Variations (EDT OF 285)

Sophia Jiaqi Xu
Variations (EDT OF 285)

Photographs: Sophia Jiaqi Xu

Publisher: Selfpublished

52 pages

Year: 2024

Price: 35 €

Comments: Illustrated softcover with an elastic binding, 31,2 x 23,1 cm. Offset prints, Edit, design and offset interventions in collaboration with Cathy Hu. edition of 285 copies.

a project where I started with one photographic image, explores the relation between photography, reproduction, memory, and materiality through printmaking and bookmaking processes.

The explorations delve into the mutability of memory, where each reproduction distorts and reshapes the original. Through repeated manual manipulation and layering, the image shifts, distorts, and expands, reflecting the fluidity of memory and the passage of time, where no image remains static.

To look at a thousand images a thousand times through one image. To see it again and again until it is no longer the image. To recall memories repeatedly until they become something new.

Variations centers around one photographic image. Every copy is unique in its composition; every page is different from the next.
Originating from the engraving imprint materials of the image, the scans capture remnants of the printing process.
These pieces of paper, utilized to ensure clean prints, are essentially leftovers from the engraving printing process. Through a myriad of processes and materials, the original photographic image undergoes transformation. The variations are the result of analog reproduction techniques, such as photo engraving and offset printing.
The imprints from the image and etching plate are transformed into six offset plates. Editing, designing, printing, reprinting, folding, and assembling the pages in shifting orders contributes to a multitude of variations, resulting in an edition of 285 individual publications.