Alpine Star
By Ron Jude
96 pages, 49 black & white illustrations
Soft cover, 8.5 x 6.25 inches
By Ron Jude
96 pages, 49 black & white illustrations
Soft cover, 8.5 x 6.25 inches
ISBN 0-9777655-0-4
ISBN 13: 978-0977765508
Edition of 500
Edition of 500
A-Jump Books, Ithaca, NY
Retail: $20
Retail: $20
About Alpine Star:
Photographer Ron Jude selected images from The Star News, a local newspaper in McCall, Idaho to sequence without text for this book. The images are reprinted using stochastic screening, a frequency modulation technique similar to conventional halftone printing that uses mathematical values to generate random density patterns. The printing method heightens awareness of the original source of the images, yet the visual language of notable people and events takes on a cryptic semiotic system when plucked from their news-worthy contexts. Blond twin toddlers in neck braces, a black bear's domestic appearance, and flooded riverbanks become signifiers of attention-worthy moments and together assemble to capture a micro-cultural survey pregnant with meaning.
—Printed Matter Books, New York, 2006
The source of the photographs in Alpine Star is the weekly newspaper from the artist's hometown in Central Idaho. The poetic element of these images—that unnamed, abstract subtext found in every photograph—is inflated here through the process of subtle manipulation and nuanced sequencing. While offering a world of loss and isolation, the pictures in Alpine Star also suggest the cross-pollination of personal history and collective memory.
—A-Jump Books
Ron Jude
Alpine Star 2004-2006
