The term ‘leporello‘ refers to printed material folded into an accordion-pleat style. Also sometimes known as a concertina fold, it is a method of parallel folding with the folds alternating between front and back. The name likely comes from the manservant, Leporello, in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, who the Famed rogue and lover Don Giovanni (in Italian – also known as Don Juan in Spanish) has seduced so many women that when Leporello displays a tally of his conquests, it unfolds, accordion-style, into a shockingly long list. Many leporellos are used as a way of telling a story, while others are purely visual.

In the Victorian era, leporellos were quite commonly used as travel souvenirs, depicting beautiful, panoramic scenes of the places travelers had just seen, customs and culture of the region and the like. They are often used in illustrated children’s works, as well. Collectors of books and paper ephemera will love their scarcity and delicate beauty.

Book: The Dailies by Thomas Demand

Artist and photographer Thomas Demand partnered with London-based publishers Mack Books to create a limited edition catalogue for his project, entitled ‘The Dailies‘. Demand has created the poetry of the everyday; haikus of glanced objects, dreamlike scenes and liminal locations. ‘The Dailies’, as the photographic installation is called, recalling the daily rushes of a feature film, takes over a whole floor of the building. Accompanying the exhibition (presented by Kaldor Public Art Projects) is a limited-edition catalogue, which Demand produced in collaboration with London-based publishers Mack Books.

The substantial 32-page volume can be displayed in a circular fashion, appropriated to its leporello binding. Its concertina pages, a nod to the fluted pillars which make up the base of the building, come together to form a 16-pointed star which is encased with a magnetised closing system in faux leather, ‘The Dailies‘ was designed by Naomi Mizusaki of Supermarket, who has worked with Demand on a number of books – such as his most recent publication, “La Carte d’apres Nature“. The photographs that make up The Dailies are of cardboard and paper sculptures. Some 
of them – like the coffee cup caught in a chain link fence or the twist of paper trapped in a grating – speak of transient urban scenes. Other constructions (of windows, doors or changing rooms) are places of passage, not residence; as is the location of the exhibition, a members’ club for travelling salesmen.

In the CTA building, each of the photographs are framed on the wall of a different room, radiating from a circular corridor. Demand has made subtle adjustments to the contents and fittings so they complement his beautifully melancholic images of life’s lost details. The installation is a collaboration with the writer Louis Begley, author of About Schmidt, who has penned a short story about a commercial traveller’s dream-state visit to the CTA. Fragments of the story, Gregor in Sydney, are printed in each room and on the pages of the book. A unique scent has also been created by Miuccia Prada.

Read more at-  http://www.wallpaper.com/art/book-the-dailies-by-thomas-demand#kXF1HvFXJodlWO3u.99

My Further Interpretations

I feel using the concertina and leporello form would be a great way to narrate a story and a pattern, as well as being able to compare two different narratives exploring my hypothesis of love. By appropriating some of the works like Thomas Demand, I feel this is a good way of using similar skills by comparing ‘non-traditional photos associated with love‘ with those that of ‘traditional‘ love images on the other side, submerging the concept of how they can be cross-contextually similar or even indifferent.

During my research process, I thought it would be beneficial to contact the Societe Jerseaise Photographic Archive in Jersey, in order to get a larger perspective towards what ‘love‘ was like historically, and whether it fits my specifications of it being seen by society as ‘truthful‘.

I emailed Karen and Gareth explaining the hypothesis of my project and that I was exploring the perceptions of what love is like in the modern day and our contemporary lifestyle patterns, in conjunction to what was seen as traditional methods of relationships. Gareth suggested I should look into weddings as a good way of approaching love, and I visited the Archival Website and searched up images associated to words like “weddings“, “ceremony” and “Church“. These where the following results:

The Laporello 

During my time down at the Societe Jerseaise Photographic Archive, Gareth had kept ahold of a archival artefact that had been sitting around for a while within the archive. Gareth kindly allowed me to take the Laporello and to use it at my own will. I think this Laporello is beautiful, and could be something that I use as part of my final piece. The red colouring of the box could be used as a metaphor for Love. Love symbolically can be associated with the colour due to its passionate and vibrant animosity.

Further Research

Reading the news paper the other day, I came across an article explaining about how a story of a man names Joseph Tierney. The article reads how Tierney’s death during the Nazi War, is remembered on a “small plinth in a rural part of the Czech republic“, in the village of P´sov. The Jersey Islander was taken in 1943 after the German Forces arrested him for ‘spreading seditious information’ – “small hand written notes transcribed from BBC Broadcasts taken from illicit wireless radios“. The article’s main focus was how Islander Pat Fisher found the plinth in P´sov and discovered the remarkable finding of her father after spending decades wondering what had become of him.

“I knew he had been taken and I knew the reason why he had been taken, but mum never really spoke about it because it upset her so much”.

I felt this article has had quite an influence on my project as this concludes the desperation of communicating with someone when social media is not around. The difference of this is this is not particularly a ‘love story‘ but a story including ‘loved ones‘. This similar concept still speaks the same anthology’s, and that is that the difference between contemporary love and traditional love is obviously comparable. Mrs. Fisher goes on to add how letters where so important in tracing the footsteps of his life:

“Really, we didn’t know what happened because he wrote letters from Frankfurt, but there were no more letters after that.”

The discovery of her fathers whereabouts, Mrs. Fisher added how it “reduced her and her family to tears”, and following the breakthrough, Fisher was then invited to take part in a BBC Documentary entitled “Finding Our Fathers – Lost Heroes of WW11‘ along with Guernsey resident Jean Harris, who was also on the search for her fathers grave.

Here is a link to this documentary:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b079yq31/finding-our-fathers-lost-heroes-of-world-war-ii

Mrs. Fishers mother Eileen kept allot of documents relating to Mr. Tierney’s imprisonment on the Island, as well as letters he had sent round from various camps. Despite the camps awful condition, the Jerseyman’s letters and messages from Europe maintain a lightness and a “sense of optimism“. Mr. Tierney frequently refers to his wife as ‘Snooks‘ and sometimes off as “the twerp“. The note begins:

“My husband Joseph Murray Tierney was arrested by the Germans on March 3, 1943, five months before the birth of our daughter. The Gestapo placed him in solitary confinement in the Nazi Prison in St. Helier, Jersey, where he went through many nights of mental torture. The Germans then took me to the prison where they used me as the final weapon in their foul endeavours to make my husband talk and confess to what they already knew. They threatened me, pregnant at the time with being sent to a concentration camp in front of my husband. After a whole day’s worth of questioning they allowed me to finally go home. After this experience I was I was always terrified whenever I saw a member of the Gestapo or the Feldpolizei”.

I feel this quote really strongly shows how relationships where put under allot more stress during the time of the Second World War. In contrast to our contemporary lifestyles, this shows how these sort of factors seriously compromised the emotional and physical states of what relationships had the envelop.

“Never in any of his letters does he ever complain. He said all the time, “don’t worry about me, I’m alright” He was so caring. Even in letters some people who had been in prison with him wrote, they said what a caring gentlemen he was”.

Mrs. Fisher is pictured below holding a picture with her father, Joseph Tierney.