Fine Art Photography Daily

Dodeca Meters: Sara J. Winston, tamara suarez porras, and Anna Rotty

Zach Clark: I should probably start talking about the books by talking about the parameters for the project as a whole, which honestly were pretty simple: I asked each artist to create work for a one color photobook, which would be printed in a single Risograph color. The most difficult part of the process was everyone selecting which color they would use, as every color could only be used once. The blues involved the biggest debate, which if I have to guess is because we’re all used to seeing blue photographic images thanks to cyanotype; orange… not so much. From there, there really were no rules. I wanted these pages to be a space for each photographer to experiment and interpret the idea of a photobook in whatever way they saw fit and exciting.

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© Sara J. Winston / National Monument Press

Issue #1: Good Weather by Sara J. Winston

ZC: First, I have to just say how grateful I am that Sara was willing to be the first book in the series, and with her, I could figure out all the specifics of the project alongside her work, including several issues with printing on some of the paper stocks we were potentially working with for all 12 books, and creating the specifications for every approach to printing we could use to send out to folks. Luckily, it all eventually came together nicely.

One of the approaches several artists took for this series was using their book as an opportunity to revisit older work that they hadn’t figured out yet. Good Weather is one of those books, a collection of photos almost a decade old that the exact timing of using them hadn’t felt right. I love the cover and how the grasshopper really became a symbol for the project, for me.

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© Sara J. Winston / National Monument Press

Good Weather is a series of photographs made by Sara J. Winston in Mohall, North Dakota in the summer of 2009. Mohall is 22 miles south of Saskatchewan, Canada and approximately 90 miles east of the Montana border. Her great grandparent’s homesteaded in Mohall at the turn of the 20th century; her mother was born there; and her relatives continued to live there until 2018.
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© Sara J. Winston / National Monument Press

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© Sara J. Winston / National Monument Press

Good Weather is 28 pages, Risograph printed in Brick on Domtar and French papers. 5×8″. Edition of 200 +25. Published in January of 2024.

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© tamara suarez porras / National Monument Press

Issue #2: parallax errors by tamara suarez porras 

ZC: parallax errors is a funny one, cause on its surface this looks like one of the most experimental books in the series, but in reality is some of the most straightforward reproduction of an artist’s work in the series, tamara’s photos are just that wild and wonderful in real life. The big swing on this book was that we printed the entire book as an inverse, using a light gray ink color called mist, which is one of a handful of opaque riso inks, to then print on to this dark blue paper. Tamara put a ton of work into making a lot of image files that would translate this well and we did a ton of tests and none of them were right. I eventually made these edits that looked horrifyingly wrong on the screen, but ended up compensating the reversal values right where we wanted them to be once printed.
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©tamara suarez porras / National Monument Press

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© tamara suarez porras / National Monument Press

parallax errors is the risograph publication companion to porras’ body of work of the same name, concerned with how one perceives the world, both visually and experientially through their identity, and the unreliability of certainty they can provide. parallax errors is the second issue in the Dodeca Meters series, and is being released in conjunction or the debut of the photographic body of work at the California Institute of Integral Studies, on February 3rd, 2024.

 

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© tamara suarez porras / National Monument Press

parallax errors is 36 pages, Risograph printed in Mist on French Night Shift paper. 5×8″. Edition of 200 +25. Published in February of 2024.


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© Anna Rotty / National Monument Press

Issue #3: Cottonwood Prism by Anna Rotty
ZC: Anna’s work in the last few years involves manipulating and photographing existing photographs, as well as attempting to capture the ephemerality of things like light and water. Trying to translate that to this project, we got really weird on the scanner bed; Anna brought a collection of photos and photos of photos we layered on to the scanner bed along with things like trying to scan water, to… mixed results. This was actually the first book in the series we started to print while Anna was visiting during the holidays, and after getting half way through the book and eating the biggest burritos anyone has ever seen, Anna went back to New Mexico and we spent a few months putting the finished touches on this from afar using the archive Anna left in the studio. I’d say this was hands down the most experimental book in the series.
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© Anna Rotty / National Monument Press

Cottonwood Prism is a multi approach documentation of Anna’s work investigating the Rio Grande River Valley thru New Mexico, comprised of risograph presentations of photographs, collages, and organic material created and collected within the making of her body of work focusing on the relationship between light, water, and infrastructure.
 

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© Anna Rotty / National Monument Press

Cottonwood Prism is 24 pages, Risograph printed in Blue on French Natural Kraft and Springhill Blue paper. 5×8″. Edition of 200 +25. Published in March of 2024.

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© Anna Rotty / National Monument Press


Zach Clark is an artisteducator, and curator based in Oakland, California; the publisher of National Monument Press; one half of Chute Studio; a collaborative Risograph publishing studio; author of A Mixtape Left Behind, a monthly music and memory newsletter.

National Monument Press is the publishing project of Oakland based artist Zach Clark focused on supporting the investigation and documentation of uniquely American stories through small edition artists’ books, zines, and printed matter, conceived of and completed largely through collaboration with other artists.

Sara J. Winston is a contributing editor to Lenscratch. She is an artist and writer based in New York. She works with photographs, text, and the book form to describe and respond to chronic illness and its ongoing impact on her body, mind, family, and memory. Sara is the author of several photobooks, among them Foibles & Avoidance (National Monument Press, 2024), Shades (Push Pull Editions, 2023), A Lick and a Promise (Candor Arts, 2017) and Homesick (Zatara Press, 2015). 

Sara is Artist in Residence and Photography Program Coordinator at Bard College; Acting Chair of the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Photobook Program; and a member of Storm King Art Center‘s Accessibility Advisory Group. 

On June 29, 2023, her long-term project about multiple sclerosis care, Our body is a clock, was adapted and published as an op-ed in the New York Times, titled ‘My body is a clock’: The Private Life of Chronic Care.

tamara suarez porras (they/she) is an artist, writer, and educator from (south) Brooklyn, NY, and based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

tamara’s work examines experiences of knowing, remembering, and forgetting, working across photography, writing, installation, filmmaking, and performance. tamara has exhibited nationally, including at the Brooklyn Museum, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, School at the International Center of Photography, Center for Book Arts, En Foco Touring Gallery, and Deitch Projects in New York City, as well as Root Division, Kala Art Institute Gallery, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco Center for the Book, Your Mood Projects, fusedspace, The Growlery, and Embark Gallery in the San Francisco Bay Area. tamara’s writing has been published on The Brooklyn Rail, Art Practical, and 48hills.

tamara is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Photography+Imaging and Journalism and of California College of the Arts with a dual MFA/MA in Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies. tamara is a Lecturer in the Art Practice department at Stanford University, and has also taught at colleges and universities across the Bay Area. tamara is a member of Black Hole Collective Film Lab and the Curatorial Council at Southern Exposure.

Anna Rotty investigates water, light, and infrastructure, informing her understanding of orientation and place. By constructing landscapes and making light a priority, Anna looks to highlight the intangible and emotional aspects of the world. Recent photographic and installation-based work explores the waters of the Rio Grande where she lives. She recently received her MFA from the University of New Mexico on Tiwa land known as Albuquerque, where she teaches photography. She is a current fellow at the Silver Eye Center for Photography.

Follow Zach Clark/National Monument Press, Sara J. Winston, tamara suarez porras, and Anna Rotty on Instagram: @zachclarkis@sarajwinston; @obviously_tma@annarotty

Posts on Lenscratch may not be reproduced without the permission of the Lenscratch staff and the photographer.


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