Marieke / Photobook Analysis

Photo Works Beyond Reality by Schilte and Portielje

Hardback, sewn bound, self-published, 21 cm x 21 cm

Schilte and Portielje

The duo Schilte and Portielje work in a very interesting way where their photography looks like it could be a drawing, painting or collage, you don't immediately recognize their medium. It’s very valuable to me because their works have the essence of a charcoal drawing and I used to do a lot of these myself. The title of the book is: Beyond reality and I think this really reflects their way of working. They explain that by manipulating the individual characteristics of the toner and varnish they try to guide the process towards an end result that holds the middle ground between a photograph and drawing. To increase this distance between art and reality even further they work in black and white.

They have this quest to design the ultimate work together and this is so engrossing to them that it compensates for the long and uncertain trajectory they have to follow to engender a photo work and bring it to completion. I would explain their technique as a collage style of working.

All of the photo works they have created together form a unity that could lend itself to interpretation. They do however eschew meaningful titles and expository texts because they feel this restricts the autonomous perception of the onlooker.

Because they would rather limit themselves to the photo works itself. Together, in this publication all of these photographs form an image-story that continuously offers fresh angles of approach. With this they hope to raise new questions about the work, and invite the viewer to follow their progress in the future.

So I think this book is an experimental artist statement to showcase their body of work. Since the photographs are a combination of their work in an exposition setting, workspace and their original photographs. Both of these elements are portrayed in the book.

What interests me so much about the design of the pages is that the photobook gives the illusion of being a gallery itself. It is very obvious to me that each image has been picked with a lot of care as every image that is selected on the pages makes an interesting combination. A lot of sizes and positions of the photographs are unconventional. For example sometimes a very small image owns an entire page and is combined with a page filling image on the page next to it. Sometimes an image is positioned entirely on the right sometimes on the left. Some almost look like cut out images on a page like the image is just a narrow stripe. While other pages have multiple images combined on them in different or the same sizes. They really play around with the way you pay attention to their images by doing this.

I feel like they have been quite original with the lay-out and they have a very good eye for the combination of their images on the spreads of their photobook. All of the images are very surreal in their nature and there is a very clear visual language present. While I also feel that every spread is quite different in layout and imagery. The design is solitary and distant like the images themselves like it’s an own universe.

This book was given to me during a short photography course at my Bachelors by the teacher that gave it to me. He thought it matched my own practice and I still feel that this is the case and that is why Photo Works Beyond Reality is one of my favorite photobooks.

Design wise, yes maybe it is also a bit conventional in a way I noticed this with the cover and the use of paper.

But at the same time I don’t really mind this as I feel that their imagery demands your full attention and I don’t think elements like cut outs or folds in the paper would have worked. Since they are so creative with the placement of the images and the combinations of them I feel that a simplistic design is more suitable so I understand their decision on this part. It also matches well with the black and white colour scheme and choice to not use any text combined with the photographs.

Maybe they made the decision to keep the design more simplistic besides the layout since the images themselves are so surreal and loaded.

I can see myself making similar choices when I will make a photo book even though I can also imagine that by using unconventional methods for the cover, paper and binding can also help to bring a certain focus to the images portrayed.