Papyrus Productions ~ New York
(Francois Deschamps and Judith Mohns)

Photographic bookworks by Francois Deschamps
Work by Francois Deschamps
Work by Judith Mohns

Drone/ 1, 2, 3
By Francois Deschamps
Rochester, New York: Visual Studies Workshop, 2010. Edition of 250.

Assemblage in 12 x 9" hinged tin with three pamphlet-stitched books and remote control reproduction. Drone 1: 8.75 x 8.5"; 50 pages. Drone 2: 8.75 x 8.5"; 42 pages. Drone 3: 8.75 x 8.5"; 46 pages. Universal remote: 8.75 x 2.75"; lightweight card stock; three dimensional. Illustrated paper title tipped on lid of container.

Visual Studies Workshop: "This book project comprises a series of three pamphlet-stitched books collected in a presentation hinged tin along with a three dimensional image object of a universal remote. The project deals with remote projections of power at various times in history through metaphors developed around the three principal meanings of the word 'drone'.

"Drone 1 based on the drone as a male bee, creates new images of colonial history.
Drone 2 based on the white noise of a drone, juxtaposes images of the good life in the United States with watercolors of violent scenes from newspapers.
Drone 3 reflects on current events such as the use of drones for combat, video games which desensitize children to remote killing, and suicide bombings which are also a form of remote warfare.

"The books are structured so that between each full page is a half page; as one flips through the books, each image spread is modified by the half page flap to create new and sometimes disturbing juxtapositions. All photographs and drawings are by the author except those from colonial histories." (Honorable Mention in the 2011 MCBA Prize)
$275

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PEORIA
A Romance
By Francois Deschamps
New Paltz, New York: Papyrus Productions, 2009. Edition of 35.

9.5 x 8"; 28 pages. Digitally printed on French paper. Handbound stab binding.

A conventional presentation of convention, set in the heart of convention, where even the betrayals and hypocrisy seem sweetly shabby.

Francois Deschamps: "At the same time as it narrates the story of an unfortunate love affair in Peoria in 1976, this book describes through Polaroid images and text the physical appearance of the city of Peoria. This comments on aspects of that city's Midwestern culture and a melancholy sense of loss."
$60

Souvenir of Kingston
By Francois Deschamps
New Paltz, New York: Papyrus Productions, 2009. Edition of 50.

7 x 10"; 58 pages. Printed on French paper. Stab binding.

Although this book might seem to bow to Ed Ruscha's Twentysix Gasoline Stations, it does so only as a point of difference. The images of Kingston, disembodied from any context but this book, seem chosen and arranged as individual statements of social meaning – particularly the effect of change, changed circumstance, changed priorities, changed technology – rather than as a witty swipe at perceived pretention. Souvenir of Kingston is just that, a definition of place, and not a comment on repetition and banality.

Francois Deschamps: "Presented on the occasion of the four hundredth anniversary of Hudson's sailing in 1609, this book is based on a Souvenir of Kingston published one hundred years ago. That original Souvenir featured accomplishments of civic pride and a sense of high patriotism. One hundred years later, this book reveals the buildings of Kingston, New York, as a palimpsest of historical overlays which allude to these cultural and historic changes. This project is supported in part with funds from The New York Foundation for the Arts and The New York State Council on the Arts. "

Francois Deschamps, JAB 27: "Kingston is a charming slightly deteriorating river town with a varied topography, especially down by the creek that feeds into the Hudson. The approach is deadpan but the buildings themselves are amusing, isolated from their backgrounds and juxtaposed, like the Greek temples on pages 6-7. These temple houses were actually next to each other on the street, as if there had been a Greek temple competition between two families. The visual strategy of isolating the structures also turns the buildings into little models, which is the way I was seeing them. This book is an homage to the wonderful funkiness of this town."
$90

Gerontion
1898 - 1998
By Francois Deschamps
New Paltz, New York: Papyrus Productions, 2008. Edition of 100.

9.75 x 7.5"; 84 pages. Casebound.

A pictorial biography, perhaps a deconstruction, of a local personality, a character whom people knew mainly from his own stories. Here it's a mix between "You are what you can make other people believe" and "You are what you leave behind in your house." This book pays dignified attention to the mystery of one human being.

Francois Deschamps, Forward [sic]: "Albert 'Yellow Kid' Gerontion lived in Catskill, New York, from 1962 until his death at the age of 100 in 1998. He was a quaint, local character who claimed to have been a great flimflam artist starting in the 1920's. Few had ever been in his house until, following a neighbor's tip, police found him dead on a sofa in front of a television blaring an afternoon soap opera. The unusual contents of the house sparked interest in this man who was mysterious and unknown until the end."

