Bella’s Books

This week we had (Isa)Bella Capezio come round and give us a great mini presentation on photobooks, bringing with her a number of beautiful examples. One of my favourite photobook’s from the selection that Bella brought in was about a young man who moves to Korea and dates a Korean woman and his father that ends up following him over there and doing the same thing.

When you first look through this photobook it just feels like a loose collection of images about urban life in Korea. However at exactly halfway through the photobook the images begin to visually repeat themselves. Once you realise the images repeat themselves you start flicking back and forth between pages trying to match up images. It then becomes clear that the images are visual mirrors of one another, with the main difference being the people within the images. The first set of images feature the young man and his young partner. The second set of images then feature the man’s father and his same-aged partner replicating the poses and themes of the original images. It becomes clear that this photobook is actually about this young man’s relationship with his father and the ways in which their lives intertwine and mirror one another.

 

A photobook is a unique medium, in the way that it allows the artist to create a sense of shock and bewilderment with it’s audience. As the photobook medium allows you to precisely control what the viewer sees and when. Photobooks also lend themselves to a process of looking at an image, then turning to another page and comparing it to another, then looking back at the other image. Which is exactly what the artist, in this context, wants the audience to do. He wants the viewers to be surprised by their revelation, and then begin this process of matching imagery.  In this sense the audience is engaged in active exploration of the artist’s work and its thematic issues (such as the artists relationship with his father and the way their lives mirror and oppose each other). Much like the way in which the artist himself through living his life would’ve begun to notice and explore the ways in which his own life mirrors and opposes that of his fathers.

 

Until next time,

Louise Alice Wilson