STONES is a limited edition box-set of books by Canadian artist Claire Falkenberg. In collaboration with Open Projects Press, the set includes six handmade photo books: ‘Wet Night’ (2010); ‘River Trees’ (2016); ‘Continents’ (2017); ‘Rippling’ (2017); ‘Cedar’ (2018); ‘Constellations’ (2018); and an offset-printed poster, ‘Heartbreaker’ (2018). All seven are full-color landscapes of varying sizes, papers, and bindings. Falkenberg’s photographic sequences are visual poems that immerse the viewer in a sensation she describes as “both knowing and not knowing.” These slow pivoting observations evoke a direct experience of the landscapes themselves: the feeling of trees, of trash, of ice, of light. Using different sizes, bindings and pacing for each piece - some form continuous loops while others hold still - Falkenberg makes these inchoate feelings miraculously tangible. Speaking of her work at large, Falkenberg says, “I spend a great deal of time just observing, trying to feel the thing I am looking at, trying to see the thing more clearly. I want to know it and I want to not know it. I want it to feel completely familiar while at the same time remaining mysterious, eluding me and eluding definition. It is this simultaneous sensation of knowing and not knowing that I am after. Through this experience, I want to provoke a feeling that comes before words, names or stories, a deep and subtle sense that causes one to wonder: What is this thing, and how do I already know it?” - Open Projects Press
35mm photography; laser-printed books; offset printed poster; silk-screened box; edition of 25; dimensions: 12.5” x 19” x 2.25” / 31.75cm x 48.25cm x 5.75cm