accumulation and age of items to help construct a past life and allude to the passage of time. As members of this generation pass away, their personal history becomes commodified; but this project counteracts the disposability of an accumulated life by prolonging the existence of the domestic environment and the items it contains.

BOOK PROJECT STATEMENT

For the past two years I’ve been working on my visual thesis project, “Forget Me Not” that focuses on the interior spaces and environments I find while attending estate sales in the Chicago area. From the start of this project I’d envisioned the end result as a book that would create a narrative structure for my photographs. The book will provide a means of building an environment for my own photographs through the inclusion of family snapshots, written material like letters and journals and words and images from ephemera purchased at the sales like cookbooks, decorating guides and travel brochures that serve as a primary source and voice of the era that links the past to the present. A book also ensures permanence, the evershifting spaces I photograph that are now gone will have the chance to live on as a tangible presence.

IMAGES

More images from my “Forget Me Not” project can be seen online at my website: http://www.leilaniwertens.com Unfortunately I don’t have all the found material/slides scanned yet but will post samples of those to the blog soon.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
I’ll use a flatbed scanner to digitize the physical materials collected from the estate sales (ie vernacular photographs, dried flowers, scrapbook pages).  I hope to produce a limited edition artist series of the book and also a more commercial, digital version—for the limited edition I’ll use basic binding techniques and materials like chipboard, glue and thread to create an editioned version of the book. The digitally produced book will be similar in content but will be bound by an on-demand publisher and have a different cover than the limited edition.

Since I’m attempting to incorporate various elements– my own images, found imagery/ephemera and text the end result will not be one large book but several small books that will be united in their size, materials used and overall aesthetic. They will all fit into one larger box/sleeve that will encase them all. For now I envision 3 or 4 of these smaller books (depending on how long it takes to create each one) that will each represent one story/voice/a particular estate sale. I’m still struggling with where my own photographs come into the process– whether they should be separated into one of the small books or integrated into the 3 books. If I separated my photo project into its own book I’d make a different aesthetic choice with the cover/fonts/colours used to differentiate it from the ‘source material’ and to emphasize the difference in past vs present.

[One iteration of a text and image experiment using the same photograph. The two other versions are below]

As both a photographer and a writer I thought I’d be easy for me to combine the two, however, over the years I’ve separated the two so much in my head that it’s actually difficult to find an effective way to balance text and image without one overwhelming the other. In a gallery situation, especially if the images are large, I’m compelled to look at the photos/paintings/sculptures first and the text information last. When in book form I do the opposite, read the text then ‘read’ the image afterwards which at least for me stems from my experience of reading books as a child when an illustration or two would pepper the dense text of a story.

The real breakthrough comes when we recognize text as a visual element rather than just a narrative device. We’re used to text ‘telling’ us something but what if it’s not in our native language? For me it’s easier to accept the artistry and visual value of a word written in Japanese than it is to study the visual elements of an English word. After watching Helvetica I’ve become more aware of typefaces and fonts, serifs and sans serifs and how and when to use them. The evolution of taste chart below, created by Jessica Hische, is an excellent example of how we relate to type as we age (and hopefully become more savvy).

Truly the most difficult thing for me is to be more conscious of the visual form of the letter, I’m envious of graphic designers that can think of the “text as picture,” something that I still struggle with today. I believe one of the most difficult tasks is to create a poster, logo, business card, etc. using only words without images. An example would be the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial by Maya Lin. On a more light hearted note is the Art History Poster below that succinctly reduces an artist and his or her oeuvre into three words.

This week’s readings, “Picture Relationships” and “Structure and Composition” discussed the conceptual and practical framework of what goes into a visual book. While I’ve had a sustained and prolonged exposure to books my whole life, and have previously taken a text & image class, this was the first time I truly considered the stripped down fundamentals of what constitutes the book form. The simple illustration on pages 213-215 demonstrating “order of viewing” is something that we as an audience most likely take for granted when looking at a group of images. Even without text or any other kind of contextual information, we want to make connections between images, no matter how disparate their subject matter might be, and will create our own narratives in the absence of one. I was surprised at how even three pictures had so many possibilities and how adding only one more to the mix could drastically change how the group was perceived.

Another simple lesson taken from the readings derived from this quote, “page and picture are not synonymous,” pg. 330. Again, this may seem obvious, but by many authors/artists the page is often treated transparently and as a blank, dead space for the active image to reside upon.  It’s become common to see fine art photography books feature an artist’s portfolio with one image per page, with text either below the image or on a facing page. I can understand this particular treatment of the page, as it mimics the white space of the gallery wall and brings attention to the images rather than offering a distraction, but it also seems to equate the page and picture with this one-to-one ratio treatment. What I find thought provoking, and am interested in exploring in my own book, is the idea that “a picture need not to be composed by one page.” This could just mean that the image runs across the gutter onto the facing page, takes up two pages or more intriguing– uses the entire book to convey the image (for example, an image that folds out or layers of transparencies).  By understanding these two elementary concepts, I’ll be able to be more fully aware of the books I come in contact with in the future and can better understand how the author/artist’s intentions and will be able to better grasp how an audience will react to my future book(s).

Also, just for fun, I’ve posted some images below from a blog I recently found titled ; Forgotten Bookmarks . The author of the site is a used and rare books seller and often comes across ephemera left behind in the books he buys– this ranges from bookmarks and wedding invitations to handwritten recipe cards and photographs. He posts scans of each item paired with the book in which it was originally found. Maybe it’s the pairing and/or my need for a narrative backstory, but I find myself making connections between the found objects and the content of each book and feel that there’s definitely a connection between the two. Be sure to click on the links to see a larger image and the text information.

Business letter from the Crosman Bros. Company, Rochester NY, dated June 10th, 1924 found in “The Pictorial History of the World: Volume II” by James D. McCabe. Published by J.R. Jones, 1907.

;Get well; card in the shape of a book found in “Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox.” Published by the author, 1933.; Handwritten wedding invitation, no date. Found in “A Portrait of Joan: An Autobiography by Joan Crawford.” Published by Doubleday, 1962.