Ah Ho

In the spring of 2008 I spent three weeks in Minnesota participating in a course about Ojibwe culure and history. We spent a great deal of time on three reservations, and most of our lectures were taught by traditional elders. I made this book on my return in an attempt to reconcile the personal changes I went through as a direct result of that experience.

The piece is titled “ah ho,” an Anishinabe phrase of respect. It consists of a seven-panel accordion book crafted of mahogany. All of the mahogany frames have keyed mitre joints, and hold two panes of glass. Photographs I took during the course are printed on the front, clear panes of glass. There is approximately 3/4″ between the two glass panes, which gives the pages three-dimensionality. The backing panes, which are removable, have handwritten transcriptions from the journal I kept during my stay in Minnesota.

Text panel lifted

The photographs are printed using wet plate collodion, a photographic process invented in the mid-1800′s. They are projection printed in the darkroom from black and white negatives. The transcriptions are handwritten with india ink. They are then preserved with a layer of collodion.

Page 1

This is the title page for the book. The top glyph is based on a logo found in the inside cover of “Ojibway Heritage” by Basil Johnson (logo originally by Del Ashkewe from Cape Croker), which pictorially represents the Ojibwe beliefs about the structure of existence. This altered glyph contains my symbol for the process of making. Below that are seven symbols representing the enclosed photographs (including the beach figure on the bottom of the title page). My maker’s mark is positioned below that. As a whole, the page is meant to symbolize the creation of the book, while showing that the Ojibwe world view has affected my own.

 

Pages 2 and 3

Pages 4 and 5

Pages 6 and 7

 

Top view

Closed

 

Page detail