Richard Roberts, Mechanical Reproduction in the Age of Digitisation, screenprint & letterpress, self-published, UK, 2019, ed. 100

front cover

Roberts describes this book using a term for a folded book that I had not heard before, he calls it a “Boustrophedon fold book”. The Boustrophedon fold book also has another name and that is "snake book", with both relying on the same construction method of making cuts in a single prepared sheet and folding different sections, which creates at least one two-page spread opening up diagonally to the main folded book (snake-like!). See the black and white graphic on the front of this book that illustrates a sheet of paper with these types of cuts.

About this book and its theme Roberts includes an introduction:

"This publication was conceived and made by Richard Roberts. It consists of screenprinted images composed from cast-off pieces of laser-cut acrylic using the 'work and turn' printing technique. Translucent inks were randomly changed during the printing of the edition to create multiple colour variations.

Das Kunstwerk Im Zeitalter Seiner Technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction), written by Walter Benjamin in 1935, proposed that the 'aura' of a work of art was diminished by mechanical reproduction due to its ubiquitous nature.

In this era of digital communication it seems like the physical printed book has gained an 'aura' of its own."

I would agree with Roberts that in our digital environment the printed book, almost by definition has an auratic presence uniquely its own compared to its digital equivalent. This screenprinted and letterpress book also testifies to the handwork and craft involved in such a production, and combined with the experience of feeling the ink on the paper it offers us both a visual and sensory experience not available from any digital alternatives. This is the kind of 'aura' I can support!

12 pages, individually 5.5" x 5.5" and when unfolded 3ft 8"

reverse side

back cover

2 accordion postcards (France & Austria), no date and 1961

I've just come across these two rather unique variations on the touristic postcard strip that typically feature photographs of a particular geographic location. The first card is undated and illustrated with images from Versailles, and the other was mailed in 1961 in Austria and features views of the geography around the city of Mariazell in the Southeast of Austria. 

Both postcards 5.5" x 3.5".

google translation

google translation

postmarked 1961 and mailed in Austria

Den DuVall, CONTENTS: drawings 2018-2023 of newspapers, bulletins, & pamphlets 1963-1990, Shandaken Projects, Catskill, 2024, ed. 50

front cover

 

      wraparound cover

Created and published during a residency at Shandaken Projects in Catskill, New York, CONTENTS "...is a collection of details from recent graphite and colored pencil drawings by Ben DuVall. The drawings are the result of an ongoing research project into the graphic vocabulary of 20th century protest and mutual aid movements, with a specific focus on print ephemera, publications, and journalistic accounts. This 15-foot-long, accordion fold artists' book is the first to collect and reproduce these drawings at full scale, mainly highlighting material from the UK and North America from the 1960s through the 1990s". [publisher's note]

Comprised of fourteen double-page spreads that give you just enough information to begin making sense of the spreads, but not enough to get a full understanding of what's going on. The dot matrix print effect to the drawing style also lent for me a sentimental air to these pages as I noticed an undercurrent of political images & reporting from British print sources with one reference to the early anti-nuclear demonstrations at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in the UK.

This artists' book represents a smart repositioning of drawings generated from one genre of printed matter and then folded back into another printed matter context that foregrounds both the original context as well as the new and expanded printed matter accordion site.

30 pages, individual 9.5" x 6" and when unfolded 15 feet.

back cover

Sarah Matthews, The Negro Is Still Not Free, letterpress, 2022

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Sarah Matthews writes that this accordion was "... inspired by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr:'s celebrated I Have a Dream speech from August 28, 1963, this work was created to support the Youth Art & Self Empowerment Project in Philadelphia, PA. Their mission is to, 'provide space for incarcerated young people to express themselves creatively and to develop as leaders both within and beyond the prison walls'".

This 'snake book' (with one hidden fold section) is a powerful statement by this young African-American artist that highlights the continued discrimination faced by black and brown communities in the USA. Additionally, I can't help but see the influence of another black letterpress artist, Amos Kennedy Jr., in Matthews work, and like him her work has a social and political edge that seeks to engage and activate the viewer to go out and act!

For more info about Sarah Matthews see: I AM Sarah Matthews. Artist.

