Raven's Raft ~ Colorado
(Andrew Beckham)

In Praise of Stories
By Andrew Beckham
Denver, Colorado: Raven's Raft, 2005. Edition of 10.

11 x 17"; 25 loose pages. Includes 20 diptych images, a title page, and colophon. Introduction by the artist. Piezograph quad-tone inks, carbon inkjet output with archival, continuous-tone printing on Hahnemühle Photo Rag and vellum. Tipped-in title plate, leather with silver foil letterpress, on spine. Tipped-in dual-plate diptych image on front cover. Housed in a hand-built clamshell case, archival and finished with fine linen.Constructed by David Ashley Studio in Denver.

Homage to and demonstration of the vital role stories play in keeping us sane or at least functioning when faced with the unfathomable or unbearable.

Barry Lopez sets the tone [from Winter Count]: "He watched the storm that still raged … bend trees to breaking, slash the surface of Lake Pontchartrain and raise the air boiling over the gulf beyond. Everything is held together with stories,' he though. 'That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.'"

Then, by means of an ingenious arrangement of graphite drawings on translucent paper layered over pairs of black-and-white photographs, we witness the role of stories in attaching us to and shielding us from what is outside, the other, the non-human. The drawings allude to mythic subjects —freedom, danger, drought, dream, infinity; the photographs record nature, stark and if not foreboding, at least somber.

Seen together, with the drawing over the photograph, we see human aspirations and limitations interacting with the world. Seen side-by side as we turn the pages, the story is parsed from the underlying groundwork.

Andrew Beckham, for the Introduction: "Stories are told. Routes are recounted. The weight of human lore weighs on these places like so much detritus, settling slowly to myth. These intersections of site and story form layers, like sediment slowly petrifying to slate. Peeled away, a sort of koan, or riddle, or even prayer is made visible."
$1,200