Brandon Graham ~ Illinois

The Gutting
By Brandon Graham
Chicago, Illinois: Brandon Graham, 2008. Open Edition.

5.8 x 9"; 24 pages. Off-set printed with original photographs and text by Graham. Pamphlet fold with a saddle stitch binding.

Experimental literature presenting multiple layers of an individual life: how childhood experience through the power of confused and confusing memory shapes the adult. A web as murky as the fish guts of the story.

Brandon Graham: "[The Gutting] combines original short fiction with a graphic short story. This combination of elements is a realization of my interest in exploring the place where experimental short fiction, graphic novels, and artists' books run together.

"The piece explores the ways in which the traumatic events that transpired during a childhood fishing trip … continue to have repercussions in [an] adult relationship. Part of the conceit for the design is that the fragmented and unreliable way in which memory works lends itself to a layered and fractured narrative. To that end the graphic portion underscores the central metaphor in the short fiction but is recounted simultaneously to the 'fictional now.'"
$25

Irresistible
By Brandon Graham
Chicago, Illinois: Brandon Graham, 2007. Open Edition.

3.25 x 4"; 8 pages. Opens to 8 x 13". Formed from one folded legal-sized sheet of paper. Created in InDesign. Printed on a color laser printer.

Brandon Graham: "Irresistible combines my interest in the printed multiple as a means for delivering an 'art experience' to viewers in non-gallery settings, the use of first person short fiction to engage a reader, and my concerns over the political direction our country has been moving and continues to move.

"More specifically Irresistible is a reaction to the Bush administration's slow bludgeoning drumbeat for war with Iran. A drum beat that echoes the rhythms of the argument that rushed us into war with an argument that was repeated again this week [January 2008] in the President's State of the Union Address."
$10

Tear Here
By Brandon Graham
Chicago: Brandon Graham, 2007. Open Edition.

5.5 x 6.5"; 38 pages. Designed in InDesign, and printed on a Color Laser Jet on linen-textured paper. Some pages altered with a perforator and then sewn on a sewing machine. Bound with a chain-stitch, but not cased in so that the spine is exposed. The statistics are accurate, the narrative fictional. Written, designed, and produced by Graham.

An understated but unsubtle lament of the plight of US forces in the present Iraq War, especially the increase in amputees at "twice the rate of past U.S. conflicts."

Brandon Graham: "Tear Here started with taking a set of military uniforms, cutting off the arms and legs, and lashing them back together with red thread. Then I took digital images, tore at the seams, and visually documented the seams ripping apart….

"Using the structural vocabulary of the codex, Tear Here explores the ways in which the conflict in Iraq tears away at the bodies and the lives of those soldiers who serve in the U.S. military."
$85

Tolerance
By Brandon Graham
Chicago, Illinois: 2007. Open Edition.

3.5 x 4". 8 pages.

The subject is, not surprisingly, intolerance - specifically, intolerance of homosexuals. Irony is alive and well.

Brandon Graham: "Tolerance is single sheet folded into a 'zine format book. Its content is a reflection of my ongoing attempt to use a first person unreliable narrator voice to create flash fiction that address large social issues but puts them on a human scale. The form is a reflection of my interest in the printed multiple as a means of delivering an 'art experience' to viewers where they live and work."
$10