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AAP 1940

The notion of printing images on preprinted papers, such as books or magazines, has always interested me. The possibilities of chance and serendipity for images and texts to interact is limitless. However, the destructiveness of the proposed process, also revealed the coward in me; each unique page offered only one chance of 'getting it right' plus the destruction of an otherwise unique document. My intended subject matter, a 1940 copy of the American Annual of Photography, seemed to high a price to pay.

So I would, in turn, recourse to working differently with the same source material. The notion of decay and mutation is central to the alteration of these the pages. The choice of the 1940 edition, as opposed to others in my possession, was important. It displays the predominantly pictorialist sensibilities of the era, plus an elaborate photographic technology which is now largely obsolescent. and, yet the imagery reflects little of an outside world in turmoil. The work centres around ideas of a disregarded history, redundant technology, pictorialism and decay.