White Ribbon Day - the making

By way of background to the making of the book which features in my previous post.

I realise the topic of this book is tough and may seem a bit out of kilter for my work in general; yet women's work and women's stories are important to me and to my making and yes, sometimes the stories just aren't that nice. Nonetheless, I hope that I have brought to it my care and concern, and a fairly gentle way of expressing some really difficult things.

In terms of the actual process, it was quite challenging to work to a set of parameters; some of which really weren't in my comfort zone.  As mentioned previously, one of the ways in which we broke through our confusion was to sit together and do a mind-map. We listed each of the parameters and then tossed around how could that be interpreted? what might it mean? how could we represent it?

That was incredibly helpful for me to get the idea of miniature, multiple openings - with abstract photography within.

Gradually a set of ideas took place.

One sunny day I gathered as many pairs of shoes as I could find in the house that could appear to be women's shoes - several pairs of thongs and slippers that are Barry's actually made the cut - and I lined them up on our front path and photographed them.

From all of these photos came the images I would work with.

Trials to see if parts of shoes would work at this size.

In Melbourne Laurent had taught us about the golden mean and ratio and I wanted to put it into use, to consolidate it in my brain a bit, so each of the pages I prepared used this ratio. And I must say the result was very elegant.

I tried lining my pages up asymmetrically but that just didn't gel for this book - instead the fold-out openings are laid out asymmetrically as is the view when you see a single opening - with the back of each page a different colour and slightly smaller again.

This didn't feel right.

This felt better, yet the asymmetry is still there.

It was important for the book to have integrity and to work as a whole, and for me to be able to point out each element and how it linked to the recipe; but to not have people view the book as a collection of elements thrust together.

I printed the images on lots of different papers and found Hoshu worked best - it was not as heavy as say Fabriano, but not as light as the 10gsm Tengucho. It showed the detail but didn't bulk out the book.

Each image was cut, and then cut again - to show only a portion of the shoes within each opening.

Even tho I am a less is more kind of gal, the book felt sterile with just openings and shoe prints within, so I wanted to add some marks (I wasn't allowed to use text, which I figured also meant numerals) so I couldn't write about the issue or use the numbers. Instead, on each page I made different marks by way of counting the women. By embossing and de-bossing the female symbol on the back of each page, you immediately know it's a book about women.

Although the number is something like 72 women die each year; the words often used are "more than one a week". And so I used 52 as the number I would include throughout - 52 openings and 52 marks on each double spread.

A couple of names were options "More than one a week" or "Counting the women" but when I showed Susan the finished book and explained the white ribbon around the book - she suggested calling it White Ribbon Day - which helped people understand the ribbon, and set the scene for what followed. Another moment of collaboration!

Barry decided that if these books were really about collaboration then there should at least be some photos that show the two of us working together - and so here is one.  The tables are covered in papers and ideas and I am talking with my hands as ever.

When you look at Susan's beautiful finished book, you wouldn't think that we had worked to the same set of parameters would you? Amazing how two artistic minds can create such different works when the starting point is the same. A wonderful experience and much learning along the way.