Photo credit: Curtis James, 2023

Siren Song is a photographic project that embodies my personal view of California’s Salton Sea – a seemingly marginalized and neglected American "Western Frontier" - and the vestiges of its inhabitants. As I spent time there and became more intimate with the place, I tried to pull back some of the surface layers to uncover the longing, sadness, and hope that I perceived.

In 2023, Emily Macaulay (Stanley James Press) and I worked to create something tangible from this project : a large book that can envelop the reader and help to “place” them there. The paper dimensions and thick stock encourages the reading experience to become a ‘bodily’ one. The text accompanying the photos is letterpress printed on the very thin Offenbach Bible paper; these poems are interspersed in the book and the materiality of the paper is extremely light and easily slips from the fingers. It echoes the fragility of the landscape and reflects the ethereal –  the ghosts of the Salton Sea.

Edition of 75

A saddle stitched book measuring 240x360mm (portrait)  / 9.5"x14.25" (portrait)

Screen printed foldout cover with attached photo to front cover. Printed on Colorplan Slate 350gsm

8 text pages printed on Colorplan Vellum 175gsm

19 full bleed photo pages, digitally printed on Naturalis Matt Absolute White 160gsm

6 letterpress printed poems, printed on Offenbach Bible paper

Photography and poems by Tamar Granovsky

Epigraph: Nafiza Azad, The Candle and the Flame

Design by Tamar Granovsky and Emily Macaulay of Stanley James Press

Autumn 2023. Hand bound by Stanley James Press