Analysis, Experimentation

book layout // draft 2

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Here is my second draft for my photo book. I decided to completely change the layout from my original idea because I wanted the project to be more contemporary and wild. I also decided that I wanted my images to be bigger to create more of a lasting effect on the viewer. I first changed the image for the front and back cover because the black and white image of the hands didn’t create the initial look that I wanted to create. The color theme for my photo book is soft pastel colors, such as blue, purple and pink. I simply brought out the natural pigments in my original photos, and used them as the base of my color theme. I wanted my front and back cover to really show what the book is about, and that’s why I didn’t want to use a black and white photo. I really like the colour and framing of this image, and it works really well as the initial image that draws people in. Although the image looks elegant, because it looks like the hands are dancing, it also looks like they are reaching out for each other. It could represent pain and torment, as well as love. However, the hands are physically expressing a deeper emotion which is what my project is about. This is why I really like this image as my front cover.

I wanted my book to be eye catching, and to draw the viewer in with the use of color and shape, and with the flow of the images. I decided I wanted more of my imaged to be larger and more dramatic. I also decided that I didn’t want to categorize my images any more. I wanted them to be all combined and mixed up, rather then placing them into a particular order. I no longer just wanted the landscapes to be the multi page images, I choose the best images out of the whole selection to present in a larger scale. Some landscapes, some faces, and some body image.

I made sure the whole of my book worked really well together. I wanted every image to lead onto the other one really well. I also made sure that the color scheme and shapes worked well together. I love the flow of these sets of images in particular because the colour and flow leads really well onto the next image. I also really like the contrast that there is within the book. Every image is different, yet they all work really well as a set.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/88743/when-the-body

I wanted to include some words within my photo book to achieve a deeper understanding of what the images were meant to represent. I found a poem online by Linda Hogan called “When the Body”. Linda Hogan was born in 1947 in Denver, Colorado.  She is a poet, storyteller, playwright and novelist. I decided to use particular  stanzas from her poem because I like the way she fragments certain parts of the body,  “But the feet have walked”, and “from the hands”. She links the body to nature and uses tress to describe what the body is like, “their branching of toes”. Her writing is really poetic and romantic and I think it suits the theme of my photo book.

When the Body

When the body wishes to speak, she will
reach into the night and pull back the rapture of  this growing root
which has little faith in the other planets of the universe, knowing
only one, by the bulbs of the feet, their branching of toes. But the feet
have walked with the bones of their ancestors over long trails
leaving behind the roots of forests. They walk on the ghosts
of all that has gone before them, not just plant, but animal, human,
the bones of even the ones who left their horses to drink at the
spring running through earth’s mortal body which has much to tell
about what happened that day.
When the body wishes to speak from the hands, it tells
of  how it pulled children back from death and remembered every detail,
washing the children’s bodies, legs, bellies, the delicate lips of the girl,
the vulnerable testicles of  the son,
the future of my people who brought themselves out of the river
in a spring freeze. That is only part of  the story of  hands
that touched the future.
This all started so simply, just a body with so much to say,
one with the hum of  her own life in a quiet room,
one of the root growing, finding a way through stone,
one not remembering nights with men and guns
nor the ragged clothing and broken bones of my body.
I must go back to the hands, the thumb that makes us human,
but then don’t other creatures use tools and lift what they need,
intelligent all, like the crows here, one making a cast of earth clay
for the broken wing of  the other, remaining
until it healed, then broke the clay and flew away together.
I would do that one day,
but a human can make no claims
better than any other, especially without wings, only hands
that don’t know these lessons.
Still, think of  the willows
made into a fence that began to root and leaf,
then tore off the wires as they grew.
A human does throw off   bonds if  she can, if  she tries, if  it’s possible,
the body so finely a miracle of  its own, created of  the elements
and anything that lived on earth where everything that was
still is.

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