Sunday [every day] book love

Images from here, here, here.

Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction

Hilma af Klint - A Pioneer of Abstraction (wonderful artist, wonderful exhibition, wonderful short docu).

Moderna museet (Modern Museum Stockholm + Modern Museum Malmö) has some great videos, talks, shorts, interviews here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ModernaMuseetVideos

[a serene] Book of Frustration.

[a serene] Book of Frustration. Sara Elgerot, 2013. Unpaged, illustrated throughout, 42cm uncurled.

Book description:

"I made a book out of frustration; it became serene."

Materials:
Scrap paper (trimmed-off paper from other book), recycled plastic ('handles' from household packaging), recycled plastic ties (from consumer packaging).

Other//Colours Of A Day.

Other//Colours Of A Day. A book by Sara Elgerot for 'An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street', 2013. Unpaged, illustrated throughout, 21x13cm. Signed and numbered. Edition of 3 books (+1 artist copy). -->> better photos to come.

This book was made for 'An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street' - a project initiated by Beau Beausoleil (USA) and co-curated by Sarah Bodman (UK). Links: here and here.

I've been very moved by this project and its intent, and am very happy to be part of it.


Book description:

" “I was born in Sweden of Swedish parents. Sweden has not had or been in war since 1814. It is not the same. I've lived most of my adult life in the UK. I lived in London on 7/7/2005, very near to where the bombs went off. Then life moved on. It is not the same.

I knew Baghdad only from history lessons and books. I knew its book market from “We Came To Baghdad” and a documentary which chronicled Agatha Christie's life in Mesopotamia and talked at length of Baghdad’s bookstalls and book market. 'One day', I thought, 'one day I will visit'. Then I knew Baghdad from a war we marched against, terror that doesn't stop. Years, a decade, later it hasn't stopped. It is not the same.

I wanted to make a book for transformation, with one wish: May all beings know and live in peace.”

The book was inspired by transformation and the phrase “The River Turned Black with Ink”. It was made by taking newspaper photographs of the destruction on and of Al-Mutanabbi Street treating them with water, painting with the water on the paper until all the colours had emerged and blended together. Cut up and assembled into books they have turned into 'other'."


Materials & Technique:
Newspaper photographs printed on paper, treated with and painted on with water. Scanned in and printed out unaltered. Gathered, folded, cut and assembled. Cover: ancient Baghdad map printed on paper and treated with water. Hand-bound with white and coloured thread.


Edition of three copies, which is donated to the project (+one artist copy). All copies are made up of different parts of the original sheets, which means each copy is different. Each copy is also bound with different coloured (exposed) threads.

One copy of 'Other//Colours Of A Day' will be donated to the Iraq National Library in Baghdad, whereas the other two copies will be part of touring exhibitions for the next few years in conjunction with the 'Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project'.

Skogen.

Skogen. By Robert Adams. Yale University Press, 2012. 48pp., illustrated throughout, 9,75x11". Images from here.

Book description:

" 'Skogen' is the Swedish word for forest, and while the dense woods featured in Robert Adams's most recent series of photographs grow near his home in Oregon, the pictures evoke a wild utopia, and convey a hushed, primeval awe.

In this volume, the latest to document Adams's ongoing quest to find form amid the chaos of nature, shadows predominate, tempered by an ambiguous light that is unique to the Pacific Northwest.

'Skogen' features forty-six previously unpublished images, a body of work that is among the most pictorially complex of Adams's distinguished career. Also included are an introduction by the artist and a poem by the acclaimed poet Denise Levertov. This pairing is meaningful; as Michael Fried wrote in Bookforum, 'Adams's artistic ideal...has much in common with that of a certain sort of lyric poem, one that similarly has not the slightest room for carelessness of any sort'."

Today in 1890

Swedish Worker's movement/Swedish Labour movement, first of May demonstration in 1890, Sundsvall, Sweden - source for photograph.

"8 timmars arbete, 8 timmars frihet, 8 timmars hvila" - 8 hours work, 8 hours freedom, 8 hours rest.

Today I don't know // A day of not knowing are days without knowing

Today I don't know - Photo on 29-04-2013 at 10.21 #2.

Taeyoon Choi sent me three of David Horvitz's photographs with some instructions (>>"My friend David Horvitz gave me couple hundreds of his photographs without specific instruction. I'm trying to send them to strangers and friends around the world. [...]")

My hair was like that for many years, and my mouth is kind of like that, and for some time now I don't know... I will take pictures until I know - or until (for now) I've stopped thinking of not knowing.