Heartbeat

      Collage from the final Heartbeat dummy (1994)

Between the end of 1990 and 1994 I made about seven different dummies for Heartbeat. Some with fiberprints, the others photocopied. This began after the unexpected passing away of my mother. I had photographed about 15 years and made selections from that period, about her of course, and about everything else that mattered: my relationships, my brother, my friends, my son and the places where I lived, mostly in The Netherlands and in France. Heartbeat became a visual poem in which happiness and sadness went hand in hand. Nothing was linear or chronological in the book.

The images I used for Heartbeat were taken without any intent to publish them in a book. I never was much of a planner and I photographed from intuition, always kind of reacting to things. I began by photographing directly around me. And that never changed much, except of course, my circles of living life became larger, or different, or something.

Heartbeat

(self) published by Volute 1994

Illustrated hardboards (issued without dustjacket)

Size 23 X 31.5 cm. 64 pages duotone printing

Photographs and texts Machiel Botman

Editing & design Machiel Botman, Adriaan Monshouwer, Victor Levie and Fred Ritchin

Scans and printing by Veenman Drukkers, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Binding Boekbinderij Van Mierlo, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

First edition 1500 copies total, of which 500 in Dutch, 500 English and 500 French.

For each language there was a limited edition (mentioned in the colofon) of 15 copies, with a signed fiberprint of the cover image. This limited edition had a handmade slipcase, illustrated by the author.

The exhibition Heartbeat opened in Het Nederlands Foto Instituut in Rotterdam, in december of 1994. With the prints we also put up one of the dummies, a leporello of nearly 20 meters long. 

Slipcase limited edition of Heartbeat - none were the same