Book review / “Death is Not Here”, by Wouter Van de Voorde (published by Void). Reviewed by CON BOEKEL.

THE imagery in “Death is not here” is about life and death. The text is limited to the four words of the title. Photos form the bulk of the book.

The brachiopod drawings are of fossilized creatures which first lived and died half a billion years ago. Death heads are drawn into the fossils. A skull is modelled from earth and placed on a living human hand. A sulphur-crested cockatoo suffering, clinging to life but dying, is encased in a sarcophagus of funereal black pages. Shakespearean ravens, foreshadowing doom, lurk on modern urban battlements.

These images are juxtaposed with eggs, symbols of fertility and the beginnings of life. A mother suckles a baby. A young boy explores his expanding world. Ravens gather around the kangaroo carrion, seeking life from death. A man’s feet stand at the edge of the flaming entrance to hell. Towards the end of the book various themes come together. The boy climbs a ladder into the future yet flaming Hades beckons.

One of the themes of the imagery is the way in which life is embedded in space and time. The photographer has constructed a corner of a “room”. Using this device, the viewer is led to believe that what they are seeing in the corner is a lot larger than it is. When the fossils are arranged, rearranged and built into towers their visual presence is enlarged. But when they are juxtaposed visually with something at a “live” scale – a hand or a raven – they assume their rightful proportions.

Photobooks are one of the few art forms intended to be touched and held. This book is a sensuous hold. The grades of paper are varied. The binding, with glue and stitching exposed, is as if born naked into the world. It practically begs the holder to run a finger along the spine.

An alternative way of “reading” the book is to ignore possible conceptual interpretations altogether and to absorb directly the book’s pictoriality.

Texture, line, shades, planes, shapes and patterns, come into their own. The printing is just so. The blacks and greys have a pervasive, tactile sootiness. The cream paper balances the greys. Blank cream or black pages help mould the eye’s journey. Photos bleed to the edge, or cross the gutter, or nestle one with another. Margins vary from non-existent to wide.

Some of the images are displayed like photographs pasted into a snapshot book. Some photos appear to be part of the fabric of the page, soaked into the paper. The photos are the book.

Throughout, there are thoughtful and sometimes tongue-in-cheek touches. The ISBN number is writ large on the back cover. Here there is an ink splash; there, a dark room smudge.

The overall result is a powerful visual rhythm. João Linneus’ design is effortless. In his hands the book is an expression of joie de vivre.

Ultimately, the conceptual and visual interpretations combine extremely well. For example, there is a stunning page turner from an image of a constructed tower of fossils on one page to a flock of adult ravens on the following page. The ravens are teaching a young raven a vital lesson of raven life – its place in the pecking order. The complexity of conceptual and visual imagery comes together in a most satisfying way.

There is an intensely absorbing dance in this photobook. Epicurus wrote that as long as we are alive, “…death is not here”. As long as we are alive we can give life to a photobook. We can love it like loving life. But we can fear it for its ability to outlive us. When we hold it, we hold life in our hands but we touch our mortality.

In the valley of the shadow of pandemic death, “Death is Not Here…” is a life-affirming tour de force.