Unlike Hans Bol (in Paradise City, one of this year’s Best Dutch Book Designs), Aglaia Konrad presents her Carrara photographs not as separate, beautiful, independent images, but in a rugged dynamic. Each is set straight up against its neighbour, sometimes forming a strip that continues on the next page.
The result is a filmically fragmentary ‘narrative’ and a splintering of the visual continuity caused by sometimes showing us different perspectives at the same time. Sometimes they are even the same photos but displayed in a different light. The spectator finds himself constantly caught off guard, always being challenged to re-experience the places depicted. The book as a whole takes on the character of a drama of light and shade, with colour pages occasionally breaking the rhythm. Its design forces us to look carefully and take a more active part in it.
The cover consists of a colour photo with black foil-printed in a separate coarse-screened pass over the cloth-structured laminate.