Mrs. Merryman’s Collection
Anne Sophie Merryman/Miki Soejima
MACK
Hardcover
112 pages
240×270 mm
2012
ISBN: 978-1-90794-6257
Miki Soejima is a magical realist, an escapologist who is stepping out to claim her identity as the photographer behind Mrs. Merryman’s Collection, winner of the 2012 First Book Award. In the school of great fantasists such as Joan Fontcuberta, Japanese photographer Miki Soejima’s work deals with the artifice at the heart of photography, and the influence of authorship. Her work comprises of a set of postcards which the artist has fabricated, and a fictional story that presents the work as objects collected by Anne-Marie Merryman, and inherited by her granddaughter Anne Sophie Merryman.
‘The whole story is a fiction. I have fabricated a collection of postcards, attributing the imagery to a fictional character, Anne-Marie Merryman. Her granddaughter Anne Sophie Merryman presents the work to the public, as a set of postcards that she inherited in a wooden box. People looking at the postcards might realise they are fake through a set of hints, placed in the postcards themselves; and, at the end of the book, there is a hidden message. I created the postcards using my own photographs, and mixing different materials from postcards that I collected – so the texts on the back of the postcards are real messages in authentic handwriting… I often mix up the messages and the stamps, intentionally.’
Miki Soejima was born in Japan, 1980, and now lives and works in London, UK.
www.mikisoejima.com
Mack is an art and photography publishing house based in London, working with established and emerging artists, writers and curators, and cultural institutions – releasing between 20-25 books per year.
