Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress

Discipline: Book design
Format: Book
Design firm: Heavy Meta
Creative director: Barbara Glauber
Designers: Barbara Glauber, Beverly Joel
Jacket designers: Barbara Glauber, Beverly Joel
Authors: Ian Berry, Darby English, Mark Reinhardt, Anne Wagner, Michele Wallace
Editors: Ian Berry, Darby English, Vivian Patterson, Mark Reinhardt
Publishers: Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Williams College Museum of Art, MIT Press
Trim size: 11.8 x 9.5
Pages: 208
Quantity printed: 4,000
Typefaces: Burin Sans, El Dorado
Printer: Dr. Cantz’sche Druckerei
Jacket printer: Dr. Cantz’sche Druckerei
Paper: Scheufelen Job Parilux Silk 200 gsm
Binder: Buchbinder Dieringer
Binding method: Smyth sewn, hardbound with paper-wrapped boards
Book type: Image driven

The artist Kara Walker is best known for her provocative black cut-paper silhouettes that confront slavery, sex, violence, and racial stereotypes. This catalog accompanied an exhibition of a selection of works at the Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and included many previously unpublished pieces.

Earlier publications that featured Kara’s work often reproduced it as black-and-white line art, but since we wanted to convey the scale, context, and tactile nature of the work more accurately, we used four-color reproductions and included floor and ceiling details in installation shots whenever possible. In order to accommodate large images of her room-size dioramas, we chose to use a horizontal format.

The formal language of Kara Walker’s work consists primarily of compositions using intricately cut black shapes arranged in narratives. To complement this, the structure of the book’s typography is based on rectangular blocks: body copy sits in justified columns while overprinted black boxes with different finishes for display type. This allows the large background type to read as either figure or ground depending on the way the light hits it, making reference to Kara’s flip of the Victorian tradition of using white silhouettes.

Juror Notes:
“Great typographic voice—referential yet fresh—that embodies Walker’s work well. Every part of this book is considered, from its tactile, understated cover, to its half title, to the checklist and copyright page.” —Cheryl Towler Weese