Girls Vs. Books.

Sebastopol, California:: Deeply Game Publications,, 2022.. Edition of 15. 10" x 8"; 66 pages. Illustrated pastedowns and free end pages. Printed with rubber stamps & pigment ink. Images printed with Indigo Electroink on Mohawk Superfine paper. Font is Cochin. Photography by Sara L. Press. Bound in illustrated paper covers with cloth spine. Signed and numbered by the artist. Sara Press: "'Girls vs. Books' is an artist's book made from my Storied Books* photographic series about vernacular altered books.  "The extra-illustrated books in this photo-based project were grangerized, stamped, and drawn-in between 1865 and 1980 by young women who didn't think twice about violating the sanctity of the printed page with their own editorializations. "My photographs, portraits of transcendent everyday objects, cherish the forms and textures of books. Beyond simple lyricism or nostalgia, however, the images celebrate the active consumption of information. They encourage us - even digital natives - to question, enhance, and transmute our received cultural mores. "In a nod to this content, this edition was printed (on Mohawk Superfine paper) as machine-bound books that I then cut up, rebound, and titled with rubber stamps."  *Sara Press, Storied Books: "Books act upon us, changing our minds and lives. We act upon them by turning pages, by dog-earing or underlining important passages, and by passing them around. Certain books bear the marks of more aggressive interaction, however, and this is what I have been documenting with my ongoing project in three parts, 'Storied Books'.  "While engaged in the daily struggle to protect my own books from the ravages of little hands, I noticed that many of the crayon- and pencil- marks made by long-grown children have now matured into enhancements. I began photographing volumes that had been 'defaced' long ago by a persistent series of girls and women who have talked back to their books.