The Big count down in on!!! 17 Days till YM006 is Released! Alice in Wonderland is unquestionably a fantasy story, full of fairy tale and imagination. Carroll insists on a philosophy that reality is merely a personal construction, where everyone’s reality is different, and it is essentially, all in our minds.
As readers, we are encouraged to make our own assumptions and interpretations about what we are reading. Carroll offers very little in the way of any descriptions, of either characters or situations. The descriptions in the text are just enough to reinforce the story, but vague enough that the reader can let their imagination run wild.
So why is it, that almost everyone would describe Alice as a blonde little Victorian girl in a blue dress?
While many would argue that John Tenniel’s illustrations are second to none, and work with Carroll’s words to form one of the best collaborations in children’s literature. I would like to suggest that maybe they are not so brilliant. As drawings, they are beautiful, but they do leave every reader with the same visual interpretation of the characters. Leaving very little room for imagination.
Maybe Carroll thought it necessary to follow the convention that seems to state that all children’s books must be illustrated. Or maybe it was the idea that in a story requiring so much imagination, just to follow the plot, allowing readers to conjure up their own visual ideas as well, is a step to far.
I must confess, that to me, the first image of Alice I think of is not that of Tenniel’s illustrations. As a child of the 90’s, I instantly think of the animated little girl from Walt Disney’s heart-warming version of the story. But even that interpretation, has clearly been derived from Tenniel’s illustrations.
Perhaps more recently, in Tim Burton’s version, the characters are a bit different, a bit more sombre and unique. But if you really think about it, they owe a lot to the original illustrations too.
To be perfectly honest, the more I think about it, the more I am left wishing I could go back to my childhood, before I ever encountered anyone else’s Alice’s, and read the story with no pictures. See what my own imagination could come up with, when left totally to it’s own devices. I think everyone should be allowed that chance to create his or her own Alice. If Alice is allowed to journey through Wonderland making her own assumptions about the people and characters she meets, why couldn’t we be given the same luxury?
Johan Nilsson's Alice.
You can see more of Johan's Work here - http://jnilsson.tumblr.com/
This ramble was written by YEAH's Co-Editor and Art Director Stevie.
You can read more of her ramblings at www.ljsphotography.co.uk/blog
Watch this space for more steve-ramblings on our blog, and more updates on YEAH's Alice in Wonderland One Off.
YEAH LOVE
Check out this AMAZING huge 70s Viewer that been made for the 70s exhibition at the Allen Gallery in Alton Hants. 
The Boys finally meet!
Location:Petersfield,United Kingdom
Just to prove we havent been too serious recently.. here is Stevie doing her Johan impression!This piece is a personal collaboration with YEAH Magazine, and will form the practical resolution for my final year degree project.
In line with YEAH, the piece will be theme based, in this case, exploring peoples responses to their favourite children’s book. I have been asking contributors to respond; in whatever manner they choose, to a book from their childhood. I have asked them to think about what memories they have of the book, how it made and still makes them feel, and what it means to them.
Although it is a magazine collaboration project, I am reluctant to call it a magazine. The final format is still a work in progress at this stage, originally I envisaged it sitting somewhere between a magazine and an artists book. However, the more the project progresses, the more reluctant I am to bind it.
In a project so heavily built around the concept of childhood, I thought it important to ask people what childhood means to them. The response I got built up a picture of childhood as a time when there is nothing to worry about, when you are free, with no cares or worries. It’s exciting and beautiful, a time for innocence and adventure. It’s about exploring, interacting and learning.
I want these elements to be reflected in my piece. I have begun to think that to bind this project, to give it a rigid ‘magazine’ form, would limit the adventure. The reader wouldn’t get enough of a sense of exploration and excitement.
From the projects I have been researching, I have decided that I want the readers or viewers of this piece to be able to interact with what they see. They need to feel it, smell it and most importantly, experience it.
The way my ideas are going at the moment, the piece may take the form of a sort of ‘box of goodies’. As a child myself, I would collect things in a shoebox. I collected letters, photographs, shells, leaves, and pretty much anything else I found and was fascinated by.
Maybe the piece will be a box crammed full of postcard images, miniature books, toys and things to evoke memories.
At the moment I am still gathering contributions, and beginning to piece them together. One of the biggest issues I face is authorship. This seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of my projects recently.
On a photography course, where my projects include no photographs of my own. Where do I stand? How do I make the work my own?
I have thought about including my own photographs in this piece. To be perfectly honest, I don’t want to. Somehow, I don’t think it fits, I don’t think it would be right.
I think this is a curation piece, about how I bring together the work I have collected, commissioned or sourced. My work is to curate, to bring together and to present the work.
So, that’s where I am at the moment. Who knows where it will end. My only constraint is time, the downfall of it being tied to my degree.
