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• 1 2016-12-06T09:57:10-08:00 Sumo Geisha Sashimi 11 gallery 2016-12-06T20:54:04-08:00 For this exploration of a book quality, it makes sense to begin with the traditional codex form.
  
  The first artist book we will look at is Sumo Geisha Sashimi by Brad Freeman.
  
  This book takes the form of the codex bound by a traditional Japanese stab-binding technique (which, as it happens, reflects the work’s content – one instance of a bookish practice of relating form to function). The content of the work plays on the juxtaposition of recto and verso on a page spread of an open codex. On the left side of the page, the author/artist displays an image of a sumo wrestling match. As the reader progresses through the book, this same image is continuously zoomed in to reveal a geisha sitting in the audience, and then continues zooming until the picture is nothing but pixels on a page. On the right side of the page, the image is part of a photo series that progresses throughout the book of a butcher preparing sashimi.
  
  In his artist statement on the work, Freeman elaborates on his use of the recto/verso system:

  “Complexity and resonance can build as the pages are turned. A single image exists within the context of what happened before and implies what might occur on future pages…
  The book consists of two temporal systems appearing at the same time, with one time system on the verso and one on the recto. Both temporal systems exist simultaneously on the plane of the page spread with the gutter separating the two systems. On each verso page one moment is captured in a photograph and gradually enlarges with each turn to reveal the geisha. On the recto a sequence of moments captured photographically displays the butchering of a tuna. The codex form provides the perfect container for linking these two time systems to create an associative viewing experience.”

  Concisely, Freeman says [on this work] in the Journal of Artists' Books (2014):

              “The intention was to take advantage of the book’s verso/recto form and create a correspondence among the images across the gutter that would not have been possible if each sequence was presented alone.”

  
  With the clarity of Freeman’s statements, one can understand the affordance of juxtaposition through recto/verso form.