in Kamiyama

These are spreads from MANGA, an artist’s book I created as an artist in residence in Kamiyama, Japan. It is going to be digitally printed in 15 numbered and signed copies.

Alongside other diners I have been enjoying the manga collection of the Hidenoya restaurant in Kamiyama. I have favorite collections and well-liked volumes within the collections. Since I don’t understand any of the words in the books I often tried to figure out the narratives based on the images only, which proved quite impossible since the genre relies so much on the interplay between words and images.

Eventually I found myself making up entirely new narratives based on the portion of the information available to me– the visuals.

This was the starting point for my book MANGA. I seeked to re-create the experience of looking at a succession of images that appear to form a narrative although one not readily decipherable, so that each viewer has to create their own story.

The images in MANGA I created by constructing and photographing small three-dimensional sets. I posted previously about building the sets on this blog under the titles How to build a home using only paper and scissors… and The Visitors.