CAROLINE FRASER PHOTOGRAPHY
  • welcome
    • news
  • Photographic works
    • Shore Life
    • rain dance
    • fire on water
    • findings
    • Conversation pieces
    • unbearable lightness
    • previous works
  • artist books
  • Workshops
  • Blog
  • shop

blog - an ordinary life

Winter Notes -  a book project from the Yukon

5/5/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Yukon in winter
Lockdown has provided time.

Time to work on projects that have been sitting on the back-burner for months and even years.

Time, for example, to get to grips with a set of images that I made of plant life in the snow from Canada's Yukon territory. A wild and beautiful landscape where I found myself concentrating on plant stems and trees in winter.


Picture
Yukon in winter - an icy pool


Walking in the landscape I started to see only black and white; snow and stems. Tree trunks and branches.


Picture
Winter notes © Caroline Fraser


I was drawn to the graphic quality of the landscape. Some blades of grass so delicate that I wondered how they survived.


Picture
Winter notes © Caroline Fraser


During this recent lockdown i finally found some time to work these images into a book. I initially thought of setting the images to words by Emily Dickinson in her poem 'It sifts from Leaden Seives'

I wrote to the Emily Dickinson foundation to request permission to use the words in a small run of an artist book. They granted permission, but at a fee that was prohibitive for such a small production.

So I sat myself down and started to write some words of my own.

I looked at the images and responded in words, thinking all the time of music and drawing as suggested by my title 'Winter Notes'.



notes from a manuscript
music for a winter song
a plaintive melody


Picture
Winter notes © Caroline Fraser


under leaden skies
fragments of summer

slump into winter days



Picture


wave forms in slow motion
transmit old stories
from which new works will emerge


'


Once I had a collection of short 'poems' I struggled for weeks on the format for a book. Large or small? Hard or soft cover? Which images in what order?

The choices are endless. Decision making not my strong point.

But then I did a workshop with Monica Dengo on working with words and images, and she taught me a simple structure containing three books that overlap each other, allowing the pages to be read in a myriad of ways.

This seemed perfect, for the words and images were interlinked, and each poem was no longer tied to just one image. Even better, the structure was more like a notebook, which fitted my title perfectly. I liked the informality of the structure, with its soft cover and simple binding.


Picture
making an artist book
Picture
'winter notes' artist book © Caroline Fraser
Picture
'winter notes' artist book © Caroline Fraser
Picture
'winter notes' artist book © Caroline Fraser


The choice of cover colour relates to one of the poems


needles strewn randomly
in cold disarray

tell a bloodless tale


I was thinking of the colour of blood that a prick from a needle would normally invoke. The many pine needles were lying in a bloodless landscape.



Picture
Winter notes - artist book


I blind embossed the front cover using my newly acquired Adana press; a lockdown treat to myself. This gave me more pleasure than I care to admit to!


Picture
Adana printing press
s

Now that Winter Notes is complete, I have other back burner projects to get on with; the next on my list is a book of sea wall stories from the coast at Camber Sands.

The final book, Winter Notes, can be seen in this video with more images and words.


0 Comments
    Picture

    Caroline Fraser - an ordinary life

    on life, suburban living, art, creativity, photography, book art and travel.

      Sign up here if you would like to be notified of future posts, news, tips and special offers.

    Join my mailing list

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    September 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020

    Categories

    All
    Art And Creativity
    Book Art
    Lockdown Life
    The Art World
    Travel

    RSS Feed

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
Welcome to Caroline Fraser Photography

Colourful abstracted and traditional photographic landscapes, book art and workshops. Capturing the moods and beauty of nature whether in wild open places or in small sanctuaries in suburbia.

About Caroline Fraser
Picture
Picture
Picture
  • welcome
    • news
  • Photographic works
    • Shore Life
    • rain dance
    • fire on water
    • findings
    • Conversation pieces
    • unbearable lightness
    • previous works
  • artist books
  • Workshops
  • Blog
  • shop