Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain
Heavy Meta, 2007
Description
This book—and the exhibition it documented—questions the reproduction and dissemination of images of human suffering. The thumb on the cover acknowledges the viewer’s participation in this exchange. To frame these troubling images in the context of lengthy critical debates, we separated the book into two parts: essays, printed mostly in black and white on a creamy uncoated sheet, and plates, printed in full color on a coated sheet. A latent image, a black box in the shape of a film negative, marks the beginning of each text. The essay pages’ contrasting typographic texture makes the images easy to spot. The outer edges of the plate pages are the same color as the essay section, as if the words frame the photos. There are no captions on these pages, but the colored type at the bottom directs you to discussions of the image and to a section that includes extended captions.
Juror Notes
This book’s dichotomous typography and composition engage the reader in a conceptual game exploring the representations of beauty and pain.
Credits
- Design firm
- Heavy Meta
- Creative director
- Barbara Glauber
- Designers
- Barbara Glauber, Emily Lessard
- Photographers
- Ashley Gilberston (photograph), Rick Schwab (newspaper)
- Editors
- Erina Duganne, Holly Edwards, Mark Reinhardt
- Trim size
- 9 x 10.5 inches
- Pages
- 216
- Quantity printed
- 2,500
- Typefaces
- Beton, Bulmer, Grotesque
- Printer
- Transcontinental Litho Acme
- Papers
- Finch Fine, Soft White, 80 lb., smooth, EuroArt Plus Silk, 100 lb. (text); 130 lb. (cover)
- Binding
- Smyth sewn soft cover
- Publishers
- Williams College Museum of Art, The University of Chicago Press