Gerontion, text: "A pile of newspaper clippings found in the chaos of books and papers on an upstairs bed caused many to question Gerontion's stories. It appeared that he was obsessed with the story of Joseph 'Yellow Kid' Weil. He may have used the news articles to create the story of an exciting past and to transform himself into a glamorous personality. If so, what was his true past? The artifacts in his house suggest that at least some of his claims were real. In any case, it makes an interesting chapter in the history of this small river town which time has forgotten."

Francois Deschamps, JAB 27: "For this book, I took a group of photographs I had made and centered them around a real historical character Joseph 'Yellow Kid' Weil who I renamed Albert Gerontion. At the end we find out that Gerontion was using the stories about the historical 'Yellow Kid' to make himself interesting. The book uses layers of fraud to look at the slippery nature of history and narration."
$65

(No Words)
By Francois Deschamps
New Paltz, New York: Papyrus Productions, 2008. Edition of 100.

8.5 x 8.5"; 94 pages. Casebound. In pictorial wraps.

There are a few words, but the core of (No Words) is a pictorial presentation that calls into question the romantic view most Westerners hold of Oceana, the South Seas, and adventures in paradise.

Francois Deschamps: "Juxtaposing historical images and photographs taken in the Pacific from 1994-2001, this book deconstructs the imagery of this highly mythologized region of the world. The sequencing of the images is organized by thematic issues such as death, interracial relations, education, Oceanic waters, and changes in historical representation. An index of the images at the end gives extremely precise information on sources."

Francois Deschamps, JAB 27: "I called it (No Words) because I wanted the juxtapositions of historical photographs with new photographs that I had taken to speak for themselves. On page 34-35 there is a short visual history of the Fijian war canoe: this goes from an 1884 account in a missionary journal, to a photograph by the Burton Brothers, to that same photograph translated into an 1880 textbook, and finally a photograph of a model of a war canoe for tourists. This book is about history, change, and the myths we create to understand new experiences."
$65

Reading Guillevic on a Sunny Day
Euclidiennes
By Francois Deschamps
New Paltz, New York: Papyrus Productions, 2009. Edition of 100.

9 x 6"; 66 pages. Text in French. Casebound with 4.5"-wide band wrapping from inside front cover to inside back cover.

Papyrus Productions: "Based on a discarded copy of Euclidiennes by the French poet Guillevic, this book is about the experience of reading that original book. The spaces of the page spreads, lit by sunlight, are represented as an experience to examine and treasure — a new space for new emotions. As each page simultaneously reveals its front and back, the translucence and depth of space and time are made material."

Francois Deschamps: "I was given a copy of Euclidiennes, discarded by a library, but nonetheless a thing of exquisite beauty. Reading Guillevic on a Sunny Day is my book about the experience of reading that book. The collection of poems, Euclidiennes, by the french poet Guillevic uses the figures of euclidean geometry as metaphors to comment on emotions, feelings, and relationships, thereby laying bare the Cartesian duality. In my book, the spaces of the page spreads, lit by sunlight, are represented as an experience to examine and treasure — a new space for new emotions. ... The book is dedicated to my father, a mathematician and lover of geometry. He made this drawing to illustrate a hyperbolic universe where space becomes infinitely dense as one reaches the edge, thereby paradoxically creating an infinite universe in a finite space. Can a book be a hyperbolic universe?"
$50

The Pet Quartet
By Francois Deschamps
New Paltz, New York: New Shed Press, 2006. Edition of 25.

5.5 x 4.25"; 24 pages. Four chapbook-type volumes housed in box with illustrated title paper on lid.

New Shed Press: "Long awaited ... 20 years in the making ... These four exciting volumes, assembled for the first time, span Deschamps' heady rise from canary breeder to general pet philosopher and theorist."

The four volumes were produced between 1986 and 2006, and are here collected in a boxed set as a Special Collector's Edition.

How to Care for Your Canary, originally published in 1984, contains Deschamps' sage wisdom about owning a canary: "Do not mention famous opera singers around a canary."

How to Care for Your Pet Lobster, initially produced in 1986, contains similar sage snippets: "It is good etiquette not to boil water within earshot of your pet's hearing."

General Pet Theory, originally produced in 1994, offers perspective on pet ownership: "Who is Whose Pet?"
Dead Pets includes "Pet Epitaphs" to "fittingly memorialize a life well lived."

