Der Grief #13
German photography magazine Der Greif now invites a guest editor to compile each issue. For it’s thirteenth, NY artist Penelope Umbrico held an open call for images on the theme of Surplus. The theme is emphasised via the very structure of the publication, meaning our Page 23 here is a particularly unique one.
The magazine appears at first to be the familiar small, bound volume. Once opened, though, the reader finds the 16-page printed sections have been collated and trimmed but not bound together. Each page/spread carries a full-bleed image of multiples of the same items – piles of cut tree trunks, discarded car seats, keys in a security cupboard, anonymous packing boxes – and most of the images also spill over onto the following spread. Thus the pictures themselves have a sense of surplus about them – they appear to overwhelm the physical pages.
Small page numbers run with each picture (rather than page), and 23 (above, left) is a single page image that appears half way through the third 16 page section, presenting a single shot of discarded packaging by Alessandro Teoldi squeezed between two other pictures.
Despite the rigid numbering system, the unbound pages soon fall apart and the pages reorder themselves. Multiple iterations are encouraged, the magazine inviting readers to upload their own version for public viewing. Thus almost any page might become Page 23.
In a nice final touch, the magazine has been printed on a selection of papers found surplus at the printers.
Art direction and concept, issue 13: Penelope Umbrico, Gita Cooper-van Ingen, Simon Lovermann and Leon Kirchlechner.