Taking the form of a traditional hardcover book, the contents of this publication are anything but; only its gold embossed cover lexicon–later revealed to be ‘Walter’ itself–hints to its true complexity. Geeven photographs her subjects against the universe, rather than focus on their fashion or physical beauty. The physical project Walter was collaboration between Geeven and Thomas Grill, who wrote its algorithm, which ‘read’ varying situations of the North Sea. It created collections of words in reaction to the sea’s shifting conditions; peaceful texts when the sea was calm, illuminated by daylight, while a treacherous sea spoke of terror and loss, during episodes of darkness. Walter the publication collects those phrases; its column structure decreases at its end, as words increase in ‘heaviness’ and therefore become larger. Walter ends with an index of the three axes–x, y, z–which combine to create the many ‘moods’ of the shifting North Sea.
Text and images © Mainstudio
