One for the Other

Book created for Chido Johnson’s project Let’s Talk About Love Baby. Chido has created a Love Library that continues to grow as it travels and is exhibited.

The book I made for the library is titled, One for the Other, a phrase that comes from Roland Barthes’ book, Lover’s Discourse, in the fragment on union. I was hoping to capture both the solidity and the fragility of a lifelong union between two lovers.

The book has no pages but is made from a solid block of Plexiglas with the images of a man and a woman scratched into the surface and rubbed with ink, one on each side of the block. As you look at one side, one person, you see the other blending and bleeding through, becoming one. I worked from black and white photos of my own parents from 1952, the year they met. They were married for 55 years, one for the other.

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