Thames Log by British photographer & film-maker Chloe Dewe Mathews examines the ever-changing nature of our relationship to water, from ancient pagan festivities through to the rituals of modern life. Dewe Mathews spent five years photographing up and down the River Thames, from its puddling source to its great estuarial mouth. Far from holding a fixed identity, the Thames becomes a protagonist in a series of ceremonies and practices that flow seamlessly downstream, from boat burning in Oxford to evening prayer in Southend; from mass baptisms to teenage rites of passage.
We approached Chloe's unconventional record of the Thames through a highly ambitious book design: by rolling Chloe's images across French-folded pages, the Thames literally moved downstream through the book in a continuous visual flow. The typeface of the book, Doves Type, was an early-20th-century font thrown into the Thames by two warring foundry partners, rescued by divers from the silt of the river and lovingly restored a hundred years later.
Loose Joints Publishing, 2021
152 pages, 76 colour plates, 240 × 295 mm
Softcover with French-fold pages
text by Marina Warner
ISBN 9781912719198
Book Design, Editing, Production
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