Daniel Gordon’s Houseplants

Upon hearing the phrase “pop-up book,” many would imagine elaborate children’s books featuring animated nursery rhymes, underwater worlds in three dimensions, or castles springing skyward. The thoughtful ways contemporary artists might use this dynamic form are unlikely to be top of mind. And yet, there is a history of compelling pop-up books functioning as art objects, from Andy Warhol’s Index (Book) (1967) to Kara Walker’s Freedom, a Fable (1997) and Tomás Saraceno’s From Arachnophobia to Arachnophilia (2022). Add to this list Houseplants (2020), a collaboration between photographer Daniel Gordon and paper engineer Simon Arizpe, and edited by Denise Wolff at Aperture.

Gordon is best known for making photographs of his constructed still-life tableaux, lushly patterned, vibrantly colored scenes populated with three-dimensional objects formed from cut, taped, and glued images printed from the Internet; he revels in the camera’s unique ability to transform what appears in front of his lens into a new reality. Parallels are inevitably drawn between these photographs and the mediums of collage, painting, and sculpture. Gordon leverages this disorientation and tension to mesmerizing effect—even more so in recent years—blurring boundaries and expectations with projects such as Houseplants.

What makes Houseplants distinct from the thousands of other pop-up books lining bookshelves around the world is the rigorous conceptual underpinning and exploration that sparked the project in the first place. Unlike traditional photobooks, Houseplants does not replicate Gordon’s existing photographs. It is an artwork in its own right, conceived specifically for the pop-up book medium.

Modestly scaled and, at first glance, more binder than book, Houseplants appears unassuming with a single tipped-in photo on the kelly-green linen cover. Upon opening the book, a blossoming crown of thorns unfurls, nearly one-and-a-half feet high, with a life-size half pomegranate at the base of the potted plant. More compositionally straightforward than his elaborate, often large-scale photographs, the minimal scene befits the book’s more intimate context. Gordon digitally creates the backgrounds and shadows in his photographs—which are often brightly colored and sometimes quite intricate—printing them for integration into his three-dimensional tableaux. He streamlines this approach in Houseplants, translating simplified, wildly hued shadows onto the book pages to approximate the jagged and rounded edges one might see if this still life were surreally lit. This and the five spreads that follow were created and sequenced to provide visual diversity within the narrow subject matter—plants and foods—and offer variety in how the still life inhabits the book’s spread, notably animated by the pop-up mechanism.

The three-dimensionality of Houseplants required thinking about the appearance of Gordon’s objects from every angle, considerations distinct from those involved in producing photographs. For his photographic compositions, the objects are made for the camera’s perspective. The crude, handcrafted constructions of crumpled paper, glue, and tape are evident if one walks around them, spoiling the illusion of reality offered in a two-dimensional print. The book, in effect, reverses his typical process; instead of rendering flat his sculptural tableau, Gordon now invites the viewer to consider the depth, scale, and construction of his scene recast in three dimensions. Play and discovery are part of the inherent physical relationship to Houseplants as you inspect from the front, back, top, and sides; every angle is visually accessible. The various supports, flaps, and folds that assist with the sculptural quality and movement of the objects are not disguised, as they are in Gordon’s photographs. Instead, the format openly acknowledges the engineering and construction.

As much as this book is a celebration of Gordon’s unique process, it is equally a demonstration of Arizpe’s ability to artfully employ pop-up mechanics to dynamically bring these ideas to life. The scale, position, and movement of objects within a given spread—even the total number of spreads included—represent a delicate balancing act between Gordon’s vision and Arizpe’s engineering knowledge; the bending, sword-like leaves of the snake plant must attach in particular spots, and the strawberry cannot be positioned just anywhere on the spread. The rigidity of these pop-ups dictates the thicker-than-average paper used. In contrast to the glossy pages of many pop-up books, the matte, uncoated paper in Houseplants serves both practical and aesthetic requirements. For Arizpe, the glued elements adhered better with matte stock, which, as luck would have it, also more faithfully communicates the surface of Gordon’s original sculptures.^[1] Since matte stock inevitably dulls colors, the vivid colors achieved throughout are a testament to meticulous pre-press work. Houseplants blends the machine-made (offset printing) and handmade, evocatively simulating Gordon’s practice in the book’s production.

Though a print run of 1,000 may sound considerable for a book involving many small die-cut pieces assembled by hand, the small number of printers who can manufacture pop-up books worldwide usually require producing 10,000 copies or more. Thus, the relatively limited run, coupled with the extensive labor involved in engineering and craftsmanship—from concept to completion—is reflected in the book’s price tag. When you consider how Houseplants more closely resembles an artwork than monograph, $150 feels entirely reasonable. While other artists often employ the pop-up book format for its resonance with project-specific ideas, Gordon’s artistic process dovetails with the pop-up medium.  Houseplants represents an expansion of Gordon’s oeuvre, offering a new vehicle for exploring and pushing the boundaries of the artist’s ever-evolving practice, conceptual concerns, and approach to materials. The pop-up book format provides viewers with a new lens through which to consider the questions elicited by Gordon’s work—about image-making, appropriation, the ambiguity of “truth” in photography, and the blurry distinctions between mediums. Producing this book ultimately informed Gordon’s process for creating monumental, steel sculptures as part of the inaugural commission for the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston in 2021, evidence of how this work reverberates beyond its pages.

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  Phone conversation between the author and Simon Arizpe, August 10, 2022.