It’s OK to look
It’s OK to look. A shroud for a Book of Dead. Cotton, jute, book. 2021.
Use play/pause for different views.
A variation of this work was custom made for the cover of Dark Mountain Issue 19: Requiem, with the following words:
I wanted you to know you were being handed a Book of Dead, so I made a scale model of one, wrapped it in a shroud of torn cotton fabric, bound it with jute yarn – both ancient materials – and photographed it as I would an archaeological find, or a museum exhibit.
There are few among us who are bold enough to return death’s gaze with ease. Yet as with mortality (and our fear of it), which appears at first inscrutable, enshrouded, intangible, this book is painlessly opened, bound with nothing more than ideas. To those intrepid explorers who stand at the threshold of our only certainty, the title of this photograph offers the following encouragement: it’s OK to look.
