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A Possible Life. By Ben Krewinkel. |
The beautifully crafted and layered A Possible Life uses photographs, letters, conversations and documents to investigate the life of Nigeria immigrant who has lived in the Netherlands for ten years, though the identity of the man called Gualbert remains at least partially hidden because of his status as an illegal alien. Selected as one of the Best Books of 2012.
A Possible Life is a book about an illegal immigrant to the Netherlands. His name is Gualbert and with the photographer Ben Krewinkel, he's the co-author of the book. Gualbert comes from Nigeria and has lived in the Netherlands for the last 10 years. Maybe. Or perhaps he comes from Niger because that's what all his papers are stamped with. Or perhaps his name isn't Gualbert and he's not a migrant because Krewinkel says that reading the book '...as a non-fictional and objective story purely, might be considered naive.' Instead Krewinkel regards the book is a partly fictitious account of an illegal immigrant’s life, one told through a collection of personal photographs, letters, conversations and official documents. – from the review by Colin Pantall
Another beautifully designed book where the pages need to be cut for the full perspective to be seen. It's an old trick, but wonderfully done. Thanks to the great design, this is a book where the whole forms substantially more than the parts. – Colin Pantall
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| A Possible Life. By Ben Krewinkel. |
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| Singular Beauty. By Cara Phillips. |
Presented in a clean white box, the wonderfully designed Singular Beauty by Cara Phillips peers into the doctor’s offices, operating rooms and at the strange devices of the cosmetic surgery. Phillip’s perfectly composed photographs show spaces that are not just a medical sterility, but also cold and lifeless, devoid of human presence. Selected as one of the Best Books of 2012.
A slick insight in the world of cosmetic surgery. Both the clinical photographs as well as the glossy design with Japanese binding contribute to a terrific (almost scary) book regarding the limits of pushing physical beauty. -- WassinkLundgren
Cara Phillips' book Singular Beauty was printed with FW: and designed by Hans Gremmen in the Netherlands and produced as a result of a successful Kickerstarter campaign completed in January 2012. The book comes in a lightweight clamshell and the semi-transparent pages are folded almost as a Japanese binding with reverse printed black text with captions describing the subject and location of each office. All images in Singular Beauty were shot with a 4x5 camera and Phillips uses all available lights in the operating theater. These two factors create strikingly detailed images. -- Melanie McWhorter
View the video presentation by Melanie McWhorter
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| Singular Beauty. By Cara Phillips. |
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| The Line. By Palindromo Meszaros. |
The cover photograph of The Line by Palindromo Meszaros is an image that is difficult to forget -- red mud covers the bottom of trees, the line matching up perfectly with the horizon. It's an impossible looking image, one that can take a few seconds to make sense of, and is a perfect encapsulating image to describe the terrible disaster that lead to its creation. On October 4th 2010, a retaining wall of a reservoir containing waste water from the MAL aluminum company burst, flooding the town of Ajka, Hungary will a million cubic meters of toxic waste. Causing ten causalities, poisoning fields and creating irreparable damage to homes and infrastructure, Meszaros photographed Ajka six months later. While the water had long-since receded, its presence remains -- every part of the landscape is stained with a red line from the toxic water that filled the landscape. The visual beauty of the red line pulls us into the work, but the disastrous event that caused it can never be forgotten, and the two presences are in conflict in every frame. The self-published book is beautifully designed making for a memorable document.
View the video presentation by Erin Azouz
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| The Line. By Palindromo Meszaros. |