Accidental Evidence.

By Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari.

Eighteen Publications, 2025. 52 pp., 10½x10".

SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE!

SIGNED by both Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari.

In 2024, we were on press in Istanbul, at Ofset, for the fifth printing of Evidence. We had been working on the book for the better part of a year, updating many of the image files with new scans and rebuilding the layout from out-of-date software.

The experience of being on press is a restless combination of waiting and working. We sit in a vacant office awaiting the call to come to the press. When that call comes, Mike compares the printed sheet with the match prints. Adjustments are made, and then the press starts up again, and five minutes later, he reviews the changes. This could continue several more times until he is finally happy with the outcome, and then Mike signs the printed sheet, which is why the press sheet is called a signature.

A couple of hours later, it’s the second, or maybe the third time we’re down there, and Mike is busy evaluating a sheet. For a moment, Chantal wanders off from the viewing area and starts gathering sheets lying on a pallet around the corner. They are Evidence photographs printed on top of other Evidence photographs. These are the “make-ready sheets”, the paper fed into the press at the outset that calibrates the ink levels and alignment. These sheets will be used repeatedly, image laid upon image with increasing densities of ink, until eventually, they become blackened waste material to be trashed.

Some of the Evidence make-ready sheets were printed on top of another book’s make-readys. Evidence images intersect the poetic landscapes made by photographer Faraz Ravi for his book Seasons of the Fallen, which was printed days before we arrived. In Evidence, images of the land are merely backdrops for experiments and tests. In contrast, the warm-toned flora from Seasons of the Fallen takes root. We start to collect all the make-ready sheets, and between press checks, we are no longer just waiting around; we commandeer a room to evaluate and cut out the pages that show promise.

In Accidental Evidence, photographs that appear in different sections of Evidence are now mashed together. Lists and texts meant to contextualize the photographs now intersect the images directly. We have embraced these little accidents and, in doing so, constructed a new sequence that playfully undermines the original. To recreate the richness of overlapping layers of ink Accidental Evidence is printed with five colors. As the book unfolds, layer upon layer of ink dominates the pages, and Evidence lies buried beneath.

Cat# ZK794S Softbound [Signed] $50.00 (978-0-918290-18-2)
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