“I always enjoy experiencing a photo book that doesn’t deny the process through which it was made… The intricate, handcrafted attention given to constructing these photo books is absolutely paramount. It takes an extreme amount of craft, care, attention, to make something look this effortless and simple. The multiple folds for pages, gatefold spreads, inserts, and all the other magic put into these bound works of art dramatically raises the bar,” Cary Benbow, F Stop
A companion to Oil Sands, Mountaintops to Moonscapes comprises a large-format book with slip-sleeve, hand-bound in multiple parts, and a booklet in which origami folding techniques are used to express the violence being done to the Appalachian landscape.
The team chose a generous format for the larger book to perfectly show the huge landscapes Alan was documenting, along with the vast areas of land being destroyed. Photographs of leafy mountain towns soon give way to the industry of mountaintop removal mining. The book is bound in four parts, allowing the photos to overlap in different combinations, showing the complicated relationship between environmental issues and the local economy.
The final image is one large photo showing the destruction left behind. The cover is printed on a textured card representing the tactile nature of the land.
A small booklet containing text-based information accompanies the larger book and includes a paper explosion that gives sculptural form to the mountaintop removal mining process.
