Found and Bound book project

The Found and Bound book project was a really neat hands-on project that helped me focus a slew of ideas into one book, while also being able to group numerous books together. When I first heard of the idea I thought that the project would be a compilation of different book pages that I would just insert into a main book, though when I started working on the piece I found that it started to become a sort-of collage type book of photos. When we initially went up into the library to find books to work from, I wasn’t sure of any theme or select path to take with the book, I just wanted to create something unique and abstract, something that no one else would create. Searching for books started off by looking for interesting titles, but then I soon realized that the title was the least important section of the book for me, so I spent a good time looking for photos within various books. The first book that I found was the one book that I pulled most of my source material from, which was a psychology book called The Mind of Man. This book initially caught my eye in the library because of the photos and diagrams in it, mostly images of the mind and human body. Then I found this small, blue, worn out book that just seemed like the right size and shape for the project, even though the title was Nuclear War Nuclear Peace. With this, I had picked out several more books that I figured I would use the covers or small images from, but ultimately in the end I just stayed with the one psychology book and other images from magazines. Even though I had all of my books and there was a mass of craft materials in front of me, I had no initial path that I wanted to take, I just figured that I would cut and paste and eventually figure it out; which is exactly what I did.

The first photo that I cut out was a diagram of a human bran under dissection, where you could see every vain and crevice, and I placed this on the first blank page I saw in the front of the book. From here on, I knew that I wanted the book to be about the mind and drugs and the various things that humans experience while on them. Text wasn’t an initial plan but in the end I thought it would be cool to kind of take the reader on a trip and guide them through the book, making them think about the photos and if the words even matched up with them or not. One concept that I wanted to make sure I included in the book was various spreads, and luckily I was able to find a lot of photos that fit the entire page and worked with the gutter of the book. I’m not quite sure why I wanted to include this item in the book but I eventually liked the way it looked and fit the concept of the book. I called the book War, Peace and Drugs and did everything from cutting and pasting to painting and tearing out pages from the book. I glued images down and drew in the book as well. This part was to basically add more confusion then was already in the book, so that the viewer could have an experience of the abstract chaos that takes place. Also, I wanted to just add my own little touch to the book, so I just added black pen marks to certain picture frames, kind of adding an abstract feel to the photo. Overall, I had fun making the book, and I really think it helped me focus on the sequence of photobooks and how they need to ultimately come together to form a cohesive idea or pattern, in this case, drugs war and peace.