Andrew Pengilly’s book design and production for Alexandra Lethbridge’s The Meteorite Hunter is shortlisted for the Paris Photo photobook award. The book design is a Japanese bound paperback with printed tracing paper pages overlaying images creating associations between the overlaid images. The overlaying of images on different materials adds to the book design and archival nature of the work. The books volume is limited to an edition of one hundred copies. Andrew Pengilly was very pleased with the exceptionally high quality print achieved on the two materials. This is particularly so considering the usual results achieved on tracing paper. The high quality rendering of tones of black and grey on the tracing paper is very rewarding.

Lesley Martin describes its printing as “lush, bordering on the indulgent, layering images printed on tracing paper to beautiful and ethereal effect.”

Rocks and space were common themes in this year’s submissions. In The Meteorite Hunter, Alexandra Lethbridge has selected the meteorite as “a metaphor for the fantastical hidden in the everyday,” and its hunter as someone who is able to “locate the ethereal and sublime in the mundane and banal.” This might also function as a suitable analogy for photography and the photographer.

The book design juxtaposes appropriated images with those created by the artist one of which, we are promised, is an honest-to-goodness meteorite. The key to the images (which reveals the secret) is tucked inside the front and back flaps of the cover.

Posted:
June 9th, 2015

Category:
Book Design.