Friday, April 10, 2015

OUGD505 / Studio Brief 01 / Research / Holy Bible by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin


“Right from the start, almost every appearance he made was catastrophic… 
Catastrophe is his means of operation, and his central instrument of governance."

-Adi Ophir


A fine example of appropriation and synthesis between form and content.

Imitating the King James Bible would direct all design decisions.

The imagery created is somewhat similar to the techniques commonly 
used in contemporary Graphic Design; Collage and Placement.

The context of the copy within the book becomes skewed, as it's not intended to be read yet it is intended to convey the concepts within and the content of the bible. This is then illustrated with the appropriated photos from the archive, this is probably the only source of such imagery as common partaking in photography at natural disasters may not be a sustainable career.












Violence, calamity and the absurdity of war are recorded through image extensively within The Archive of Modern Conflict.

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin mined this archive with philosopher Adi Ophir’s central tenet in mind: that God reveals himself predominantly through catastrophe and that power structures within the Bible correlate with those within modern systems of governance.

The format of Broomberg and Chanarin’s illustrated Holy Bible mimics both the precise structure and the physical form of the King James Version. By allowing elements of the original text to guide their image selection, the artists explore themes of authorship, and the unspoken criteria used to determine acceptable evidence of conflict.


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