Village (2025)

Village (2025)
Julie Safirstein
Softcover pop-up book. H150 x W75 mm, 40 panels. Acquired from Editions du Livre, 28 October 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The pages of this Village turn and pop out, revealing chromatic images that underscore how well the elements of architecture can simultaneously inspire children’s books and artists’ books. A walk around the fully extended Village encounters five facades separated by five wing panels. The are doorways, arches, windows, stair steps, towers, roof shapes, domes, and however much more the eye can find in rectangles, squares, triangles, half circles, rhombuses, straight lines, and curves.

The view from above brings us five diamond-shaped compartments inside which facades abut facades. In doing so, each facade appears twice, once in one diamond and again in an adjacent diamond. The green facade shows this best when tracked from left to right across the images below. The view around and the view further in show us how this village like any village has buildings shaped differently and buildings shaped alike. You may have noticed that neighbors with the same facade favor the same color.

Like any community, though, it needs a landmark. The wing panel with a triangle-capped tower on both sides is this one’s. It stands at the center of the book, opposite the spine. Of course, with that shape, the village needs to know which side is which. So, on one side, the cap is red and the base blue, and on the other, the cap is blue and the base red.