American Origami (2012 - 2019)
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2021)
American Origami is the result of six years of photographic research, and results in a statement of over 700 photographs which closely examines the epidemic of mass shootings in American schools. The project includes first person interviews, forensic documents, and press materials, as well as original photographs and texts. The varied elements repeat and fold into each other, illuminating relationships between myth-making, atonement, and collective healing. Bound in a unique way, the book creates a parallel world of the past and the present, showing the silenced landscape interwoven with the personal artifacts created by those left behind.
American Origami
Fw:Books/Light Work, 2019
Softcover, 384 pages
ISBN: 978-94-90119-81-2
For orders in the US please purchase from Light Work.
For orders outside the US please purchase from Fw:Books.
Winner of the Light Work PhotoBook Award 2019 / Shortlist Aperture Paris PhotoBook Award 2019 / Shortlist MACK Books First Book Award 2018 / Photobooks of Note 2019 (Deadbeatclub, Jackie Bates) / Favorite Photobook of 2019 (PhotoEye, Jason Eskenazi, Shane Lavalette, Kevin Kunishi) / Best of 2019 (Rob Hornstra, Photobookstore) / PHmuseum Best Photo Book 2019 (Laurence Cornet) / The Guardian Best of 2019 (Sean O’Hagan) / Best of 2019 (Vanessa Winship, Photobookstore) / TIME Magazine’s Best Photo Books of 2019 / American Suburb X Best of 2019 (Brad Feuerhelm) / Photobooks of Note 2019 (Deadbeatclub, George Georgiou) / What We Read in 2019 (Mother Jones, Mark Murrmann)
“This is a truly intense book… The approach to visual storytelling is amazingly sophisticated; each layer you peel back delivers another gut-wrenching—and often enraging—detail that reveals another nuance to these complicated stories of violence, and of our communal attempts to process them and move on.” - Lesley A. Martin, Creative Director, Aperture
“Though tactically quiet, American Origami is a profoundly dark and moving testament to how gun violence has ravaged the American school experience. It stands alone as perhaps the most intelligent and graceful photographic account of how communities metabolize this almost seasonal horror, and how mass shootings have become a deeply painful part of the American fabric.” - Paul Reyes, Editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review
“It is impossible to do justice to the elegance of this book’s form in words; a viewer needs to flip through American Origami to understand the brilliance of this approach that marries form and content.” - Allie Haeusslein, Associate Director, Pier 24 Photography
“American Origami presents an unusual and moving reflection on the complexity of a seemingly endless cycle of gun violence in America—a timely publication that is visually striking, poetic, and painful.” - Shane Lavalette, Director, Light Work
“A complex photobook on every level.” - Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian
American Origami Theater Project
American Origami Theater Project
Performed at the Getz Theater, Chicago, Illinois October 13-23, 2021
Adapted for the stage from the book American Origami by Andres Gonzalez
Directed by Jimmy Maize, Tectonic Theater Project
Written by Jimmy Maize and Andres Gonzalez
In collaboration with the Columbia College Theater Department and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago
On Stage: Ginger De Leon, Lexi DeWitt, Snag Flynn, Emma Fulmer, Ricky Luoto, Eilish Morse-O'Rourke, Jimmy Piraino, Nealie Tinlin, Grace Trivax
