Bookish

Marc Olivier 2011

I love the materiality of books, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Far from disappearing from our lives, books are being used more and more for things other than reading. In fact, I've devoted a pinboard on Pinterest to that topic.

One of my favorite photographers, Abelardo Morell, has done a stunning series on books. When I took some of my old books off the shelf and photographed them on Saturday, it was very much inspired by him. I like the abstraction of the pages above (the book is a 19th century history of Paris I bought a long time ago in Seattle).

Marc Olivier, 2011

 You can see the same books in this totemic stack topped with an 18th century collection of Rousseau's rantings against theater. The shot was done with natural light. I set the stack of books on a table by the front door for side lighting and then used a light reflector to bounce back some fill, which ended up giving the halo-like glow. The final photo below shows a rip in the last page through which you see the title Lettre à d'Alembert. It was a happy accident to find that little window into the book's contents. I sent about 11 book photos to the company that distributes my work commercially, but I don't know if it will fall within their needs. Four of my dictionary page photo prints are being distributed (although they are not all of the same ones in my post). Going for commercial viability is an interesting exercise and is often not compatible with what you would send to a gallery. In my opinion, the artist who best straddles those two worlds is Michael Kenna. I find his work very inspiring but I don't do landscapes. Yet.

Marc Olivier, 2011

put a bird on it!

(Marc Olivier, 2011)

I love how phone and power lines divide the sky. Even better when you put a bird on it :)

Queen of Spades

Eva as the Queen of Spades

She wanted this one to be creepy.

Queen of Hearts

 Never mention an idea to your kids unless you are actually going to do it.
After reading a post on B about a deck of playing cards he had made through printerstudio, I thought "hey! that would be cool." What if I made a deck of cards with my kids and dog playing all of the royalty?" I was discussing the idea with my wife and as soon as I mentioned that maybe it would be too involved because we'd have to have them dress up in various costumes, Eva heard "dress up" and "costumes" and that was it. Sunday afternoon she decided we would do the queen of hearts and picked out a dress from her dress-up box. We took the photo in the bathroom, which actually has white and yellow stripes, but Eva wanted them to be pink. So we went into the man cave and watched "Barbie: A Fashion Fairy Tale" (featuring a song with the injunction to "Get your sparkle on." We also learned that "when you're in doubt, glitter it out." Words to live by.) while I retouched the photo. Next up will be the queen of diamonds. The tricky part is to do the photos with whatever we have on hand. I don't have the budget to do a Philip Lorca diCorcia or an Erwin Olaf production.