Flicker. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2005.
Flicker. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2005.
Flicker. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2005.
Flicker. Emily McVarish. Granary Books. 2005.

Flicker.

Granary Books, 2005. Item #GB_126

8 x 10 1/4 in., 48 pp., paper over boards with dust jacket.

Flicker’s design and production seek to embody the combinations of presence and absence that surround and consume us every day: the mold of a tenant held by an apartment’s design (and of an era’s beliefs by its façade), the abstraction of drivers in traffic, the simultaneous concentration and distraction of a screen watcher, the constant here-and-gone movement of a pedestrian. Flicker’s text juxtaposes and intersects strains of these four figures—buildings, traffic, a watcher, and a walker—in the shared streets of a city to see if they ever add up to a whole. Flicker’s pages are composed of thousands of pieces of lead type turned on their heads and printed as a solid matrix. Text occurs in the clearings of this background where type has been flipped rightside up to show its readable face. Also accommodated in the micro-grid of Flicker’s pages are isolated wood letters and small duotones. The latter were printed from polymer plates of digital video stills. Further complicating relations of negative and positive space and of sequence, die-cut holes link images and texts through multiple spreads.

Flicker was written, designed, and printed by Emily McVarish. Quarter cloth binding with printed paper over boards by Coriander Reisbord with McVarish; printed dust jacket. This is from an edition of 45 copies, of which 10 are hors commerce and 35 are for sale; each signed by the artist. Out-of-print.




Pictured: cover; pp. 25–26; 29–30; and 33–34.

Further reading: Drucker, Johanna. “Book Spaces City Spaces.” Afterimage, September/October 2005.

Out of Stock