Grace by Scott Offen.
Understanding Grace by Scott Offen as a collaboration between two friends and partners, and not as a traditional passive subject substituting for an active photographer's narrative, is crucial to the book's essence.
One can imagine Scott and Grace playing between the roles of director and cinematographer as they coordinate and collaborate on scenes, lighting, environment, textures, and so on.
Their relationship feels active and engaging to the point where one feels as if they are watching a paper movie, freed from the notions of authorship, as each photo morphs into the next with a singular identity that is the book itself.
The book's pages offer a wonderful interplay between the interiority and exteriority of Grace's world. There isn’t a moment when one feels separate from the other.
Through rich textural patterns found in the landscape, in the shadows, in the wallpaper of their home, or in the fabrics of Grace’s clothing, one world reflects the other, and by the book's end, they become seamless.
A tight edit can account for a lot of the book's cohesion and allows these textural patterns to become a woven thread throughout the fabric of the book's sequence.
Sometimes Grace’s clothing or bare skin blends into the world around her like a creature born with the perfect camouflage for its environment, but this isn’t camouflage; it is immersion.
We are in a landscape that is wholly embodied by Grace, who inhabits it, and the landscape inhabits Grace’s essence across the spreads of the book.
The photo pairings found throughout the book feel meaningful, meticulous, and symbolic. Yet their symbology escapes us; they are codes of the inhabitants, not the observers; inner dialogues between their creators and the land, ambiguous markings left for thoughts to ponder.
It is also impossible to escape the playfulness, the liveliness, and the youthful but profoundly mature candour offered to us as we poke our heads into a private Oz of sorts.
We never know where to expect to find Grace within a frame (if she is bodily present at all), as she darts through the trees, peers down the rabbit hole, undresses in a forest of leaves, scales a wall, or bellows out chants and incantations to the wind.
Even when we find Grace in states of reprieve and reverie, there are no predictable instances between her interior and exterior worlds, as both feel meaningfully active at all times and beyond the confines of the quotidian, mundane, and the book itself.
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge before my closing thoughts that I forgot to mention the third collaborator in this tale, and that is the world itself, the land, the domicile, the distances between it and our protagonists, and how this triangular configuration between our three collaborators is what gives the book its more powerful gift: endless possibility.
Here, we need to make a note regarding the physical object itself. The book's construction is soft and understated, but most importantly, it is open, meaning the physicality of the object itself reflects the contents found inside its pages. Being able to lay the book perfectly flat enhances the pairings and gives the book a sincerity that reflects its author's intentions.
The recessed image on the book’s cover evokes the suggestion that one is about to embark on a journey, with the circular cutout implying a portal of sorts, and the deep blueish greens hint at a sense of maturity and deep thought that one finds within the work (hats off to the folks at L’Artiere for the wonderful execution of the design and high-quality reproductions of the images found on the pages).
My takeaway from Grace is the power of pure collaboration, friendship, and the dismissal yet deep understanding of societal views and unfortunate norms that are challenged, conquered, reversed, and levelled out throughout Scott and Grace’s time working on this wonderful book together.
Thank you, Scott and Grace, for sending me a copy of your wonderful book, and for trusting me and my words with its contents.
Grace is still available, I believe, and I will leave you all with relevant links to where you can find your own copy and learn more about the project if this review has piqued your interest.
