Levi Sherman, The Kink's Gesture, Levi Sherman Designs, 2012

cover

A sharp and compact artists' book accompanied with short clipped snippets of typeset texts spread out across its length — but it left this reader none the wiser as to the true nature of 'the kink's gesture.' But perhaps, all the different display options that the snake book offers with its folds, blind alleys and abrupt transitions is the 'kink' that animates this book.

16 single-sided pages, individually 2.75" x 2.25" and unfolded 1ft 9.25". 

back cover

Takashi Homma, The Ginza Street, Tokyo, Japan, 2019, ed. 500

book with silver slip case

This is the 9th book Homma has created in homage to Ed Ruscha and his contributions to the field of artists' books. Specifically, this book is in homage to Ruscha's "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" (1966) which was also a leporello that used a similar design in order to show every building on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. 

But there is more to this story. Photobook historians have noted the similarity of Ruscha's mapping of Sunset Strip with one in a 1954 pair of books published by the Japanese writer and artist Shohachi Kimura titled "Ginza Haccho", which is a book of photographs by Yoshikazu Suzuki that shows every building on Ginza Street in Tokyo in the same format as Homma's accordion. While Ruscha has demurred about revealing if he was aware of Suzuki's technique for recording both sides of this well-known street in Tokyo, others have also recorded this street in a similar manner. The most recent homage book, prior to Homma's, is Michalis Pilcher's "The Ginza Strip" (2018) that surveys Ginza street using the same technique with both of them adopting the same silver slip covers and formatting. One crucial difference however, is that Pilcher's photographs were taken during the day while Homma's were taken at night, thus inserting his own twist into this game of influence and appropriation one year after Pilcher's.

Pilcher's book can be found on this blog here: 

accordion publications: Michalis Pichler, The Ginza Strip, Kodoji Press: Berlin, Tokyo, 2018

53 pages, individually 7" x 5.5", and when unfolded 24ft 3.5"

Ellen Wallenstein, A Game of Chess, Women's Studio Workshop Print Center, Rosendale, NY, 1986

A work by this photographer and book artist based in New York who recently retired from teaching at Pratt Institute. I'm having a hard time getting the gist of this work that's been made with a plastic camera. A photo of a piece of Roman statuary on its front cover leads into a series of moody and blurry images that seem to be related to this piece of sculpture. Otherwise I'm at a loss to get the message, unless it's connected to some literary reference I'm unaware of (maybe the "Game of Chess" section in T.S. Eliot's "Waste Land", 1922?).

10 double-sided pages, individually 6" x 6", and unfolded 5ft.

reverse side

back cover

Mélanie Corre, Le Chaos, Terry Bleu, Amsterdam, 2024, ed. 300

An accordion that is rooted in a physical place, in this case it's the rocks found around Wrac'h island situated in Brittany, France. The rocks can only be seen at low tide and Corre has carefully depicted over 60 of them in this accordion. Corre has also done a number of other works that explore the subject of the rocks found in this vacation location, indeed this work comes from an exhibition of her's titled “Roch Gored: mapping chaos around the lighthouse.” The landscape also features a lighthouse at the entrance to the estuary and Corre introduces it in this poem about this piece:

Le Chaos

The lighthouse signals us

we are guardians of the coast,

tickled

       by the current

we have a good laugh 

                    underwater

tomorrow, 

     facing the chaos.

For another of Corre's works on the same theme on this blog see: accordion publications: Mélanie Corre, Cascade, Terry Bleu publisher, Amsterdam, 2021, ed. 200

7 double-sided pages, individually 6" x 3.5" and when unfolded 2.5ft

reverse side

back cover

Lucrezia Viperina, Bored Meats, Strane Dizioni, Italy, 2000

                                                                                front cover

Based in Milan, Lucrezia studied at the European Institute of Design (IED) specializing in illustration and animation. Of this strange and compelling accordion the author says, "Bored Meats is the diary of a confined girl. Bored Meats is something we all experienced during the 2020 lockdown."

10 double-sided pages, individually 6.5" x 6.5" and unfolded 5ft 5".

reverse side

back cover

Silvia Rocchi, Serena Schinaia, Roberto Masso & Martín López Lam, Una Giornata Scorsa, Ediciones Valientes, Rome, 2016

    

Una Giornata Scorsa (A Past Day) is a collective work created by 4 artists over a period of five days, between May 30th and June 3rd, 2016, at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome. The urban jungle is the central theme with depictions of all the vagaries and unexpected events that take place in these kinds of environments. A silent bespectacled visitor can be seen in some of the pages negotiating this rather hostile environment, with the last frame showing him jumping out of the back of an ambulance into a street littered with overturned and burned out vehicles.

16 single-sided pages, individually 8" x 12" and when fully open 16ft.

front

reverse side

back cover

R. Clarke-Davis, a book of wander: dunked, Kiddie Viddy Press, Baltimore, 2025

cover

A new leporello from R. Clarke-Davis and it doesn't disappoint. The work is an interesting & subtle mix of photographs in various sizes arrayed across the length of the work and interspersed with the following words: slipped, dunked, retrieved, tested, and reassured. These photographs of empty city streets with their signage and litter seem to be evidence of events unseen, of which this flâneur of the night has documented the aftermath.

Many more of Clarke-Davis' leporello works can be found on this blog with a quick name search.

10 single-sided pages, individually 4.25" x 6.5" and unfolded 5ft 5".

Verna Kovanen, Broken Holiday Album, Kerber Verlag, Germany, 2022

 An interesting excursion into the nostalgia of re-visiting once favorite vacation places only to discover the memories and their present physical reality do not match!  Included is a reproduction of Kovanen's Finnish passport with stamps indicating visits to places in Finland, Majorca and Cyprus. Below is the publisher's summary of the complex of issues intertwined in this project:

"In Broken Holiday Album, the photographer Verna Kovanen (b.1989) invites readers to accompany her on a journey to the Mediterranean white sand beaches and the holiday resorts of her childhood. The abandoned travel destinations, which were once built to satisfy our need for escapism, today seem more like stage settings caught in a time capsule. The poetic and subtle photographs can be viewed picture by picture or—owing to the leporello form—in a panorama view that extends over nearly six meters. The passport concealed in the book’s cover pocket gives us insights into the artist’s personal life and family history. Memories and imagination, underlying themes in Verna Kovanen’s artistic work, are also prominent in this book."

30 double-sided pages, individually 7" x 6" and unfolded 15 ft.

reverse side

back cover