3. The queer art of Artists’ Books: Hazard Press
Jeremy Dixon
Hazard Press is a queer, Welsh imprint that aims to create Artists’ Books with individuality, compassion, humour and attention to detail. The term ‘Artists’ Book’ usually refers to a publication that is seen as an artwork in its own right rather than as a book about art or a specific artist/s. I set up Hazard Press in 2010 after an inspirational visit to an Artists’ Book fair organised by, and held at, Ffotogallery in Penarth, South Wales. This fair opened my eyes to the possibility that I could start up my own press because it made me realise I already possessed the subjects, knowledge, skills and means of production to make my own books without having to rely on an outside printer, or on the approval of a publisher, or of anyone else for that matter. I had already amassed a large collection of printed ephemera including postcards and cartes de visite, and I also had plenty of my own poetry to use as subject matter. I was also employed as a graphic designer and so knew about pagination, preparation of artwork and other tricks of the trade for readying books for printing. The fair also made me realise that I had been handmaking many different types of books (such as comics, scrapbooks and portfolios) for a really long time – stored in my attic were books I had produced as far back as primary school. I also had a ready-made name for the press; in using my middle name, Hazard (my paternal grandmother’s maiden name) I reclaimed a part of my family heritage that bullies had seized on to mock me at school (this name-calling also formed part of the constant homophobic bullying I experienced every day).
Hazard Press titles do not follow the linear progression of a commercial print project. With minimal editorial, deadline or budget constraints, the books are much more freewheeling and intuitive, perhaps as a reaction to my background in the commercial world of graphic design. Encompassing the plurality of meanings of the word ‘queer’, Hazard Press books have rather unexpectedly developed into an ongoing project of autobiography based on poetry, memory, queerness, music, images, and a delight in the accidental forms and diversions that the journey of planning and making an Artists’ Book can take. Over time the overall theme of the books has evolved to become more of a reflection of my life experience as a gay man. This realisation has, however, only really happened retrospectively and quite recently; it was not a planned approach for the press, although it can now consciously influence future titles. My creative practice is centred on personal history, research and exploration using chance and happenstance, recycling, different papers, colours and varying contents. I consciously produce only small runs, with an emphasis on the handmade, which incorporate evidence of human intervention. Collage plays an important role in the production of Hazard Press publications, whether by using found text or found images or by combining a variety of glues and print processes and bindings. The following two examples look in detail at the Hazard Press production process.
He Said Meet Me At the Fountain
Figure 3.1. He Said Meet Me At the Fountain cover.
The book He Said Meet Me At the Fountain forms part of an ongoing series, which I collectively refer to as ‘micro-books’. Each title follows the same basic design template and is made from a single sheet of A4 paper, cut and folded to form an eight-page publication. The micro-book could be regarded as the lighthearted Hazard Press equivalent of the mass-market Penguin paperback. It is usually quick to conceive and execute, cheap to produce, and is based on images rather than words, a form of visual poem. He Said Meet Me At the Fountain was inspired by an early 20th-century photograph I bought from eBay showing a young man sitting at the edge of a fountain in the centre of which is a statue of an angel. The photograph was complemented by three other vintage images of men by fountains found online and a mock-up of the book was produced. However, I felt intuitively that something was missing and a slight delay in production and a fine-tuning of the content was required. One month later, the solution revealed itself when a counterpart to the first photograph appeared on the original seller’s eBay site (definitely not listed there at the time the first image had been purchased). This new photograph was of a different man posing in almost the same spot and it seemed reasonable to assume that the two men swapped places to take shots of each other. This supposition is supported by the fact that both images feature a seated bystander in roughly the same position. After I shared the photographs on Facebook, an American friend identified the location as Bethesda Fountain (the Angel of the Waters) in Central Park, New York. The fountain was designed by Emma Stebbins in 1868 and has a prominent role in the play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. This award-winning play by American playwright Tony Kushner was written in 1993 and deals with the outbreak of the Aids crisis in the mid-1980s. The second image now chimed with the rest to form a kind of pre-1960s image poem, hinting at gay desire, cruising, friendship, of secrets recorded on film, and of the calm before the oncoming storm. In the final layout the two friends at Bethesda Fountain are opposite each other in the centre pages, so when you shut the book they touch. The book has a queer content, but also a queer genesis, where luck and time and coincidence were allowed into the development process to enable the book to grow, rather than to be designed or made to a specific targeted brief, deadline or audience. The format of the micro-books means they are quick to make and cheap to reproduce, allowing them to be sold for a few pounds each, in keeping with the idea that an Artists’ Book can also be a form of the democratic multiple. The series can also evolve over time: the content isn’t fixed, and the most recent titles (Tonight for the First Time Just About ½ Past Ten and So Here’s My Number Call Me Maybe) are inspired by lyrics taken from anthemic queer pop songs.
