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Bhutan
Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Himalayan Kingdom Michael Hawley, Carolyn Bess (photographer), Sandy Choi (photographer), Dorji Drukpa (photographer), Michael Hawley (photographer), Becky Hurwitz (photographer), Choki Lhamo Kaka (photographer), Gyelsey Loday (photographer), Christopher Newell (photographer), David Salesin (photographer), Ming Zhang (photographer), David Macaulay (illustrator), Christopher Newell (editor) Friendly Planet, 2003 114 pages $10,000 |
Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Himalayan Kingdom collects color photographs culled from 40,000 pictures taken over four trips to the Asian enclave by a group of MIT students under the tutelage of director of special projects Michael Hawley, plus several Bhutanese friends of the expedition. Those images, printed in giant format on one side of five-by-100-foot rolls of archival paper, make up the contents of the world's largest book. Cover closed, the six-inch-thick volume measures five by three-and-a-half feet; it weighs about 130 pounds, and is printed and bound on-demand in a limited edition of 500 copies available only through Amazon.com. The book costs $10,000, takes 1-2 months for delivery, and qualifies for Super Saver Shipping. It comes with an aluminum easel for easier viewing and turning of pages, and a charitable-donation tax deduction.
It's hard to assess this object in any but physical terms. For one thing, I'm not sure what it really is. Is it an album of bound posters? A photographic catalogue? A high-end printed slide show of "our class trip to the Himalayas?" A 21st-century art scroll? The digital equivalent of a monastic manuscript copy? Mechanical reproduction pushed to the borders of handicraft? Or hoopla? Or what?
Undeniably, the work is expensive and rare. To find my way into its presence took a little over two months. After failing to synchronize a visit to the bindery in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and being thwarted in my efforts to view the copy on display at the National Geographic Society's headquarters in Washington, D.C., I finally caught up with Number 14 of 500, one week after it was transferred from National Geographic to a permanent home at the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.
My appointment to look at Bhutan also gave the Prints and Photography Division staff their first opportunity to go through the book. They pushed several library tables together against an outside wall of the reading room to make a raised platform for turning the pages. The book was cradled by foam bolsters to ease pressure on the spine when it lay open. A step-stool helped elevate me above the viewing surface, although probably not far enough to attain the right aesthetic distance from the page. The custom easel hadn't been unpacked yet. The blinds were drawn to cut down glare. I borrowed a loupe, to inspect the prints' dot structure.
Bhutan 's binding boards are hinged and attached to each other by metal posts, which also pass through and anchor the four signatures at the spine end of the book. Each signature—the single unfolded piece of paper that passes through the printer/press—consists of one roll of archival paper five feet high and 100 feet long. The images in each signature are printed side-by-side in one long pass. The scroll is then folded every 40 inches, back or forth, so that each section of the bound volume opens spread by spread, like a long fan, rather than trimmed into separate pages like a conventional book, or rolled out like a narrative scroll. Turning the recto page pulls open the following spread.
Michael Hawley, impresario of the Bhutan project, also performs as a concert pianist. Where a concert artist can make due onstage with his own two hands and one page turner, it required two white-gloved librarians working in tandem to turn a page for this reader. Thus, the minimum number of people required to read the world's largest book is at least a company, if not a crowd. Uniquely, Bhutan makes for a social, rather than a reflective or meditative experience. For a time, in this instance about four hours, the company of readers can become part of a privileged family looking over pictures from their treks to Shangri-la.
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