A collection of works by British artist and researcher Mick Finch. It is a visual reader that visually interprets post-war British history.
Drawing on an archive of approximately 3,000 images, this book reconfigures the material contained in The Book of Knowledge, a popular eight-volume encyclopedia compiled for children in 1950s Britain. Short articles with illustrations covering a wide range of subjects, from astronomy to religion, magic, and zoology, are here rearranged into a new order.
Moments in time and space converge into a single fluid montage, suggesting that editing images of reality is nothing other than editing reality itself. The book questions how photography is involved in shaping political reality.
Inspired by the games included at the end of each volume of The Book of Knowledge, the publisher, SHIBBOLETH, designed a picture quiz bellyband. The front features all the images the author used to construct the book's narrative sequence, while the back contains their descriptions, allowing them to be matched with the corresponding spread in the book.
This bellyband serves as a starting point for workshops and classes tailored to different levels of image reading. By asking children to isolate the dense visual elements in the book from the whole, it encourages them to observe reality more closely, while also serving to address short attention spans in people with autism through sensory stimulation. For adults, it provides an opportunity to question the narratives they learned in school through the associations of images encountered in the book.
This book received a Special Mention in the Best Photobook category at the Immagini Rilegate Award, held at the Milano Photofestival in Milan, Italy, in 2024.
One-Thing-After-Another is a visual reader of post-war British history. Drawing from an archive of 3000 images, the volume reshuffles the material contained in The Book of Knowledge, a popular eight-volume encyclopaedia from Fifties Britain tailored to a readership of juveniles, and containing short illustrated articles on a wide range of topics from astronomy to religion, magic and zoology. Moments and places in time collapse into a single liquid montage, which suggests that editing images of reality means editing reality itself. The book questions the role of photography in shaping political reality.
Inspired by the game present at the end of each of The Book of Knowledge’s eight volumes, Shibboleth designed a picture quiz bellyband. On the front are all the images Mick Finch has used to build his narrative sequence. On the back, the descriptions of the same images are to be matched with the spread in which they appear in the book.
The bellyband is used as a starting point for workshops and classes operating at different levels of image-reading. It asks children to deconstruct the dense visuals in the book by singling out the parts from the whole, inviting a closer observation of reality. It provides sensory stimulation for people with autism to work on their short attention span. It invites adults to question the narratives they were originally taught in school by looking at the associations they come across in the volume.
The Book was awarded a Special Mention for Best Photobook by the 2024 Immagini Rilegate Award, Milan, Italy.
