Info

• Slipcase with banderole, 21 letters, 21 photos and a booklet, 155 × 110 mm
  
• Language: German
• ISBN 978-3-948174-21-7

Nominations / Awards
Awarded by the Stiftung Buchkunst 2024: one of the 25 most beautiful books in the competition »The Most Beautiful German Books«

Editor
Helena Melikov

Editorial
Lilli Geßner, Helena Melikov

Authors
Anushka, Julia Meyer-Brehm, Swan Collective, Christian Dittloff, Rabea Edel, Carl Ensom, GPT-4, Sophia Hembeck, Ina Holev, Franziska König, Marie Krutmann, Charlotte Kunstmann, Lana Lux, Lisa Tracy Michalik, MINETTA, Marvin LT Müller, Noa Sophia Niss, Marit Persiel, Michael Schuster, Alexej Tikhonov, Erica Zingher

Design
Helena Melikov

Book Art Foundation – Jury Statement:

Not everything that flips is a book. Or is it? A small black slipcase holds a stack of folded papers. There are just under two dozen A4 sheets, folded crosswise, like love letters used to be written. A book cover, in this case a belly band, protects them from slipping out.

A thoroughly romantic concept revives old photographs that lay dormant, anonymous, in flea markets. Authors were invited to resurrect a neglected cultural practice – the writing of love letters. They immerse their imaginations in a given photograph and allow themselves to be inspired. We are attached to things, but conversely, memories also cling to every artifact – especially photographs. The memories may be orphaned, but the photographs are awakened. The image is loosely tucked into each new letter, written in unpretentious typewritten script. In this way, the two find each other as fresh image-text pairs.

The letters are stacked on top of each other as eight-page folded sheets. It almost looks like a book block. There's no conventional binding at the spine, as that would leave the letters sealed. The combination of slipcase and belly band ultimately serves to hold them together . So, it is a book after all.