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Books that emerge from shadows and pop up in 3-D
16 September 2007
16 September 2007
Let us now praise off books.
In the business of books, genres rule-- the romance novels, the thrillers, the biographies, the autobiographies, sci-fi, mysteries, memoirs, chick lit, short story collections, guidebooks, and all the rest. In their hundreds and thousands of titles each year, they are the cash cows of the publishing world.
But part of the delight of reading is that, in skimming the shelves, you can stumble across a book that is totally unlike anything you've ever seen before. Something unexpected, unusual, very much its own thing --- such as "Uncovered: Photographs by Thomas Allen" (Aperture, 2007), also listed by some online booksellers as "Thomas Allen: Uncovered."
First of all, this a board book for adults, as the cover indicates with its come-hither blond about to take off her shirt. But, when you open the book, you find that she's part of a three-dimensional scene.
What the Detroit-born Allen did was find an old, beat-up pulp paperback with this image of the blond. Then, he cut around the edges of the image, leaving the bottom still attached to the cover. Then, he folded the image up so it appears the blond is rising out of the book as it lies flat., like a 20th Century version of Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." Then, getting the lighting and focus just right, he photographed his pulpish sculpture.
The book has 20 or so photographs of such three-dimensional creations, most of them employing the images from one or more cheap, generally lurid paperback covers -- such as cowboys, dancers, pirates, men in a fistfight and a KO'd boxer. One exception is a 2004 photofraph titled "Swell" in which the diagram of a three-mashed sailing ship has been folded above the page of a dictionary so that it appears to be floating up the wave of a page.
In the business of books, genres rule-- the romance novels, the thrillers, the biographies, the autobiographies, sci-fi, mysteries, memoirs, chick lit, short story collections, guidebooks, and all the rest. In their hundreds and thousands of titles each year, they are the cash cows of the publishing world.
But part of the delight of reading is that, in skimming the shelves, you can stumble across a book that is totally unlike anything you've ever seen before. Something unexpected, unusual, very much its own thing --- such as "Uncovered: Photographs by Thomas Allen" (Aperture, 2007), also listed by some online booksellers as "Thomas Allen: Uncovered."
First of all, this a board book for adults, as the cover indicates with its come-hither blond about to take off her shirt. But, when you open the book, you find that she's part of a three-dimensional scene.
What the Detroit-born Allen did was find an old, beat-up pulp paperback with this image of the blond. Then, he cut around the edges of the image, leaving the bottom still attached to the cover. Then, he folded the image up so it appears the blond is rising out of the book as it lies flat., like a 20th Century version of Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." Then, getting the lighting and focus just right, he photographed his pulpish sculpture.
The book has 20 or so photographs of such three-dimensional creations, most of them employing the images from one or more cheap, generally lurid paperback covers -- such as cowboys, dancers, pirates, men in a fistfight and a KO'd boxer. One exception is a 2004 photofraph titled "Swell" in which the diagram of a three-mashed sailing ship has been folded above the page of a dictionary so that it appears to be floating up the wave of a page.