Figure 3.2. He Said Meet Me At the Fountain centre spread.
Figure 3.3. Collaging Ken & Joe cover.
Designed as a tribute to the playwright Joe Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell, the Hazard Press publication Collaging Ken & Joe mimics their London libraries collage subterfuge of the 1960s. The couple were arrested, fined and imprisoned (in separate gaols) for six months for stealing and causing malicious damage to books in Essex Road Library in Islington (coincidentally, I was born and lived as a child in Essex, an example of the kind of biographical connection that one often comes across). They would secretly remove books, collage image and text onto the covers and then return the radically altered volume to the bookshelves. Even at the time their prison sentence was considered particularly harsh and was perceived to result from all the homophobic media attention surrounding their case. The Hazard Press book contains a found poem, sourced from the interpretation and label texts that appeared alongside some of these original altered library books at the exhibition Queer British Art 1861–1967, held at Tate Britain in 2017. Each copy of the edition of 100 books has a unique collaged cover created from a full-page colour illustration taken from a water-damaged 1958 set of The Book of Knowledge encyclopaedias. Collaging Ken & Joe is a queer book, dedicated to queer forebears, which reflects its history and contents in its overall design. Unlike mass-produced books, each cover is unique, using a different image and cutout and with altered headlines to undermine the original meaning of the colour plate by means of camp humour and/or surrealism. The production process does not follow the usual methods of book manufacture: the series of 100 books is being produced in batches of 25 copies; only 50 have been produced so far, and the rest will follow only once these books have been sold. The edition is also queer in that, unusually, the design isn’t fixed and production is open to change over time. For example, its first 25 copies had the title handstamped on the back cover of the tracing-paper overlay, but after seeing the puzzled reaction of readers at a book fair – who didn’t seem to understand just how the book worked or where to start reading from – I altered the design so that the title text is in a more traditional position on the front cover. This dialogue between reader and designer/publisher, which represents a blurring of the usual boundaries and enables readers to almost co-create future copies of the book through their feedback, could also be seen as another of the queer aspects that Hazard Press brings to the expected processes of book production.
Figure 3.4. Collaging Ken & Joe open.
Figure 3.5. Collaging Ken & Joe centre spread.
I would argue that the production of my Artists’ Books can be seen as different from, and also as subverting, some of the accepted norms of publishing, which in turn means they could be considered as an aspect of queerness, of otherness. Hazard Press is not driven by profit or the need to sell and does not have to work within any of the traditional editorial structures. The money raised through selling its output funds the production of future books, and I subsidise the press through part-time jobs and leading workshops and lecturing in colleges and at festivals. There is a non-traditional approach to content, print and production (in terms of recycling, different paper stocks, colours, small runs) and it is incredibly creatively freeing to know that I do not need to conform to any sort of hierarchy or to follow any corporate rules of design. Hazard Press titles are able to respond faster to events in the world and have a quicker production turnaround. It also means all the books are handmade, emotional and intuitive, a subversion of the usual means of publication. Artists’ Books also allow for a queer means of distribution that circumnavigates the usual mainstream channels. Audiences can be reached without institutional or commercial consent through unconventional and more personal connections and networks, such as book and zine fairs, festivals, readings, independent and specialised bookshops, talks, workshops, exhibitions (all of which can be physical spaces but are also increasingly becoming online ones too), as well as through social media and the Hazard Press website.
I really hope that Hazard Press and the books I have made and will continue to make will inspire other people’s (especially queer people’s) creativity and confidence and help them see that they can develop and grow as a human being by producing their own art. In conclusion, I will reveal here the true raison d’être behind Hazard Press: I now see the whole project as one enormous FUCK YOU to anyone or any institution who has ever actively bullied, belittled, ignored, hindered or tried to deny my right to exist in this world as a queer artist, poet and human being. Hazard Press allows me to say I don’t need gatekeepers, I don’t need anyone’s approval, I don’t have to follow the usual rules, I can make my own way!
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