Stories You See: How I Published a Book From an Instagram #tag
What do we see when we step outside; the sky, buildings, cars, statues, words? We mainly think of reading when we think of books, magazines, or newspapers. But we are always reading, every day, when we see a sign or graffiti out in the world. With our short attention spans we tend to ignore a lot, especially these words that surround us each day. But when they become a part of art, whether in the form of storefronts, graffiti, or city signage, words can gain a richer visual experience. Our imagination opens up to see them beyond their dictionary definition. Every individual creates their own interpretation based on how they perceive the word in the beauty of its natural surroundings.
About 5 years ago words started finding me, sometimes they yell, sometimes they are a quiet whisper, over time I have amassed well over 500 photos of words. I began sharing these words through Instagram using #collectingwords. As a social platform it was an easy place to share the words and allow others to discover them quickly and be seen by many. As my collection grew I began to wonder if I could put these words into new context and combine them into narratives.
While the digital space is a great place to easily share the words individually, something didn’t feel right about putting the narratives there. It felt like they should be displayed in an old school physical form, printed on paper, and bound into a book. This lead me to discover New Heroes & Pioneers, a publishing house based in Malmö, Sweden.
With their help I transformed my collection of words into 43 (very) short (visual) stories. It felt right for the stories to be presented in a more traditional book format, giving readers the physical context to identify what they are seeing more as stories than simply an arrangement of photographs or art.
By presenting the narratives this way it also seemed to help contrast what the idea of a story and reading can be. If the words you read are photographs, does it still count as reading? Andy Warhol once said “I never read, I just look at pictures”. I’d like to think maybe this would be the first book Andy might have have actually wanted to “read”, twisting the idea of art book into story book and in a sense “fooling” the viewer into enjoying a series of good stories. Stories they weren’t expecting but were drawn into through artistic visuals.
Those who encounter the book are also able to interpret the stories from their own perspective, sparked by memories of a place or time, evoking unique emotions of laughter, tears, or even fear and anger from their own life experiences. Maybe it even opens the imagination for the next time someone reads a more traditional text, imagining the words they read in a new context or remembering when they saw a certain word out in the world on a sign or scrawled in graffiti.
With this book I hope people will, in sense, get lost when reading the stories the way I do when discovering the words to create them. By making the words and stories visually interesting, perhaps it will also encourage people to want to read more and let their imaginations wander with the words they read. And maybe even encourage those who struggle with reading to want to learn as a result of seeing words photographed in an interesting environment. Enticing more intrigue than words that are simply printed in black ink on a white page seem to provide at first glance.
Throughout this project people have told me how they are now more aware of their surroundings and find themselves noticing words in their environments. I hope this project helps to serve as a reminder that there are treasures to be found all around us every day, and while sometimes the digital world can consume much of our attention, it can also open us up to new things that are out in the world. I encourage you to take advantage of the technology you have at hand and go out and discover the things you most enjoy, even if it is just for yourself at first. Write about them, take photos, collect, nurture those things and let them become the things you want to share with others and things they want to know about. Start small and don’t let a lack of acknowledgement or perceived success stop you, if you are doing something you love, and if you love it enough, you will find a way to make it great. Who knows what it may become, a sculpture, perhaps a book, maybe a film, the most important thing is to do something, and keep experimenting and sharing.
If you inspire yourself first, surely you will inspire others later, and that’s when great things can happen.
If you’d like to see and read more, ‘Collecting Words’ in old school book form can be found here: bookshop.org
