OK OK OK
November 28th, 2007by Mike Slack
ISBN: 0977648125
OK OK OK is smaller than those coffee table-sized art books, but still larger than a trade paperback. The fabric covers have polaroid shots (one front, one back) centered on them. So it starts off seeming a little odd, which I found appealing. It’s not slick. It has virtually no words, save the two-page title spread in the front and one page with typical book metadata (copywright, publisher info, etc.) in the back. It’s all about the polaroids, which appear alone, one on each right-hand page.
The images are simple, colorful, and appear haphazard: green vegetation against a bright red wall, a blurry plane against a blue sky, light curtains barred with shadow or is that a pattern, orange fruit still on the tree. A red leather jacked rests on a red leather sofa. Hundreds of tiny square tiles completely fill the frame. A white pigeon and its shadow walk away.
Magic in the mundane is perhaps easier for us to see when it appears divorced from its context like this (one smallish image printed on two stark white pages). These casual snapshots could be almost anywhere. Yet you know they are from someone’s hometown, backyard, school hallway. The cat probably has an owner, the blondes with their backs to the camera look like they are waiting for their dates to return, and that leather jacket belongs to somebody. These pictures are inescapably everyday (they, after all, polaroids). Even though each undoubtedly has a story, you can build a new one, your own version, from each one — and that is part of then enjoyment.
Highly recommended.
