Book Review: Traces Within by Eva Voutsaki
Review by Joshua Gutierrez
Self Published, 2020 21 x 88.8 cm
Printed on offset Lithoprint by Pureprint printers using vegetable-based inks.
Eva Voutsaki’s Traces Within is a dream-soaked, spiraling quest for catharsis set against the backdrops of memory and personal mythology. Through the use of an innovative binding technique paired with disjointed photographs that seem to exist both nowhere and everywhere, Voutsaki takes the viewer on a journey through light and darkness.
Upon first glance, the book appears to be pretty traditional in design and relatively small in scale, roughly the same size as a journal. However, as soon as the viewer opens the book, its format reveals itself as something a bit more complex and intriguing. The handmade book is comprised of three booklets that have been stitched together. Once each booklet is opened, the scale of the book transforms substantially, shifting from something intimate and alluring into something commanding and maze-like.
The trifold structure allows the viewer to experience a near-infinite number of sequences - well, in photobook terms, at least - with nearly 2,200 possible image combinations. This means that the narrative of the work is malleable - much like memory itself - and can be reconfigured every time that the book is viewed. This beautifully complements Voutsaki’s photographs, suggesting that memory and myth-making are dynamic processes. And, perhaps, in some ways, this continuous process of access, retrieval, and interpretation parallels what it’s like to process imprints left by trauma. This is further enhanced by the absence of titles, which works well to combat the finality of meaning that words can impose.
The photographs in the book balance both formal rigor and the frenetic qualities of the snapshot. Seascapes, landscapes, unknown characters, and unknown rooms are all exquisitely saturated with color and transfigured by the veil of night. When the viewer first encounters the book, they are greeted by a photograph of a lone, white horse in a darkened field - a likely allusion to Pegasus that establishes a series of mythological signs that also includes a mermaid made of snow, a cloaked figure caught in prayer or casting a spell, and perhaps even a reference to Ophelia.
Lone figures are contrasted by photographs of groups, the latter of which feel slightly threatening given the absence of context and a collective gaze that rejects the camera and instead focuses on undisclosed happenings. Voutsaki characterizes the work as a kind of,“...[anecdotal] diary with spontaneous and accidental images that enable the viewer to travel smoothly and secretly into [their] own memories.” This sense of furtive discovery is certainly kept intact by the book’s photographs which depict a place that resists the viewer’s sense of belonging but seems vaguely familiar. What’s left is a magical, surreal, beautiful, menacing reverie, one that ebbs and flows with each turn of the page.
Eva Voutsaki is an artist and educator based in Brighton (United Kingdom) whose practice and teaching are informed by elements of art therapy, mythology, memory, and fantasy. Voutsaki’s project Traces Within has received international acclaim and has been featured in exhibitions in Rome, Seoul, and Tokyo.
Video flip through courtesy of Photobookstore.