thirty stories, thirty books
I am developing a series of thirty books, each one using as its text one of the minimalist news items written by Félix Fénéon for a Parisian newspaper in 1906; and each one using one of thirty images I have created. Those stories are collected in Novels in Three Lines (NYRB Classic, 2007. The whole — the thirty separate stories — is more important than individual parts, including my images. And so I am treating the images in a variety of ways, including cropping, use of small details, and repetition.
The images I am creating collage the lives of the protagonists — their last thought, a nightmare, or how they might have passed away. My objective is to create drama, surprise, afterthoughts. For this, pacing and omission are everything.
All of the books will have the same size format, but some variations in layout. I intend that one book show all of the original images in their full form (although reduced to fit), each one facing the text it has been used to illustrate.
We have discussed these books as minimalist films, and I think this idea accurately gets at what I am doing.
The project allows me to explore one idea thoroughly, and to work on variations within that limiting framework.
Philip Michalenko
17 November 2008
Félix Fénéon (1861-1944) : French art critic, novelist, anarchist
The Anarchist Encyclopedia : A Gallery of Saints & Sinners
review of Novels in Three Lines, by Julian Barnes in London Review of Books (4 October 2007)
You always want to tell the story in cuts. Which is to say, through a juxtaposition of images that are basically uninflected. A shot of a teacup. A shot of a spoon. A shot of a fork. A shot of a door. Let the cut tell the story. Because otherwise you have not got dramatic action, you have narration...
ex David Mamet. On Directing Film (New York : Penguin, 1991).