This past Christmas found me a bit short on cash. I did however have a massive stack of inkjet ink and photo paper, as well as a plethora of photos that I have taken over the years. One thing lead to another and the result was A Book of Quarters.
The Process
Twenty-five photos were cropped six inches square. Some photos were left to scale, others were enlargements of detailed sections from the originals. The twenty-five photos were then split into four, three inch square sections (A, B, C, D.) The A thru D sections were randomly placed into four piles, where each pile got one section from each split as well as equal counts of A’s, B’s, C’s and D’s, so as to prevent 1 pile from having all the A’s (or B’s, etc.) Each pile was then randomly rearranged. The rearragement had two purposes. One was to keep the book interesting and have some logical progression (or as logical as possible at least.) The second was to prevent each books page four (or five, six, etc) from containing a section from the same source.
The Result
Four books that contained one section from each of the twenty-five source photos. After some extensive page flipping, arranging and rearranging, the four recipients (parents, sister, brother, and wife) were able to take each of their individual photos and combine them to make a whole.
