People will spout about impermanence of digital records, but books are really fragile, too. Alexis Arnold from San Francisco wanted to illustrate that with her project The Crystallized Book: collecting books and growing Borax crystals on them. Books range from literature classics to magazines, and there’s even a mysterious and arcane tome called “Linux: The Complete Manual”.
Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan and many more children's classics are recreated by these book based babies. The gorgeous photos come via Venture Photography for National Storytelling Week.
This series of work is a collection of wooden books in which all kinds of details emerge from the raw material. Hands reach out, trying to escape the confines of the pages, faces seem to appear out of nowhere, and unknown characters are set behind wooden bars, trapped within the various pieces with titles like The Book of Life, The Magic Mountain, and The Book of Dreams. Orlandi has a vivid imagination and his fine works bring the characters of these storybooks to life in front of our eyes.
A Belarussian tourist crosses the river as he takes part in “Search and rescue operations – 2016”, a three-day competition, near the village of Priselki, Belarus, November 25, 2016. Photo taken November 25, 2016. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)
Justin Rowe creates these magical sculptures from hand cut books and found images with the help of just a touch of gum arabic and 24 carat gold or palladium leaf. Some are very much in the realms of fairy stories like the one above, but my favourites are the stories below where Justin’s skill brings the book’s own illustrations to life.