ABOUT

Photopolymer, Linoleum Letterpress 4” x 4” closed, 4” x 32” open

Edition of 27

As I walked the downtown in the city of Birmingham, I took notice to the beautiful architecture and details. I photographed textures and began researching the buildings and the founding of the city. This project began as a study of the downtown Birmingham neighborhood, Central City. As my research advanced, my dissatisfaction of the city’s recorded birth began to build. Looking at the first internet hit for the history of the city, Wikipedia, one begins to read the romanticized idea of this industrial city. Every link visited had the same information with the same idyllic language. It was until I came across an academic journal by W. David Lewis that the interests of the founders was plainly written in, what I felt was, a real account.

This book is a part of my desire to seek a truth and give voice to that which I feel has been glossed over and sentimentalized. I took photographs of my walk and made reduction linoleum of some of the images. Text was taken from the Birmingham Wiki and annotated with my findings. The book was printed on a Vandercook Universal Press at The University of Alabama Book Arts program in April 2021.