WX11683 John Cartmell
2016 ISTD "An Undiscovered Country"
Prior to the digital age, a life, a moment and a memory existed only in fragments. The passage of a life, unless purposefully recorded—committed to a journal or memoir— was often lost forever. A personal account of an era, event, or memory is a shout from beyond the grave, “I was here”.
As I began to explore the brief , The Undiscovered Country, through my Grandfather’s memoirs, I realised that not only was I looking at his first-hand account of being a POW in WWII and his experiences of staring death in the face, but that I was able to hear him in a way that many other people aren’t as fortunate to have with their deceased loved ones.
To gain a better understanding of John’s situation the story is accompanied by historical facts, images and John’s ephemera that he bought back from the war. In John’s memoirs the idea of ‘scrounging’, making do, and of using items for purposes they were never intended for, is a reoccurring one. The overall look of the book is a reference to this spirit of re-purposing; the cover, seemingly cut from an official army document folder and bound by hand to form a new item.
Blocks and circles of colour are used to highlight imagery and to balance text, though they are also a dismantled, covert reference to the International Morse code S.O.S. When pictured in full, S.O.S. is ‘hidden’ under tip-ins.
The book is a respectful and in-depth exploration of John’s internment. His unique view of a dark time in history is animated with the employ of typographic composition, imagery, history, and presentation of some John’s WWII ephemera.
