MANUAL (Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom) | La Fontaine the Fabulist, 2012

It's been nine years since we created La Fontaine the Fabulist. We have been asked why and how we made a photo work so tall. The simple answer to why is artistic challenge. And believe us, producing a seven-foot-tall image of two nine-inch-tall books was definitely a major challenge. The picture's file had to be high resolution. That is very, very large, equal to the challenge of producing a photograph that size, however, is the issue of scale. Scale is really part of the photograph's message. The author of the books, Monsieur Jean de La Fontaine, was a famous 17th century French poet. In fact, he was a fable, telling fabulist. So, our thinking was that our photograph would have to be monumental in order to measure up to la Fontaine's messaging as a fabulist. We've dealt with books as a subject since the beginning of our collaboration in 1974. In fact, our name MANUAL in part refers to manuals, those books and pamphlets that help guide us through life's many tasks and interests. But in 2010, we turned 100% of our artistic focus to the subject of books in what has become an ongoing series, the book project. We thank you for your interest just in our work.