19.06_26.08.1945 by Andrea Botto.
In this artist book, Botto traces the homeward journey taken by his grandfather as he left a Nazi camp at the end of World War II and travelled south through Europe to Tuscany. Botto himself produces none of the material that is included in this book, but draws from two different sources: the Internet, and documents that belonged to his grandfather during the time he was imprisoned. Following his grandfather's path, Botto searched online using the names of the towns and the year he had passed through them. He compiled the images he found, and used them in his book, interspersing the personal documents throughout.
This method is quite contradictory; using personal, handwritten documents from his grandfather, and connecting them with images taken by strangers and posted on the vast, impersonal Internet. Many of the images are irrelevant to themes of war, imprisonment, or journeying. The subject matter varies greatly, showing people, animals, maps, buildings, etc. All of the subjects in the photographs were likely never seen by his grandfather as he passed through. However, the found media that Botto provides places us in a specific time and place. The journey taken is understood by viewers as geographical and temporal, but even with the documents of his grandfather, we are mostly barred from any connection to his personal journey.
One factor that contributes to this distance from the personal in exchange for a connection with the era and geography of the book is linked to the almost theatrical way that Botto displays the personal documents of his grandfather. Photocopying hundreds of replicas of these documents, Botto goes through a process of "aging" the papers. The fact that they are already 70 years old, and he still goes through methods to, in a way, add authenticity to them, negates these efforts and makes the documents feel less authentic. Those interacting with the book can see folds and tears in the copy, yet the paper is stiff and flat. It's just an illusion of age. This bars us from feeling authentically connected to Botto's grandfather's journey, but still provides the imagery of age and history.
We will now take another quite dramatic step away from what the narrative of a journey would be in a traditional book by looking at Time and Space by Ken Leslie.
