and wanted to loosen things up. The problem is, he was
confusing newspaper design with newspaper use.
“That's the problem
we're facing, people are still thinking about the idea of it being an actual
newspaper. You shouldn't. You should think about it as being a series of pages
with which you can do whatever you want. Most of the newspapers I've seen are
still fairly conservative.”
So the idea with Hornstra’s newspaper was that you could
open it up and sequence it, pin it on the wall and do what you like with it. So
you could that with Rob’s newspaper, but not with your regular run-of-the-mill
non-Sochi newspaper.
I understand exactly with what Rob is saying, but these
comments (which are a little out of context here) gave me the feeling that Rob isn’t much of a
newspaper man. I am a newspaper man. I buy a newspaper every day except Sunday.
And when I buy a regular newspaper, I do a lot of things with it.
I sometimes buy photography newspapers – Aperture Photo
Review, the Prison Photography catalogue are a couple of fine examples I have
got this year. But I don’t do much with them. I read them, then carefully fold
them up and keep them safe.
The regular newspaper, with its normal conservative design I do all sorts with. Most days I start at the
back, then move to the front. I do the puzzles and write on them. My daughter
gets them and blacks in the eyes of Cameron and Clegg, Obama and Kate. I share
my paper, I pull it apart so others can read it (try that with an ipad) I cut
things out (try that with an ipad), I put them on the fridge and the wall. I save
articles and read them again. I copy them, I paste them in books. I’ve wiped my
arse with a newspaper (and I know we’ve all tried that with an ipad), I’ve
ripped them up to make confetti, torn them into strips for papier mache, lined
cupboards and floors with them, used them to protect furniture from paint,
wrapped food in them, made paper planes and hats and kites with them, oh the
list is endless to the things I’ve done with a newspaper.
So when I think of a radically designed newspaper, I’m not
that impressed because I know that the use is not going to match the design of
a regular newspaper.
So for radical design, I’m not going to look at newspapers,
but at a maker of handmade photobooks. The Dutch are pretty much recognised as the masters of photobook design and this runs through to small print editions and the handmade object. So I'm not going to choose a Dutch bookmaker - I'll leave that to others.
Lauren Simonutti made handmade books that were filled with
self-portraits. The portraits are a record to her mental illness, made around
the house with clocks and cakes and staircases as props. Simonutti lived in
Baltimore, the birthplace of Edgar Allan Poe, so its fitting that there’s
something darkly gothic about them. They are about being locked in, about a way
of being that cannot be escaped, about being trapped with sounds and voices
that can’t be escaped. But at the same time, there’s a life and a humour about
them, there’s both a response and a kind of acceptance in the pictures – not
enough of an acceptance though. Lauren Simonutti killed herself earlier this
year. So for her handmade books, for having bells and feathers attached, but
also for unblinking self-portraiture, I nominate Lauren Simonutti for both
doing something new and doing something brave. I also get the feeling that
Simonutti didn’t quite talk about her work in the way that you are supposed to
if you are an artist, and she didn’t quite make it as you’re supposed to.




But this is the best of week, so while I’m running on a
theme, I think I’ll add a couple of people. I just got Elina Brotherus’s new book,
Artist and her Model. One of her most recent series is
called Annunciation. These pictures, as Susan Bright writes in her
introduction, show "...a woman all too versed in being able to communicate
and articulate herself but still having battles with sex, the pain of love and
waiting for her life to shift... The photographs deftly illustrate how
enervating the process of trying to conceive can be."
They are incredibly sad. Many, many people have made
photographs of people crying, but very few of them move me, very few hint at
any kind of interior life. Brotherus doesn’t cry, but the sorrow ( if it is
sorrow) seems to reach out of the picture and clutch at one’s heart.
The picture below is one of Brotherus' earlier works, titled I hate sex.
Oh, and another one. Alright. Sally Mann, both for leaving
the children behind and, over the period of a decade, making flesh live on the
photographic page and making a visual representation of muscular dystrophy, the disease that struck her husband, Larry Mann. Marvellous and moving.