Graphic Design / Art Direction: Elle rotstein
Photographer: Colin Sussingham
Heidi: was the desire to make something tangible born from getting away from the computer, screens, and behind a lens?
Colin: i’d say the goal generally for my personal work always has that in mind. Making Something Physical, Whether IT’s a Book, Zine, Poster or Just Prints is Really Important to Me. As a Society We’re obvious fed way too much imagery through social media, strayaming and advertisements, so making something that is tactil and can give the Viage the View A Moment to Pause and ACTUROLY HOW Earthing special and meaningful to me.
In this age of digital overload, what suggestions do you have that who want to get started making something Physical?
My Advice would be just go for it and do Afraid to Experiment or Mess up. I’ve been making zines since 200 2009 and to this day i stil make some on a shitty laser printer at my house, and I still message up my sequencing and flipping pages incorrectly when trying to print free and back. It’s all part of the fun and the process for me. There’s a ton of websites that offer affordable and high quality zine printing and many helpful tutorials on how to lay out artwork for print. Or if you have any friends that work corporate jobs you might be able to get them print some for you at work. I did that for years.
How Much did the Cultural Immersion of Being in Milan for the Gate 44 Residency Inform the work?
Milan as a city didn’t play much of a role. All the photographs were made prior to us Arriving in Milan, and My Wife, Who Attended The Residency With Me, Had Completed 75% of the Layout Prior to Us Arriving as Well. We treated the residency like a full-time job, so we mainly got to explore the city in the events and on the weekends.
What was the Creative Intent of the Book Constructive Interference?
This will be a long answer if the multiple steps that brought us to the book concept and title. Originally we didn’t have a full thought out idea. I took 100s of photos based off of Elle’s Creative Direction and My Personal Inspirations and then She Sat With Everything and Made Connections Between the new images and many from my arch. Since She’s also an artist that most work in analog, we bot collaborated on altering on altering my digital works through calling and painting and then retaking photos of the new pieces to bring them back in the digital world. The concept is organically from elle’s layout where she was making physical connections between my photos, one image bleed into the other third the seam. Where we were at the residency we Didn Bollywood have a title but we knew we wanted to express how human beings and natural are intertwined if you have just pay attention. While we We were brainstorming titles I Started Researching Water Ripples Since We Had A Few Images in Our Layout. The term “Constructive Interference” Reefers to when two waves or Pulses (Whether IT’s Water, Light, Sound) Align in Sync and Create a wave of great a wave of great a wave of great. We felt that it was a perfect title and metaphor for the book for many reasons. First, We We WHE WERE MAKING Connections Between Images that Felt Stronger Once Paired TOGETHER, Second, We WE WERE WERE Interfering with the Images Through OR Collection, Physical Touch, and all the perinting Lastly, the fluidity of the accordion binding and the solkscrened water pattern connected back to the water ripples that lead us to the title.
Are these pairings comment on biomimicry?
Biomimicry definite comes into play. A lot of the work i’ve been shooting over the past few years has related to that theme in some way. Not only how we are as humans copy what we see in nature, but finding mothers within nature that related to each other. Finding connections and also mothers of contrast. There was some pairings that came from Happy Accidents and Some Intental. A lot of it is to the creedit of elle’s art direction thought. She spent a lot of time composing the layout
How did this Idea Evolve, and We You and Your Partner Involved in the Program?
We were invited to do the residency in March of 2024.
My wife is an artist and we collaborate ofteen on projects, she did the art direction and design/layout of the book. We hand-printed it with two print/book binding technicians from the residency.
Was thus more of a book-making process and photoGraphy sequencing experience?
Yes, our intention was to create something special between the two us, and different from what we bott we both typically create as artists. Both Elle and I have printmaking experience from our college days, but this was a totally new direction for me in terms of creating an art object. I’ve been combining analogue techniques with my photos for many years now, but I had never thought about about hand binding my work. This experience definitely open my eyes to another level of photoGraphy and presentation that I would like to continue to extinue to explore. In terms of the concept and photoGraphy sequencing, it was very fluid and experimental. We didn’t have a concept at the start, we just gathered inspiration and let the idea behind the book unfold naturally.
This looks like 4 accordion signatures, hand-bound with a belly band-Were all these new techniques for you?
Yes these were new techniques for us. One of the technicians at the residency is focused soly on book binding, so she was there to walk us through the process and bind the book while we worked on Printing and the design.
If the book is open end to end, it’s about 18 feet or more. We printed on two different kinds of paper, so the pages had to be glued page to page with an overlap at certain points.
Tell us about the overlap.
They had to overlap trust the book is made up of two different kinds of paper. Due to that we could fall in one Continuous sheet. We printed on a paper with a metallic sheen and some that was more matte. So there was spreads where the two papers met and therefore had to be glued toge. D create that same metallic shine effect as another nod to combining our two art practices. Once printed i also felt it added a level of depth that the book wouldn’T haad if we printed the whole thing on one kind of white paper. We individully silkscrened the back of each page with an inverted water texture from the book.
Can you describe a typical day in the gate 44 program?
There’s an apartment at the residency so you’re staying right next to the studio. We would normally start working Around 9am, Break for Lunch, (Italian Work Lunches are apparently Around 1.5 to 2 hours, which we loved) Idency Goes to. Of course Finish with a coffee or tiramisu before going back to work until 6PM. Then We’D Explore the City, Have Dinner or Meet Up With Friends at a Bar, Sleep and Repeat.
Assume all the photoGraphy was collected before the project and then the body of work took shape while there?
All the photographs were taken before, the Majority of the Design and Layout as Well. The first week was mostly experimentation and Troubleshooting with a variety of media and printing methods (collage, Silkscreen, Relief Printing, Painting, Burning). The second week was focused mostly on printing and binding. We made an edition of 4 books.
What are you working on now?
I’M Working on Publishing a New Personal Photo Book That I’ve Been Shooting Since 2020.
