Believe You Me – Ry Rocklen

Believe You Me is an artists' book that corresponds with Rocklen's 2011 exhibition of the same name. For the "book version of the exhibition," Rocklen had photographer Lee Thompson photograph the raw materials he would then use to construct his sculptures (thrift store acquired trophies, posters, t-shirts, paintings and a found telephone book). Rocklen then used those photographs as the source material for the book. Essentially a series of hyper-detail images of the works in the exhibition, Believe You Me collages the photographs into full-bleed spreads that have been loosely organized around a set of scanned telephone book pages and which function as the book's chapters (Hair-Handwriting, Ice-Immigration, Religious-Remodeling, etc).

In order to keep the book entirely comprised of photographs, Believe You Me's title page, colophon page, and spine are photographs of a black t-shirt silkscreened specifically for the book. The t-shirt, printed in an edition of 10 on American Apparel shirts, comes with the signed/numbered limited edition of the book, also in an edition of 10. $100. Please contact orders@2ndcannons.com for more info.

2nd Cannons Publications 025
2011, 1st printing, edition of 500.
7 x 10" 100 pages

ISBN: 978-0-9820559-9-1