Michael Snow: Cover to Cover

For years an out-of-print rarity, Canadian artist, filmmaker and musician Michael Snow’s (born 1928) classic 1975 artist’s book Cover to Cover is available once again, in this facsimile edition. Unconstrained by discipline, Snow famously remarked that his sculptures were made by a musician, his films by a painter. Flipping through Cover to Cover, which is composed entirely of photographs in narrative sequence, one might describe it as a book made by a filmmaker. Each individual page features a distinct moment, seen from one perspective on the front, and from a diametrically opposed angle on the back, occasionally pivoting between interior and exterior spaces. Midway through the book, the images are inverted such that the volume must be turned upside-down to be looked at right-side up. The result is an elegant, disorienting study in simultaneity. With this work, wrote Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, “Michael Snow has challenged the reader’s/viewer’s notion of a book, indeed one’s very notion of perception.”