Still Oceanscapes by Debra Bloomfield

Still: Oceanscapes by Debra Bloomfield, with contributing author and environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams, is a one-hundred-fifty-six-page book cataloging Bloomfield’s Oceanscapes series—a collection of sixty photographs captured between 2000 and 2007.

Context

Bloomfield’s poetic, large-scale color photographs draw on the visual language of metaphor and explore the relationship between interiority and the external world—providing a visual map of the powerful interplay between sea and sky.

Book Exterior: Dust Jacket

The dust jacket is printed on semi-gloss paper with a matte lamination. It wraps from the front around the spine to the back, protecting the fabric case with flaps.

The title on the spine sits close to the horizon, creating tension between what’s above and below the ocean surface.

Book Exterior: Case

The front and spine of the case, covered in slate gray case cloth, are blind embossed, adding a tactile touch.

Book Interior

Still, includes an artist statement from Bloomfield; essays titled “Still,” “Ground Truthing,” and “Open Space of Democracy” by Terry Tempest Williams, an American writer, educator, and conservationist; Selected Poems by Francis Ponge; “Suitcase of Memory,” a conversation between Bloomfield and Corey Keller, an independent photo historian and curator; and an excerpt from Gregory Bateson’s essay “Steps to an Ecology.”

Book Interior: Front Matter

The typographic design of the essay “Still” serves as a vehicle to celebrate the serene yet occasionally unruly ecosystem beneath the ocean’s surface.

Through the use of single words, dynamic text columns, and unconventional line lengths, the design captures the interplay between tranquil schools of marine life, lurking predators, and the profound depths of the ocean, elegantly typeset in Goudy Old Style and Futura, reflecting the unseen complexities of this aquatic realm.