Photobooks – Fontcuberta’s ‘Kintsugi’

Fig. 1 Fontcuberta’s ‘Kintsugi’ book (2021)

I am only going to talk briefly here about the subject of the book, before going on to think about the binding. Kintsugi – the Japanese concept of visibly mending broken objects to give them a new lease of life and an extra layer of beauty is something I have referred to in previous modules (links) and is a concept that I find very attractive. For this book, which is the catalogue for an exhibition, Fontcuberta continues his study of Andorra through its photographic archives by rephotographing images which have been degraded by time, water and mould. The result are a collection of semi-abstract images where the degradation is as much the subject as the underlying photograph. When I saw it on sale at the Photographers’ Gallery, the images were what caught my attention, as they reminded me of my own interest in degraded images, considered in previous posts here and here (crystallised images)

The book also contains essays by Fontcuberta, Monserrat Ronchera Santacreu and Xavire Antich on the effects of time and fading memories on physical photographs, alongside the history of Andorra. Together they make a poweful statement about how the old is forgotten over time and how the accumulated imperfections can add a new and perhaps more interesting overlay.

The main purpose of this post though is to discuss the book’s binding. It looks beautiful and I can see why the binding decisions were made but it just doesn’t work very well. The covers are softback and made of folded Kraft paper with an image of what I take to to be cracked photographic emulsion on front and back. The individual pages are made from thin folded Japanese washi paper, so that each leaf is separately bound. In line with the Japanese theme the binding is a very simple Japanese stab bind, which looks as if it was hand collated and put together with a gold thread. Stab binding is considered one of the most straightforward ways of binding individual sheets together and it has a long history, but it has one major drawback – the pages cannot be opened out properly and it does not lay flat. Thus half of each image is more or less hidden in the gutter. I imagine the soft cover was an attempt to minimise this problem but it is not very successful. Add to this the fact that the lack of a centre binding hole means that the book does not open evenly, and the result is something that should be a beautiful and carefully imagined piece, with cultural references appropriate to the subject matter, but it just doesn’t work well. I know it is sacrilege to do this, but I really want to take it apart (easliy done with this type of binding) and remake it.

Figures

Fig. 1 Woodward, H. (2021) Photograph of Fontcuberta’s ‘Kintsugi’ book. In the possession of the author.

References

Fontcuberta, J. (2021) Kintsugi. Barcelona: R M Verlag.

Woodward, H. (2019) Assignment 2 – Deconstructing the digital image: a Materialist approach. At: https://hollyocadic.wordpress.com/2019/03/09/assignment-2-deconstructing-the-digital-image-a-materialist-approach/ (Accessed on 27/07/2021)

Woodward, H. (2019) My submission for the OCA Edgezine , Summer 2019. At: https://hollyocadic.wordpress.com/2019/09/28/my-submission-for-the-oca-edge-zine-summer-2019/ (Accessed on 27/07/2021)