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 projectct.
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.