Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Power is What. The Potential is How.

"Pages create their content." - Keith Smith, Non-Adhesive Binding Volume I


The book creates a new staging area for dioramas. Each page has the power of 'what' and the potential of 'how.'  The empty page represents the height of anxiety. It contains the wonder and paralyzing fear of "What to do?" It holds a power over us. Artists of all kind fret over that exact idea "What do I do next?"

Recently I took out my first bound book. It is in a long format with rag paper. The edges are deckled with the signatures sewn with matching thread. It hides perfectly so that the pages never seem to be apart from each other. The outside is a maroon book cloth, nothing fancy but has a nice finish, of course with matching head banding. It is held together with Archival glue and red banana leaf paper.

This object represented my first real departure from photographic techniques. It was a finished object of my obsession. This was to be my step back to sketching before shooting and returning to my real roots of my own process. I held on to it till the perfect time.

I bound that book in 2008. I only recently took it out to actually use. The object became fetishzied to me. This object was perfect (even though it is not) and had to only contain the perfect ideas (which I have non). The point of a book is to be used. The pages must be allowed to dictate their content.

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