Art
An Inventively Designed Photo Book (That You Can Read)
The images in the Gus Powell book released this fall, “The Lonely Ones,” can stand alone: Powell captures orphaned landscapes and quotidian moments that hit on both the poignancy and the absurdity of everyday life. But it’s the subtle, funny one-liners Powell adds to his photos that elevate the collection of images to something that’s part poetry, part comic strip. Taking its name and inspiration from the 1942 classic by the cartoonist William Steig, “The Lonely Ones” pays homage to the “king of cartoons” with a book (and upcoming show) that delights in the interplay between language and image. “I tried to make a book that did traffic in feelings,” Powell says of the body of work, which spans a decade.
Powell was first introduced to the cartoonist’s artwork while working in the photo department of The New Yorker, when he discovered a Steig original: a simple drawing of a crumpled and torn letter at the foot of a mailbox, with the caption, “Change of heart.” That caption makes a cameo appearance in Powell’s innovatively designed book, which is organized into gatefolds that present the captions first and the photographs hiding behind them, waiting to be discovered after the pages of the diminutive, diary-size book are unfolded. “I wanted to make a book you would read,” Powell says. “And no one ever says that about a photo book.”
No comments:
Post a Comment