I have the utmost respect for people who are good at things I am terrible at. While the number of things I don’t excell at is quite high, hand constructing books takes the cake. When it comes to cutting things with X-Acto knives or folding paper or gluing anything, I am pretty much all thumbs. That is one of the reasons I am thoroughly impressed by the creator of this week’s Book Blog book, New York based photographer Peter Hoang. His book, called China, is a beautiful photo essay that he constructed completely by hand. Hoang has also shot several stories for ArtAsiaPacific, so you just know that his work has to be good.
China is robust. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I man-handled it a bit and you can’t even tell. I’ve seen professional books produced less solidly than this one.
If you would like to purchase a copy of China, get a hold of Hoang on his site and he will gladly sell you one for $25. While you are on his site, check out his photo essay on Vietnam. It is beautiful.
Book Blog is a weekly showcase of book design from ArtAsiaPacific’s areas of coverage and is written by AAP’s designer Sahar Baharloo. All images were taken by our photo editor Alis Atwell.