12 pages, individual pages 6" x 6", and when extended 2ft. 

back cover

Martin Lopez Lam, Ensalada Mixta, silkscreen, Le Dernier Cri, Marseilles, 2017, ed. 2000

front cover

Another in a long line of extraordinary silkscreened graphzines from the French publishing house, Le Dernier Cri. While this publication does not meet the technical definition of an accordion, it's 8 fold-out pages illustrates to me the power and beauty in the simple act of making a fold - something so central to accordion publications. And aside from that, this publication contains a wonderful mash-up of different types and flavors of imagery.

Martin López Lam (Lima 1981) Peruvian graphic artist based in Valencia (Spain), working to on different projects focus in independent publishing, comic, silkscreen and illustration. He has collaborated with magazines like ARGH(Spain), Que Suerte! (Spain), Carboncito (Peru), El Buen Salvaje (Peru), Kuti (Finland), Puck (Italy) or KomfortMag (Czech Rep.), and publishers like Fulgencio Pimentel (Spain), Media Vaca (Spain), Ultrarradio (Spain), Aristas Martinez (Spain), Edicions De Ponent (Spain) and Chili Com Carne (Portugal). Since 2010 he directing the graphic label Ediciones Valientes where published comic and graphic anthologies.

Copies still available from Le Dernier Cri for 45 Euro.

martin lopez - illustrator, art director, front-end / layout designer in Valencia, Spain :: Behance

32 pages, individually 12" x 8".

front and back cover

Stephen Perkins, Five Leporellos for the Peoples of Gaza and Palestine (#118-122), 2024, series of 5

 

            individual works 8" (h) x 7' 6" (w)

Etel Adnan, Untitled, Art in Focus, Tate [video]

This seven minute video looks at one of Adnan's accordions, with the presenter leading us through the different elements that combine to create this rich tapestry of word, image and drawing: 

Art in Focus | Untitled by Etel Adnan | Tate - YouTube

For further information about Etel Adnan (1925-2021) see link below on this blog:

accordion publications: Etel Adnan, Leporellos, Galerie Lelong & Co., January 23 - March 7, 2020, Paris.

Yita, The Street of Plain Happyness, China, 2023

front cover

I'm going to let the artist explain what's happening here:

"For me, the Street of Plain Happiness is the traditional morning market in Northeast China.

When I was a child, I felt like I could find everything here - lots of delicious

food and lots of joy. The people running street vendors are resilient and

interesting. In the winter, with temperatures dropping to minus twenty or

thirty degrees Celsius, the morning market has hardly ever stopped for

decades.

I used an Olympus-PenF half-frame film camera to take these photos in

September 2019. In three years that followed, after many closures and

lockdowns because of COVID-19, the warmth and vibrancy faded away.

The 'street' came back after the pandemic. After surviving, I hope that

people can live peacefully in an unknown place.

The backside of the book is adorned with traditional "spring couplets'

written in calligraphy on a red background, depicting the most

representative street scene of the morning market and reflecting the

essence of urban culture. Unfolding the book on the table, the three-

dimensional street model can be formed by standing the folded paper on

both sides, presenting another perspective to tell the story of the morning

market. Folding and unfolding it, you can feel the atmosphere of the Street

of Plain Happiness, as if strolling through it."

Yita's use of this particular type of folded map has an interesting history within artists' books. This technique of depicting a street and its businesses was used most notably by Ed Ruscha in his artists' book Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), but there was one predecessor in a publication titled Ginza Haccho (1954) by the Japanese writer and artist Shohachi Kimura with photographs by Yoshikazu Suzuki. Its interesting to me that Yita does not address this history.

30 double-sided pages, individually 4.75" x 3.25" and when unfolded 8' 1.5"

reverse side

back cover

 

Karen M. Wirth, Cocoon, 2023

front cover

A really interesting accordion that presents a series of photographs of rocks cocooned in a glacier in the northernmost part of Norway. Accompanying the images of rocks are a series of texts with definitions of 'cocoon.' About this piece the artists states in an endnote:

"The cocooned rocks were photographed on Spitsbergen, the largest island in the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, between 76º46'21.13"N and 79º19'30.56"N latitudes, between June 10 and June 21, 2023. The last image is in the area of the Mayersbreen glacier."

For more about Wirth's works see: Karen M. Wirth

14 double-sided pages, individually 2.75" x 4" and when unfolded 4' 8".

reverse side with snow landscape