Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Pierre Marty, HH, Le Dernier Cri, Marseille, 2009, ed. 2000

front cover

This 10 color silkscreen book with its multi-flap folded pages, is not technically an accordion, but when the pages are opened up some of the same effects can be seen and experienced as when viewing a traditional accordion. At the heart of the accordion book lies the 'fold,' and Marty's book playfully exploits all the surprises and unexpected encounters that happen when this feature is incorporated into the making of a book.

On his blog, Marty describes how he "...draws in different forms, produces comic strips, practices publishing on a very small scale...compulsively superimposes blacks, whites, day and sometimes colors, forming dreamlike universes that echo reality. Often wind, intestinal breaths on plants, organic or abstract shapes like ideograms, amoebas on the cornea, hair on the tongue, shivers, spasms haunt or invade his images and his narrations. The comic strips he produces do not tell a story as such, they contain little or no text, drawings follow one another in an articulated way, forming a narrative, poetic and plastic grammar."  [°)°)°)°)°)°)°)°)°)°)°))) Pierre Marty]

Another wonderfully edgy book from Le Dernier Cri!

18 double-sided pages, individually 8.25" x 6".

back cover

front and back covers opened up








Eadweard Muybridge & Mark Klett, One City/Two Visions, Bedford Arts Publishers, San Francisco, 1990


A smart accordion that combines two panoramic views of San Francisco, with Eadweard Muybridge's (1830-1904) made in 1878 and Mark Kletts' created in 1990.

The accordion format is ideally suited to reproducing panoramic images and this book provides a prime example, even though Klett was unable to make his work in one shot because of the development of the city, and his solution was to stitch together single images to create his panorama.  However, both works were shot from the same location, the Mark Hopkins Inter-Continental Hotel on California Street.

Peter Bacon Hales provides a nuanced introduction to the technical issues and the larger history and development of San Francisco, and Mark Klett offers a text that describes his process and solutions to the issues that surfaced for him in creating a panorama of the city in this contemporaneous moment.

14 double-sided pages, individual pages 12" x 9", and when fully open 10ft 6".

Muybridge's (1878) panorama





Mark Klett's (1990) panorama






Warja Lavatar, La Belle au Bois Dormant (The Sleeping Beauty), Adrien Maeght, Paris, 1982

accordion with plexi slip cover

Another wonderful accordion by the Swiss designer, Warja Lavatar (1913-2007). See this entry for more info about Lavatar: accordion publications: Warja Lavater, Little Red Riding Hood (1965/1971), Snow White (1974), and OURASIMA (1991)  

40 single-sided pages, individual pages 6.25" x 4.25", when unfolded 7ft 6"