Camille Vidacek

What she asked for

Camille is a model in Bali. She has no site and did not want one: she wanted a book, an object to send.

She was hesitating on the direction to take. I put several to her, we worked on it together, and this is the one she chose.

Ordering by light

A model’s book is usually ordered by date, by client or by type of job. Not one of those three says anything about the work.

So the twenty-seven plates are ordered by the light that falls on them. Mineral Waters on Nusa Penida, Shoreline in coastal light, Portraits in natural light, Studio & Editorial in built light. Four chapters, four kinds of light, from the outside inward.

The cover states the rule in one line: a body set among rock, water and light.

The art direction

Three typefaces, three jobs. Marcellus for the name and the titles, Cormorant Garamond in light italic for the four chapters, Manrope in extra light for all the data. The scale runs from 7 to 46 points.

The ground is a warm black and the gold is used for the roman numerals and the data lines only. Nothing else takes colour: skin and fabric are the only coloured matter in the book.

The words are mine

On the two other projects in this gallery I had a rule: the client’s words do not get rewritten. Here there were no words, and Camille handed them to me.

So I wrote the titles of the four chapters, the cover line, and the name of all twenty-seven plates. The Lagoon, Lava Field, Black Rock, White Veil, Studio Noir, The Red Salon. Each carries its number, from N°01 to N°27, like an exhibition catalogue.

A named plate is looked at longer than a numbered one.

What I left out

The book contains a card with Camille’s height and weight. That is the practice of the trade, and it is in the file she sends. It appears nowhere in what is shown here, and that choice is mine.

One plate in the Studio chapter is credited to another photographer. It is in the book, with its credit, and it is not in what I show: it is not my image to show.