Best Book Work of the Year 2020

One immediately senses that here we have it in something special. A gray full-volume book with round corners and silver cut. The coating is of canvas with white serigraphic print and silver foil embossing with the title “Old Tjikko” – the focal point of this publication.

Old Tjikko is considered with its impressive age of 9,500 years as the oldest tree in the world and is a spruce that rises above one deserted mountainside in Dalarna in Sweden.

Visual artist Nicolai Howalt has photographed this unusual spruce that in itself itself is about five feet high. A simple negative has become the many different
photographs in this book: A total of 96 variations created on approx. 96 different types of older analog photosensitive photo papers, many of which are far beyond theirs expiration date – some go so far back as to 1933. This causes them to evoke photographs appear in a wide range different artistic variations, though they stem from the same negative. The result is an almost organic diversity of perception and expression; an aesthetic where the prerequisite for each individual photograph, similar to the original motif, has become an integral part of the image-making process that seems to uncover glimpses from one
remove and other time. Beautiful poetic elegance united in simple bold choices and materials of high quality assigned by a unanimous committee The Danish Book Design Award 2020 as the Year Danish Textbook.