SAPPHIC INTIMACY - YEARNING

December 2022

Tools used: Photoshop, InDesign

Belonging to my project titled Sapphic Intimacy, my Yearning themed book was inspired by the fictional novel This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. The book follows two characters named Red and Blue, and despite being on opposite sides of the time war, they fall in love by writing letters to each other and leaving them for the other to find. However, in the end they get caught because of the traces of each other that have been left with the letters. Because of this storyline, I created two identical sides to a book, one red and the other blue, that slowly join in the center to form a beautiful purple spread. As the reader flips through the spreads, they will see abstract art I created using watercolour and markers that starts off as the full image of the art work and slowly zooms in on the traces of blue in the red spreads and vice versa, creating a feeling of yearning for one another. In the center spread there are two letters facing each other, one from Red to Blue and the other from Blue to Red. The letters are also oriented in a way that prompts the reader to flip the book once they are done with one side so they can continue the experience with the other colour.