Coping with Fear

In the days following the devastating 12.51pm earthquake in Christchurch the events continued to fold hour by hour on the internet news sites. I sat glued to the screen. The pictures horrified me, bringing the carnage closer. I needed to capture some record of those moments; I created a book in response.

I trialled a number of different book styles, meandering books, accordion style with foldouts before finally deciding on a book that looked like it was barely holding it together.

The book consists of six leaves, the front cover and an additional tag. It is bound with large loops of wire to represent the famous 'No 8' wire, with which anything can be fixed. The front cover design was inspired by the terrible damage done to the Christchurch Cathedral, the heart of Christchurch city and the lines on the seismic drums recording the earthquake. Each page of the book focuses on one image that particular affected me. These were printed out, torn from the printed page and then crushed up before being spread out and loosely attached to a sheet. The edge of each page is decorated in red and black watercolour pastels brushed off another card. The attached tag has a quote from the Mayor of Christchurch, Bob Parker.

"You have to believe me

when I say we can do it,

we can get through this

by leaning on each other

and finding a strength

we didn't know we had."