The Mind is a Muscle. Huub van der Put

Book coverThe Mind is a Muscle. Huub van der Put
Book coverThe Mind is a Muscle. Huub van der Put
Book coverThe Mind is a Muscle. Huub van der Put
Book coverThe Mind is a Muscle. Huub van der Put

Obviously you can’t just put a book with this kind of content to one side, observed one panel member. Nor was there any need to, we thought, because the quality of the design and execution of this book carries conviction and makes it in every way a book that commands respect.

The chief protagonist is the documentary photographer Huub van der Put, who, as soon as he heard that he had motor neuron disease, decided to record the progress of his condition visually, in his own medium of photography. He also asked other photographers, some of them quite well known, to join in; and he published a weekly blog.

The resultant book has a classical cloth binding. Inside, it consists of two layers: the immediately readable layer, with the narrative and small photographs as in an album, and a second layer, easily accessible thanks to partially pre-cut pages which reveal full-page bleeds of often highly intimate scenes. Cutting the pages leaves a rough fore-edge that nicely complements the cover.

There were some doubts about the typography of the interior, which is set entirely in capitals, but was that so important here? One cannot but be sucked into the fate of this young family, precisely because of the alternately sad, shocking, loving and very occasionally joyful images.

Edition: 2012
Language: English, Dutch
Final editor: Erik Kessels, Anthon Beeke
Publisher: ÈposHouse, Zwolle
Graphic designer: Erik Kessels
Lithographer: Èpos Press, Zwolle
Printer: Èpos Press, Zwolle
Binder: Callenbach boekbinders Van Wijk De Ruiter, Nijkerk
Size book block (w x h x d in mm): 230 x 297 x 18
Number of pages: 152 p.
Print run: 1,000
Price: € 34.95
ISBN: 978 94 914030 3 3
Font and foundry: Monotype Twentieth Century
Binding style: unsewn hardback, Japanese binding, perforated on fore-edge
Material: 170gsm MultiArt Silk (interior), Butterfly, yellow (endpapers), Dubletta 3267 (binding)