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The Creativity of Limitations
The beautiful artist books
of photographer
RAYMOND MEEKS are
collaborations between
used books and elegant
photographs. He spoke with
our Editor, DARIUS HIMES
about his artistic process.
AT PHOTO LA, BACK IN JANUARY, amidst the packed aisles,
some used books caught my eye. It was a collection of artist books made
by Raymond Meeks. Meeks, whose work first came to greater public
notice with the 2004 publication Sound of Summer Running, has been
essentially collaborating with various used volumes by adding his own
photographs, altering the page count in certain cases, and somewhat
rebinding the books. What struck me was the spontaneous spirit that
these artist books embodied; they didn’t seem belabored. I became
curious about the role that these books seem to play as a place to work
out editing and sequencing and ultimately furthering a body of work.
We spoke over email recently about this creative process.
Darius Himes: Your artist books are made from appropriated books that I
assume you've picked up here and there at various bookstores. When did
you first start using old books as a space to work on your photographs, and
what motivated you to do so?
Raymond Meeks: It’s just been within the last year that I’ve been thinking about the use of older, existing books. I’d been mounting prints to
folded pages for a few years, creating small books with limited, homespun bookbinding skill. I have a sorry stack of tattered books with crusted glue, ruined in the final attempt to bind covers with pages. The use of
secondhand books also seemed a decent effort towards recycling, considering the vast heap of books that rest idle on bookshelves and especially
since what I’m doing is exploratory. So little of what I do with photography and books is deliberate or intentional. Certainly, what resonates
with others seems to be born out of good luck and grace.
Creatively, I thrive when I’m put in a corner and given limited
resources and few options. The books I find provide portals and clues,
which allow me to work with the existing title or narrative. Sometimes
the dimensions are just right, or the number of pages. But I rely heavily
on the inherent voice of the book and enjoy the collaboration between
what the book was in its previous life and what it might become.
DH: You talk about the “inherent voice of the book” and my sense is that
you don’t just mean the author and the text, right? Do you respond to the
cover of the book and its proportions as well as the author and the text?
RM: It varies, really. One book, the Time Life Guide to Financial Success,
was considered solely because of its size and a unique slipcase; not that I
wouldn’t benefit from financial advice. While other choices begin with a
title and then, perhaps, an inscription on the end papers. These books have
a history, oftentimes, with markings in pencil, the name of a previous
owner. I like to be open to any direction the book can offer. The less I see
of my own hand, my choices, the less skeptical I am in the end.
DH: Could you describe for us the process of finding a book and then how
you transform it? Are there clear steps along the way and does that take
months? Or do you find yourself completing these objects in a weekend?
RM: Frequenting secondhand bookstores is not an obsession, but I leave
myself open to discovery. I recently came across the title Minna and
Myself, containing the poetry of Maxwell Bodenheim. I immediately
placed my daughter in the role of Minna, and I imagined my wife using
the first person voice. The book was originally published in 1918, and
Bodenheim’s verse drips from the page like sap. Here are some of the lines:
“Twilight pushes down your eyes, with shimmering, pregnant fingers,
that leave you covered with still-born touch. With little whips of dead
words”. And, “your cheeks are spent diminuendos, sheering into the
rose-veiled silence of your lips”.
Needless to say, I had to use the verse sparingly, which left space for my own interpretation
in pictures. This became my collaboration with Maxwell Bodenheim, who died in
Manhattan in 1954. I hadn’t known of Bodenheim previous to the discovery of Minna and
Myself and I imagined, in a narcissistic way perhaps, that I might renew his words. I trust
that he might approve of our posthumous collaboration. I genuinely took his words to
heart and spent a number of days with prints and negatives, trying to work with his pace
and rhythm. In the end though, it’s just a book that’s already had a life and it’s indulgent
to think about the book now in a new way. At times I feel it doesn’t exist for anyone else,
really, apart from myself.
DH: Sound of Summer Running was your first published book. Can you tell us how it came
into existence? Was the layout for the book based on an artist’s book of the same name?
RM: Whether I’m assembling a charcoal grill or compiling photographs, I tend to work in
reverse order. Where many artists might begin with a distinct premise or idea and then set
out to illustrate their ideas, I photograph in response to my immediate surroundings:
landscapes that I walk or drive past nearly every day, and my family and the ever familiar
backyard. There is no real intent other than to make a record of time and place. This is how
Sound of Summer Running evolved. Two-thirds of the pictures were printed and pinned to
walls around the studio. I began to wonder about making a book but I had no clear narrative. What is this about, how will I title it, what do these pictures say, what questions
linger?
All of these matters were in my head. Then, waking one sunday morning to make coffee,
the phrase “summer running” resurfaced and I recalled listening to Ray Bradbury read from
his short stories the previous day. “Summer running” was just the metaphor I had been
hoping for. It captures the fleeting nature of parenting and our inability to slow the pace,
to lie still in a moment. It is the inherent motive for photographing my family and the
surrounding landscapes, which are constantly moving or being manipulated. The title
helped define my edit and inform the pictures that I set out to complete the book.
DH: Nazraeli is publishing a second book of your work. What role did the artist book play
in the development of this second project?
RM: The moving/manipulated landscape is the premise for a book titled a Clearing, which
Nazraeli will publish by years end. The book is comprised of pictures I made on assignment in Burma, in 1993, of young hard-rock miners and laborers in salt flats, moving dried
earth on stretchers. I paired these pictures with recent photographs of aggregate pits and
other landscapes of rock, soil and dirt which are a part of our valley landscape now as two
lane highways expand to four and new subdivisions are laid out.
The artist books have allowed me to do what you eluded to earlier, to “work out issues”
in the way that these two bodies of photographs might resonate with one another. My
process is like the proverbial “roadmap in the wilderness”; it’s not really a conscious one and
I have lots of help from my son, Adam, who did the layout and sequencing for Sound of
Summer Running. Adam was 12 at the time and I continue to frustrate him with my anal
retentive design choices—centering images on a page—where he would take a more
whimsical, less predictable approach to layout.
What I find most interesting as a form of expression now is developing a narrative by
merging a series of pictures to build and expand on an idea. When the edit and sequencing are good, the narrative almost takes on a form of breathing. A great album of music
does just the same, an inhale and exhale exchange occurs. You may not groove to every
song, but the placement of certain tunes creates space, a palette cleanser if you will, and has
great impact on the songs that precede or follow. As a viewer, I want to be involved and
challenged and left with a sense that a dialogue is ongoing even after I put the book down.
Questions remain but I can trace them back to the book and continue to be engaged and
surprised.
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