On the design
- Publisher:
- Taylor & Francis Group
- Publication Type:
- Chapter
- Citation:
- Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds, 2023
- Issue Date:
- 2023
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Filename | Description | Size | |||
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On the Design.pdf | Accepted version | 323.31 kB |
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Throughout the book, illustrated plates appear at the start of each chapter. These plates have been digitally collaged from archival material relevant to the chapter, supplied by authors and sourced by the editors and designers. Rather than providing visual evidence or visual summaries of a particular aspect of the written text, these images are visual provocations; they are deliberately complex, ambiguous, and often surprising, inviting readers to critique the way the archival material is visually represented in scholarly publishing, and the inherent bias embedded in the process of creating images. In this way, the plates function like editorial illustrations, inviting contemplation on a theme, problem, or object central to the written text rather than illustrating a specific point.
Ideally, readers of this book who revisit an illustrated plate after reading the chapter may find, through reflection and deliberation, fresh interpretations of both the image and the written text. Readers must work through the assembled visual elements of the plate, in the same way that the authors (and editors, and designers) have worked through collections of material culture, to make sense of these complex phenomena.
In this chapter, we frame collage as a critical image-making process and describe how our image-making practice for this book involved collaboration with the editors and authors to provide insight into how images are created with particular bias and intentions and to help guide curious readers toward thresholds of interpretation for the illustrated plates in this book.
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