Julia Borissova – Home Is – PhotoBook Journal

Review by Douglas Stockdale ·

The COVID-19 pandemic turned our normal accustomed social interactions on its head and had a huge impact on our global society. In conjunction with the resulting medical misery, many governments implemented home quarantine as a means to limit the spread of this highly contagious virus. It’s one thing to leave and return home from other events, be it play or work, while yet another when you are not allowed to leave home for any reason.

The social issues with COVID-19 related to the quarantine could be especially stressful if you are a social person, or maybe home alone without any personal interactions. Zoom and social media initially seem to bridge that social vacuum while these virtual interactions also became unfulfilling as a hollow experience for real personal connections.

It was during this time that Julia Borissova initiated a collaborate project to investigate the effects were for individuals who needed to stay at place in “home” as related to the pandemic, “when we were quarantined, locked within four walls, and experienced the state of our newly found home in different ways, left alone or voluntarily or involuntarily shared the same space with other people. I then decided to combine our collective experience under one cover, thus allowing people from different parts of the world to be closer to each other.”

The concept of what Home might be is a subject that she has explored before, as someone who is now in a different region as to where she was raised in her artist book address and an earlier collaborative project, DOM, about Home completed before the pandemic. Thus, questioning what Home might be is a reoccurring theme for Borissova and she brings intellectual rigor as we as brilliant book design to create an interactive engagement experience for the reader.

In her role as Curator for this project, she asked everyone who wanted to take part in the project to “write their own text in their native language by hand, and also send me some images that are emotionally connected with the text. Thirty people responded to my invitation and the book was published as a collective chronicle, where all handwritten texts have English translations.”

The thirty participants, including her own contribution, are a cross pollination of those impacted by COVID-19, while only missing were those on the continent of Africa. Nevertheless, the responses were very diverse and insightful accompanied with intriguing artwork in an attempt for each person to illustrate their personal situations.

Reading the various contributions provided me with a flash-back to this period during the pandemic and only recently have I come to realize the full personal emotional impact of the unfolding COVID-19 events. Once in the middle of the unfolding events, did we really know how this would eventually end?

Each person’s English translation to their original text is either provided on a gatefold page, or a under a glued in panel. Borissova varies the layout design of the over-laid panels to create a slightly disruptive rhyme for the reader’s interaction with the contents while yet maintaining a consistent stylish approach. As a result, the book’s intriguing design, layout and sequencing is as complex and layered, as is her subject.

Top view, gatefolds extended

The one through line that I sensed was how most of the individuals found a way to cope with unexpected circumstances and essentially learned to make lemonade from the lemons that they were delt with. There is an underlying sense of hope for the future, whatever that may become, which points to the resilience of mankind in the face of adversity.

As a collaborative and conceptual artist project that incorporates photographic elements, I am also reminded of the equally brilliant artist book To Tell My Real Intentions, I Want to Eat Haze Like a Hermit by Katherine Longly. This is similar to an international exhibition between covers. Overall, Borissova’s choices in executing her artist book design creates a very engaging and delightful read. Recommended.

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Other artist books by Julia Borissova featured on PhotoBook Journal; V – Zine Collection, White Blonde, Nautilus, Dimitry, Let Me Fall Again, J.B. about men floating in the air, address, Running to the Edge, and DOM

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Douglas Stockdale is a visual artist, Critical Mass 2023 Finalist and founder of PhotoBook Journal

Footnote: I was interviewed by Julia Borissova as an artist, book artis, self-publisher of my own artist books and why I created this book review site: interview here, both Russian and English.

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Home is, Julia Borissova

Artist: Julia Borissova, born Talinn, Estonia, resides St. Petersburg, RU

Essays: Thirty contributing authors

Text: English translation for the many languages included in this global collaborative

Hard cover boards with printed cover, thread-stitched binding, Listing of Authors, four-color digital lithography includes multiple collage (glued- in) and gate-fold pages, printed & bound by the artist in Russia, in a signed and number edition of 220.

Photobook Designer and some Drawings: Julia Borissova

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Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are copyright of the authors and publishers.