Francois Deschamps, JAB 27: "On the backs of the books one can notice that the author is gradually aging, losing hair, and on the last book there is only a parrot on a skull as it is supposedly written posthumously by Deschamps' pet parrot who simply repeated the author's words in his parrot-like fashion. The canary book is fairly jolly and optimistic in tone, with important information about canary care such as feeding, naming, and canary history. The lobster book follows the same format with interesting facts about lobsters, different types of obscure lobsters and a catalog. General Pet Theory deals with pet tricks, the history of pets, and endeavors to look at existential questions such as 'can a pet be owned?' In Dead Pets the problem of death is examined. There is the clock theory (that a pet is a clock with a spring), the germ theory (that germs are everywhere), the guilt theory (that pets commit sins which cause their systems to deteriorate), and finally the economic theory (that a vast network of pet entrepreneurs cause premature obsolescence in their product). The reader can take their pick. This set of books is soft-core philosophy asking questions about life and the meaning of life in small, pleasing doses."
$115

Memoire D'Un Voyage En Oceanie
By Francois Deschamps
University of Auckland, New Zealand: PhotoForum, 1995. Edition of 1000.

6 x 8.25"; 96 pages.Gray illustrated wraps. Illustrated throughout. Offset printed in three colors on acid-free paper. With a smyth-sewn binding. Printed at the Elam Fine Arts Printing Research Unit, at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

The fictional memoirs of a voyage in Oceania that included Dr. Ernst Schlotte (scientist? owner of luxury goods store in Bremen? cannibal?) and François Deschamps (diminutive ship's photographer) and the monograph's putative author. Introduction by Dr Hinemoa Heke-Gibbons, afterword by Joan Turner, R.N.

Francois Deschamps: "This monograph is the study of a fictitious voyage of the ship Curriodity in the South Seas ca. 1920. It features a facsimile version of the journal left by one member of the expedition."

Francois Deschamps, JAB 27: "I created a fictitious memoir that would have been written in 1914 by a South Seas expedition photographer who was a dwarf and produced a journal documenting the (evil_ Doctor Schlotte's quest for a cannibal feast. In a sense it is very similar to Sombras Rojas, both using the device of a book within a book, as well as a lonely, misunderstood, and disabled narrator to tell a story about political ideas. This is the story of a man, Francois Deschamps, born a midget in Sydney in 1883. He was selected to be the expedition photographer because he fit in the tiny darkroom on the ship. He did not even use an enlarger; he put negatives on a darkened window with a lens in front to make exposures. Later he was marooned on an island and he made a crude camera so that he could continue to make photographs. Underlying all this is the simultaneous progress of World War I in Europe. The violence that we ascribe to the natives of the Pacific, such as cannibalism, is contrasted with the massive impersonal violence on the battlefields of World War I where millions perished. This book is not an apology for cannibalism, but asks questions about the nature and uses of violence."
$30

A Guide to Antipodea
By Francois Deschamps
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Papyrus Productions / Borowsky Center for Publication Arts, 1992. Edition of 300.

5.75 x 9"; 32 pages. Offset printed in 7 colors on French text and cover. Printed at the Borowsky Center for Publication Arts at The University of the Arts (Philadelphia).

"Tired of the persistent pull of Gravity? Float off to Antipodea — home of beautiful natives, fine foods, long beaches and, best of all, a weak gravitational field!"

"Return with a small, native child for entertainment in your suburban home. Send it to an American school and see what happens! It's harmless and fun?"

Francois Deschamps: "This guide to a fictitious 'primitive' land questions issues of cultural identity and in particular, the relationship between oppressor and oppressed cultures."

Francois Deschamps, JAB 27: "Antipodea is a place where there is only a very gentle pull of gravity, which makes it an attractive tourist destination. It is fun to go there and enjoy a vacation floating around. ... This place is basically a western playground. The book comments on how we use those places and how we ultimately destroy them. ... At the end it is even suggested that one can return home with a small native child for one's entertainment."
$75

Remembrance
By Judith Mohns
[Rosendale, New York]: Women's Studio Workshop, 2003. Edition of 400.

6.5 x 6.5"; 72 pages. Offset printed on French Dur-O-Tone Newsprint text and cover (100% recycled and acid-free). Pamphlet sewn.

Judith Mohns: "This book uses the August 26, 2001 obituary page from The New York Times to create new readings of the existing text by isolating different words and lines. The visible and underlying structures of obituaries, families, society, and the qualities of life and death itself are explored revealing both the cold commonalities and the very personal specifics of the lives of the deceased."

You'll never read the obituary page quite the same way again.
$40

Quartet
By Judith Mohns
Auckland, New Zealand: Papyrus Productions, 1995. Edition of 300.

Each book 4.75 x 4.75". Four books laid in paper wrap enclosure with cutout for title. Housed in sturdy black archival box (5 x 5") with title on lid. Offset printed at the Elam Fine Arts Printing Research Unit at The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Judith Mohns: "Like variations on a theme, Quartet is a set of four books, each printed on different papers and independently structured. Using transparency, gate-folds, die-cuts, two-color printing and paper manipulation, these books explore a personal journey of identity and conflict."

Each book, with form and content reflecting the slant, poses a form of the existential dilemma: What makes me me? Destiny, genes, conditioning, choice?
$150