In 2011 I was at an artist in residence on a beautiful and secluded island of Halsnoy in Norway. The island and its people were the inspiration of multiple experimental projects that I made during the residency. One of these was a series of portraits that I have now appropriated for my Light Work / Autograph ABP residency to create a new “altered” artist’s book project
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The altered book is a Norwegian prayer book from 1868. I placed miniature sized images of the portraits into the pages of the prayer book as I wanted to create an artist’s book in which some of the motifs that had influenced the images, such as Norwegian folk tales and Victorian era death photography to resonate through.
I wanted the experience of holding and viewing the book to be a very personal moment. Images that are laced within the pages of the book are not obvious and I wanted the viewer to search for them and hence explore the pages of the old prayer book itself.
Editing the images
Creating the layout of the images
The prayer book with the final images printed on thin Japanese paper
The pages are cut to create space for the images to be placed within.
A template was created to use as a guide on the page when making the cuts.
The prayer book begins to swell a little due to the tipped-in images.
One of the portraits in the prayer book.
