Editions Take 5 by May Castleberry (former Curator, MoMA)

Like the classic jazz piece from which this artist’s book publisher takes its name, Editions Take 5 is propelled by an improvisatory spirit. Under the creative drive of her founder Céline Fribourg, conceiving ambitious themes and new directions for each of its publications, Editions Take5 sets a stage where selected artists, writers, designers, and others engage in a collaborative process, intertwining new artwork, literature, innovative design and craftsmanship to make a unified work of art. From inception through production, the contributors' ideas evolve in response to one another. Each finished book distills the give and take of engaged parties for whom every aspect of the book—artwork, text, format, typeface, cloth, printing technique, the sequential structure of the book—has been intensely considered.

Artists have explored the artist's book form for many decades, and, in the experimental Modern and Contemporary idiom, have adapted almost every aspect of the book and publication process to create new genres and forms, many of them associated with specific artistic movements, over the last one hundred and fifty years. By any definition, artists play the primary role in creating an artist’s book. Inarguably, the purist expressions of an artist's vision in print have been self-published. Yet many important artist’s books have come into existence because publishers and editors created an ideal platform for artists and others to explore the narrative arts of the book. Editions Take5 is just such a publisher.

While Edition Take5's books are as varied as the artists they have chosen to work with, their program has roots in two historical models. As a publishing enterprise (although it should be noted that the word "enterprise" easily gives way to the words "labor of love" in artist's book publishing), the Editions Take5's approach, at its most basic, is akin to the livre d'artiste of the early 20th century. These volumes [would Celine like to name one she likes ?] offered original artworks and literary works of parallel importance, splendid typography, design, and hand-binding in a limited, signed edition. Yet, at the heart of almost every Editions Take5 project is a kind of photographic book. Each contains a series of photographs in which every image forms part of a photographer's carefully sequenced narrative. Editions Take5, along with its predecessor, Editions Coromandel, have characteristically given rein to auteur-photographers to remarkable effect. Additionally, the sensibility of individual Editions Take5 books recall different varied historical antecedents, whether or not the reference is direct. The playful juxtaposition of photography, design, and text, the manipulated images, and kaleidoscopic devices in Vetri Rosa by Mat Collishaw, with text by Ornela Vorpsi, and a tray case designed by Philippe Cramer , is reminiscent of early Surrealist books from the mid-20th century, or, further afield, but much admired by Edition Take5's editors, one finds Bruno Munari's children's books of the mid-20th century as a source of inspiration.

Even as they recall books of the last century, Editions Take5 ushers in their own their own 21st century preoccupations. Editions Take5 revels in unexpected narrative twists, interpenetration of text, typography, design, and art. Unlike most other photographic books and artist's books in production today (which, by inclination and for many practical reasons, typically lack a sculptural dimension) Editions Take5 offers the reader a heightened perceptual, optical and spatial experience. In Ernesto Neto's, Tom McCarthy, and Gva Studio's " Book of Chastity, " manipulated photographs, a self-reflexive and inquiring text, and an interpretive binding emphasize the interaction between the reader/spectator and image as he or she moves though the pages of the book. In several books, the reader encounters a master binder's version of extreme architecture, as in Robert Stadler's tray case for Gabriele Basilico's "Beyrouth."

To achieve some of their marvelous effects, Editions Take5 hires superb artisans and innovative designers--and gives them unusually prominent voices in the production process. This emphasis on the integrity of design and the enduring value of craft sets Editions Take5 apart from many contemporaries, who often see the technical or the handmade as extraneous to the artist's conception, and therefore suspect. In contrast, Editions Take5 celebrates and choreographs a book form that features multiple variables, layers of artistic and artisanal expression, and intersections between artists, writers, and craftsmen across different disciplines. These interests, to be seen in a number of the pages to follow, are especially evident in "Recto-Verso," Ali Kazma's vast study of the world of the book, with text by the distinguished historian of the book, Alberto Manguel, typographic design by Philippe Apeloig, and a multi-chambered box by Jean Luc Honnegger, in which photographs are reshuffled like so many piece of a puzzle. The completed project resembles a marvelous artifact, representing a slice of a much larger investigation in words, images, and design. We are much richer for all of Edition Take5's bookish investigations.