Brendan George Ko – Moemoea – PhotoBook Journal

Review by Hans Hickerson ·

Moemoeā is not really a book, it is an event. It is a party, a celebration of storytelling, design, illustration, photography, and a cultural reawakening.

In fact, Moemoeā is two books that fit together hand in glove. One is a hardback spiral bound fictional story of some ninety pages, The Spell, that uses photos, texts, and illustrations to recount the passing of traditional Polynesian seafaring lore from one generation to another. The second book is a Singer sewn pamphlet tucked into a sleeve inside the back cover. Titled The Story, in photos and text it documents the recent revival of the nearly extinct traditional seafaring culture of Hawaii.

Interestingly enough, the photos that illustrate both books were probably made at the same time. In The Spell they are the main event visually. They are larger and are more general, showing exquisite details of plants and boats as well as sweeping vistas of land, sea, and sky. Only a few typecast people appear, as well as a few traditional sailing boats. Scattered among the photos are a half dozen linocut illustrations depicting waves, a whale, a bird, a tree, an island. Woven through the visuals are short texts telling of an old Polynesian chief who brings seafaring lore to an island people who had forgotten it. The printed words themselves, typeset in an elegant flowing font, evoke and honor Hawaiian seafaring lore with words from the original language: kohala, kaula, noio, ama. Everything works together to take you to a different place and make you feel and see and imagine.

The layout and design are varied and inventive: full-bleed page spreads, photographs embedded in other photographs that continue onto the opposite page, landscape orientation, portrait orientation, smaller photos, larger photos, photos on the right page, photos on the left, centered, placed at the top, placed at the bottom. The background color for each page of a photograph on a two-page spread can be the same or different, with the color on a single page subtly turning into another shade. And, amazingly, photographs printed on pages with luminescent paper that glisten and glow. Likewise, the texts are centered or placed above or below, to one side of the spread or the other. And, in a bravura moment, the text on a spread of the starry night sky straddles it, arcing across the top of the pages. It all adds up to a visual banquet, a feast for the eye, a book that could be used as a reference for a class in book design.

In the inserted booklet, The Story, we learn about how a traditional seafaring revival started with a few individuals in the 1970s and developed and progressed. Here text takes center stage and photographs in varied layouts and page placements serve as illustrations and background, this time in black and white as well as color. We see individuals, times, and places anchored by their specifics rather than the timelessness characteristic of the photographs in The Spell.

Last but not least is the cover. The illustration on the cover is another celebration. The moon, the sun, the stars, the sky, the sea, the land, the world above the water, the world below the water, plus plants, animals, a sailing canoe. Black, white, and brown. The title, the same colors in a totemic, rhythmic font. Wow. Spectacular.

Moemoeā is not your typical photobook. Most photobooks do not incorporate so many adventurous choices, perhaps because people don’t know about them or perhaps because of the expense involved. In the case of Moemoeā, the publisher, Conveyor Editions, is also a full-service printer and bindery, and that may provide an explanation for such intrepid design.

You can read and hear about a book and understand something about it, but physically being there with it is another thing. In this regard Moemoeā does not disappoint. Turning its pages leaves you feeling inspired as well as enriched.

Hans Hickerson, Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is a photographer and photobook artist from Portland, Oregon.

____________

Brendan George Ko – Moemoeā

Photographer: Brendan George Ko (born in 1986)

Language: English

Photographs: Brendan George Ko

Design: Studio Elana Schlenker

Publication Editor: Christina Labey

Illustration: Sophy Hollington

Text: Jeremy Haik and Brendan George Ko

Hardcover; foil stamp; die cut pocket; book 39 color photographs, plus booklet 25 color, 14 black and white photographs; wire bound & booklet (Singer sewn); ISBN: 978-1-950401-01-7; 130 pages; 7.5 X 10.5 inches.

____________

____________

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 under copyright by the authors and publishers.