Duncan Tonatiuh, Undocumented: A Worker's Fight, Abrams Books, 2018

front cover and slipcase

A beautifully drawn accordion done in Tonatiuh's unique Neo-Pre-Columbian style, this book tells the story of a group of undocumented workers and their, ultimately successful, organizing efforts at their place of work. This book was inspired by a Mixtec friend that Tonatiuh met at college in New York and it illustrates his journey from a small village in Mexico to his life as a busboy in New York City. This accordion is also a tribute to the long history of pre-Columbian codices that were all but destroyed by the Spanish invaders, and thus this book carries an undercurrent of resistance and, of a contemporary revival. 

Inspired by his research into Mixtec codices and artwork from the 15th century, Tonatiuh recounts that "I decided I was going to make a modern day codex of my friend's story. I've been drawing in a Pre-Columbian like style since."

Born in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, Tonatiuh has also spent time in the USA having studied at the Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College in New York City. He has also established an award winning career and has illustrated numerous books with a particular emphasis on books for children.

11 double-sided pages, individually 10.75" x 6.5" and when fully open 5' 11.5"

reverse side

back cover and slipcase

Karlsson Rixon (photographs) & Mara Lee (text), Nakenakt (Nude), Art and Theory Publishing, Stockholm, Sweden, 2018

One side of this accordion book is a compelling series of photographs that feature the photographer standing nude, with another nude woman draped in various positions around her body. Rixon remains impassive throughout the series, while her partner assumes a variety of uncomfortable looking poses as she clings onto the artists' body. The reverse side of the accordion is taken up with a text by Mara Lee, and since it's all in Swedish, its meaning is unavailable to me.

In a publisher's note about this quietly understated artists' book they write: "The photographs depicts a series of interactions between two bodies. They are portraits of the artist captured in a particular phase in life a phase of intense questioning and reflecting on the body in relation to queerness, trans identity and aging. We are confronted with performative moments of playfulness, intimacy, and deadly seriousness in which one body carries, balances, handles or is invaded by another. Perhaps the two together form a single organism in constant change, a body that doesn't adhere to prevailing notions of what a body should look like and how it should act..."

13 double-sided pages, individually 5.5" x 7.75" and when fully open 8' 4.75".

below is the cover of reverse side of book with Mara Lee's text

Maguma, Lucky/Happy Hans, Brothers Grimm, text by Gita Wold & Divya Vijayakumar, Tara Books, India, 2021

Based on a German folktale "Hans im Gluck" (Hans in Luck) from the early 19th century, the tale tells the story of Hans who leaves home and works hard for seven years and then returns home to visit his mother. His master, satisfied with his work, gives him a chunk of gold as payment. The story recounts his numerous encounters with people on his way home who eventually relieve him of all his gold, but he's glad to get rid of the gold, and the story suggests that happiness has nothing to do with acquiring or losing material goods. 

The reverse side of this accordion retraces his journey as a computer game in which the gamer is met at each page with the different types of choices Hans had to make, but here it gives the player some agency over Han's choices and the outcome of the game. This is a smart switch from the front side in which everything seemed to be predetermined for poor old Hans!

Maguma's illustrations are certainly up to the task of illustrating this old fashioned morality tale, and he switches nicely to a computer game look on the reverse side.

16 double-sided pages, individually 10" x 6.5", and when fully opened 5' 5".

reverse side

free at last!

four postcards by Maguma are included in the book, with two images from each side

back cover

Maguma, God of Money: Karl Marx, Tara Books, India, 2017

Another cool accordion from the folks at Tara Books. This book is a powerful meditation on the nature of money, illuminated by bringing together extracts from Marx's writings on the same from his 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.' Maguma's powerful illustrations serve to enhance the slippery nature of money and our own relationship to this powerful economic force in all of our everyday lives.

11 double sided pages, individually 11" x 6", and when fully opened 5' 6". 

reverse side

back cover

Mary Bergs, Further Notes on Place and Space, Collaged Papers and Stones, Edgewood College Gallery, Edgewood College, Madison, 2022

A sharp installation in which Bergs' large-scale accordion collage sits perfectly within the elongated display cases leading to the Edgewood College Gallery. Using found materials and "self-made" materials, Bergs creates ephemeral looking collage works that come from a careful awareness of her surroundings and from an appreciation of the beauty to be found in our everyday lives. Below is the artist's statement that accompanies this piece:

"This accordion fold book and accompanying stones are a further investigation into my interest in memory, visual perception and our experience of place. When I first looked at the display case, I immediately thought of a horizon line: a story and these related lines developed into a book project. A horizon line introduces the idea of landscape, memories of places and a sensate experience of place. Images of landscape are often idealized versions of reality that we accept as truth, never questioning how these images impact our perception of our own experience. I am interested in creating situations where non-specific ideas merge, a place where two or more ideas come together to form a relationship, a possibility, a new association. My work explores the linguistic properties of materials and objects, and things that can function as language and be read by the viewer. I invite careful looking at forms and materials where spatial arrangement and changes in texture generate new meanings. I investigate the place where language and objects coincide."

A longtime resident of Minneapolis, Bergs now lives somewhere "in the middle" of Wisconsin with her husband at the edge of the village of Benton.

Annette Messager, Les Uterus Fleurissent (The Uterus Flower), Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2017, ed. 100

A really powerful double-sided accordion by this well-known French artist in which she insists on her autonomy when it comes to her own desires and pleasure. The following quote is taken from the description of the book on her gallery's website: 

"Annette Messager has created numerous artist books over the past 40 years. This new leporello-style artist book offers a partial response to the issue that matters of the female body and a concern that women's desire —and especially their ability to openly express it—continues to be met with resistance. Indeed isn't this desire—women's desire—precisely the desire to be able to, as females, manifest, affirm, and express themselves?"

For an excellent review by Joseph Nechvatal of a 2016 show Messager had at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris, he addresses how she "...deploys an iconography of anti-patriarchal anger rooted in the female body," see:
https://hyperallergic.com/344804/a-uterus-flipping-the-bird-and-other-images-of-feminist-exasperation/

20 pages, double-sided, each page 3.25"(h) and 2"(w), when opened 2ft 2".

front

back

Christopher Saclolo, Books Arts: Accordion Bindings, UCF Libraries, Books Arts & Typography Collection, University of Central Florida, video, 2022

I recently came across this smart video in which Saclolo looks at four different accordion books, and discusses their varied formal features. This is a great introduction to some of the unique aspects of the accordion book and I'm looking forward to more! Follow the link below for the 6 minute video.

Saclolo is the Book Conservator in the Special Collections & University Archives, John C. Hitt Library, University of Central Florida.

Book Arts: Accordion Books on Vimeo