The latest book by artist and portrait photographer Justin Aversano, entitled Smoke and Mirrors, explores a contemporary take on classic tarot through environmental portraiture in a black, linen-bound cover with blind embossing and white embroidery, with a thoughtful use of multiple card and paper stocks. Each portrait, featuring different artists, spiritual practitioners and thinkers from around the world, represents a different archetype based on the Major and Minor Arcana.
Aversano says, ‘Typically, people associate the tarot with illustrations and drawings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so I thought the tarot from my perspective could be conveyed as real through photography.’
Opposite each character’s portrait is a haiku based on the archetype. The haikus were written by Jessica Hundley, author of The Library of Esoterica, the Taschen book series. Accompanying the book is a Polaroid-style tarot deck packaged in a mirrored silver box.
In a foreword by American cultural critic Carlo McCormick, he writes the following about the book: ‘Its primary form is one of hindsight, high-jacking a more than 500-year-old visual language to contemplate and commemorate a contemporary community.’
The design direction and concept for Smoke and Mirrors was created by Caleb Cain Marcus, founder of the Brooklyn-based design studio Luminosity Lab. For the project, he worked collaboratively in conversation with Aversano and explains, ‘The visual languages of typography, colour, materiality, and geometries are built from an exploration of Justin Aversano’s work and echo the ideas and narratives of his project.’
Marcus adds, ‘I believe books should create an experience that isn’t reproducible as a PDF or on a screen. I used a range of techniques from embroidery and stamping to papers with different reflective and translucent qualities to create a feeling that echoes the tarot and divination.’ Marcus appreciates the haptic qualities of paper, saying, ‘Sirio Pearl is the first paper in the book block, and it scatters light with a metallic shimmer, giving it a sense of wonder.’
Photography: The Book Photographer
Papers:
Sirio Pearl (book)
Sirio Ultra Black (book)
Symbol Card (Tarot cards/packaging)
Splendorlux Mirror Argento (Tarot cards/packaging)