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Free posting within UK £5 for Europe £8 for US and the rest of the world £9.5 for tracked delivery within EU, if you want to receive the book quicker. Info about the book: A trifold book of three booklets stitched on a concertina cover which allows for the book to be opened out in to one long strip. The format for Traces Within was based on the idea of drifting through memories, the intention was to create a book with no obvious beginning or end and allow the viewer to drift through the photos. Embossed title on cover. Book opens to 21 x 88.8 cm. Printspeed offset paper, 140 gsm for the inner pages and 300 gsm for the cover. Printed on offset Lithoprint by Pureprint printers using vegetable based inks. The photos contained in the three different sections can be viewed alongside each other allowing 2,197 possible combinations of images (thirteen to the 3rd power). Self-published and hand bound by me Book design by Emily Macaulay Writing by Vanessa Winship Be the first to hold my unique hand-stitched photography book. Please note that Brexit and Covid-19 have caused severe delays to the international postage service. Estimated delivery time is approximately 1-2 months. 1st edition. RECOGNITION/EXHIBITIONS/COLLECTIONS: *Part of the: The Photobook Museum, Cologne, Germany. Reminders Photography Stronghold photobook collection, Tokyo, Japan. Fotowien collection, Austria. Grassi Museum of Applied Arts, Leipzig, Germany. Bower Ashton Library collection of Artists' Books, Bristol, UK. Glasgow School of Art Library. University of South Wales. Bournemouth University of Arts. Photo-pedagogy collection, UK. Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece. Photomentria Photography Centre, Ioannina, Greece. *Editor's pick for Photobookstore, UK and one of their top 10 best selling books for April 2021. *Arnolfini Gallery 'It's A New Day' exhibition, 2 March-18 April 2021. *Thessaloniki Photobiennalle, Photobook Boom/The Greek Case October-December 2021. *Encontros Da Imagem Photobook Competition, finalist 2021. *Dead Beat Club list of favourite photobooks for 2020. |
reviews: By Joshua Gutierrez, Too Tired Project Eva Voutsaki’s Traces Within is a dream-soaked, spiralling quest for catharsis set against the backdrops of memory and personal mythology. Through the use of an innovative binding technique paired with disjointed photographs that seem to exist both nowhere and everywhere, Voutsaki takes the viewer on a journey through light and darkness. Upon first glance, the book appears to be pretty traditional in design and relatively small in scale, roughly the same size as a journal. However, as soon as the viewer opens the book, its format reveals itself as something a bit more complex and intriguing. The handmade book is comprised of three booklets that have been stitched together. Once each booklet is opened, the scale of the book transforms substantially, shifting from something intimate and alluring into something commanding and maze-like. The trifold structure allows the viewer to experience a near-infinite number of sequences - well, in photobook terms, at least - with nearly 2,200 possible image combinations. This means that the narrative of the work is malleable - much like memory itself - and can be reconfigured every time that the book is viewed. This beautifully complements Voutsaki’s photographs, suggesting that memory and myth-making are dynamic processes. And, perhaps, in some ways, this continuous process of access, retrieval, and interpretation parallels what it’s like to process imprints left by trauma. This is further enhanced by the absence of titles, which works well to combat the finality of meaning that words can impose. The photographs in the book balance both formal rigor and the frenetic qualities of the snapshot. Seascapes, landscapes, unknown characters, and unknown rooms are all exquisitely saturated with color and transfigured by the veil of night. When the viewer first encounters the book, they are greeted by a photograph of a lone, white horse in a darkened field - a likely allusion to Pegasus that establishes a series of mythological signs that also includes a mermaid made of snow, a cloaked figure caught in prayer or casting a spell, and perhaps even a reference to Ophelia. Lone figures are contrasted by photographs of groups, the latter of which feel slightly threatening given the absence of context and a collective gaze that rejects the camera and instead focuses on undisclosed happenings. Voutsaki characterizes the work as a kind of,“...[anecdotal] diary with spontaneous and accidental images that enable the viewer to travel smoothly and secretly into [their] own memories.” This sense of furtive discovery is certainly kept intact by the book’s photographs which depict a place that resists the viewer’s sense of belonging but seems vaguely familiar. What’s left is a magical, surreal, beautiful, menacing reverie, one that ebbs and flows with each turn of the page. By Holly Dawson This. It is this. Beauty, magic, depth. Stirring oneiric integrity. A dream decanted in stills, a wordless narrative, a fractal shift. It is as if @eva_voutsaki has taken what lives behind my eyes and made it uncannily, poignantly, real. Three books inside each other; each page new jolts and revelations. She shows me in her notebook, while we wait for the sun to set gold on a garden shoot, that there are 2,170 combinations. I look through the dummy book with my bones not my eyes. For once, I have inadequate words. I first saw Eva’s photographs 13 years ago in the Brighton MA show. They were unlike anything I’d seen. They were made with all of her, all of her bones. At the time, I was starting writing. Here was the visual of the stories I wanted to write. I can’t do it justice so I won’t even try. Its evasive articulation is part of the experience of this book. I open the parcel, tied with brown paper and string, and I know this is one of those things that I will keep near me until I die. I become, in Woolf’s words, “all eye”. And you will too. You need this book. Follow @eva_voutsaki and go to her website and buy a copy of the book for your own trove of precious things. Eva, you are a magic-maker, a storyteller, an interpreter of dreams. Thank you. I’m in awe of it. I want to write in the way that you photograph the world. By Robin Tichener: If any book could claim to come close to emulating that free form stream of consciousness feeling that we experience whilst sleeping, Traces Within by Eva Voutsaki is surely it. Her dreamlike, hallucinatory images in themselves are enough to draw us to the edges of that realm, but the ingenious design by Stanley James Press is what pulls us in and makes this book the hypnotic surreal and mood shifting encounter that it is. Essentially Traces Within is three books stitched to a cover that then concertinas together to appear as a single volume. The alchemy begins when the cover is opened fully allowing the books to sit side by side, and the pages to be opened independently. The result being a mystical journey of nearly twelve hundred different combinations and sequences. With each copy being hand bound by Voutsaki, these beautifully lithographed pages are a textural and interactive delight. I’m also very happy to report that once the pyrotechnical design has been marvelled over, we are also left with an imaginative and lingering collection of images, which means I already have my first favourite book of the year. Now where was I? 926.....927.....928.... Highly recommended. @eva_voutsaki @stanleyjamespress |