Versions
Subtitle: a deconstruction
By: Linda Soberman, artist ; Lauren Camp, poet
Contributors: Camp, Lauren, poet; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Bloomfield Hills, MI]
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Cultural property; Destruction and pillage; Memory in art; Loss (Psychology) in art; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"The Versions book combines Linda's fragmented and multi-layered images with phrases from a poem I wrote about the 2007 bombing. It was a beautiful process between two artists who had never worked together, but respected each other's style. We offered comments, did rewrites, made additions to images - accruing and considering ... week by week. If we had been sitting together in the same room, the magic would have happened instantly. Instead, it took nine months long-distance to create. We needed the book to represent our two voices, and it does. The visuals extend the words and give them more power; the words gave the visuals a reason to be"--Statement from poet Lauren Camp, from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Lauren Camp creates in art, word and sound. She is the author of the poetry collection, This business of wisdom (West End Press), and writes daily about poetry (and its intersections with art and music) on her blog, Which Silk Shirt. In 2011, she guest-edited a mini-anthology of Iraqi poetry for Malpaís Review.

Linda Soberman, a printmaker and educator, with studios in Michigan and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, is the recipient of many awards and fellowships. Her work is represented in national and international venues including recent exhibitions in Michigan, Mexico, Argentina, and China. Her current work embraces themes of memory, loss and the Holocaust.
Notes: Hand-made accordion book, mixed media.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.