The cover of "This Way: Covering/Uncovering Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen", edited by Marco Sonzogni
"This Way" uses Borowski's stories to explore the relationship between verbal and visual representations of war and genocide through analysis of the entries in an international competition for a new cover for Borowski's book. Authors and advisors include noted authorities on Holocaust literature and Holocaust representation
The edition, edited by Marco Sonzogni and John Bertram, was published by Venus febriculosa and Dunmore Publishing, Ltd in April 2011. The collection is based on the premise of a cover illustration competition for a book of a very delicate nature - namely, Tadeusz Borowski's "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen".
Recognising a unique opportunity to explore in depth one of the most potent and challenging themes in the history of literature, a "conceptual" book cover design competition was held in Summer 2010 for Tadeusz Borowski's "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen". Sponsored jointly by Venus febriculosa and the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles, it was the fourth in a series of such contests that has included Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" (1955), Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" (1980) and Eugenio Montale's poem "The Eel" (1948) and whose purpose has been to foster interdisciplinary dialogue between literature and the visual arts and to encourage creativity and exploration in a medium that is more typically bound to the constraints of the marketplace.It features essays by Essays by John Bertram, Dov Bing, Simone Gigliotti, Berel Lang, Giacomo Lichtner, Alicia Nitecki, Monica Tempian.
Observersroom blogger Rick Poynor ponders how such a difficult topic can be addressed through book illustration. He selects ten of the most intriguing proposals, including Anna Zysko's winning entry, and examines their strength and weaknesses in portraying the hard truth of life in a death camp.
Poynor writes:
Allowing for the obvious differences of media, the composition of a cover image presents the designer with comparable hazards. Sensationalism, cheap shock tactics and melodrama are out of the question, no matter how shocking the book’s subject. Fashionable design and over-design are equally inappropriate. Literalism and using the most obvious visual props risks falling into stale and therefore unfeeling cliché. Such images might include railway tracks, barbed wire, fence posts, blue striped uniforms, yellow stars, tattooed numbers, swastikas, showerheads, gas and smoke, skulls and crossbones, and blood. That’s not to say that none of these devices can be used — in the 241 competition entries every one of them occurs — but their acceptability comes down to the mindfulness and subtlety of the visual rhetoric. Whatever sense of horror or outrage a spectator might feel 65 years later, these are not experiences we have had, or can claim to imagine fully or understand. To justify itself, a design will need to convey sensitivity, gravitas, a quality of carefulness and intuiting-just-enough that might be described as decorum. It shouldn’t pretend to know what its creator cannot possibly know.
Read full article on observersroom.designobserver.com
"THIS WAY: Covering/Uncovering Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen"
ISBN 978-1877-399-596
DunmorePublishing
12 April 2011
225x225mm
144pp
153 Full Color Illustrations
For more information see: thiswayproject.org
To order copies see: dunmore.circlesoft.net
Book cover competition see: venusfebriculosa.com
Source: thiswayproject.org