Hazard Press releases four to five new titles a year, each of which is printed, assembled and numbered by hand by the south Wales-based artist/poet Jeremy Dixon.
Dixon’s publications fall into three main areas: photographic books that play with language and history, musical tributes, and Dixon’s own poetry. IN RETAIL: 15 Poems of Customer Assistance, for example, is a book of poems written while working in a pharmacy, each bound with a different found shopping list. It’s also available as a Kindle edition.
What’s great about Hazard Press’s micro-books is that they are designed, printed and folded from one sheet of A4 paper in an edition of 100, and therefore very affordable.
These delightful, tiny books cover a range of subjects – local history topics are inspired by Dixon’s travels with his camera in South Wales and further afield. FINDING YOUR WAY TO DYLAN THOMAS guides us through a series of signposts in Laugharne, and when in Massachusetts the same philosophy is applied for FINDING YOUR WAY TO EMILY DICKINSON.
Dixon is also an avid collector of historical photographs, from which he has fashioned books such as BANGED UP IN BRISTOL (historic images from the zoo) and HE SAID MEET ME AT THE FOUNTAIN (vintage photographs of American men and fountains).
The titles are a great play on the contents, allowing viewers to imagine their own versions of the image-based narrative.
Dixon also uses recycled materials (stamps, music posters, theatre catalogues) to make unique books in some of his editions. One of my favourites is WOW BOW WOW WOW which features fans’ memories of seeing the band Bow Wow Wow, overprinted onto band posters with a choice of gold or silver lettering on the cover. There are also books for fans of Shirley Bassey, Manic Street Preachers, Bobbie Gentry or the 1980s gay scene in Chicago.
Hazard Press has also recently acquired an Adana printing press; its first letterpress project is a series of found poetry postcards.
Hazard Press will be showing its new letterpress postcards at Counter Plymouth Art Book Fair, KARST, Plymouth on Saturday 24 October (12-6pm). Hazard Press also has an online shop (prices from £1.50–£8)
More in the Artists’ Books series:
#1: ‘The Octopus Would Like To Put a Stop To Us’ by Otto
