Forward is a photo-collage codex and paper sculpture that depicts crowds of observers/photographers looking at the Emperor’s Throne in the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. Marshall Weber took these photographs in April 2012 as part of a life-long series of investigations into the relationship of audiences to cultural objects and authority. Weber and Dana Smith have collaborated on various books, prints, and installations that focus this investigation on the contemporary inversion of authority from the performer to the audience which often marks digital culture.

The subjects are hand-cut out of the backgrounds and the two resulting accordion folds are bound together. The top (the background, with photographic clues as to the location) is inverted vertically and bound behind the bottom (the people) so that there is both a mirroring effect of the negative space and a pictorial reference to Chinese landscape painting especially (when lit in exhibition) by the projected shadows cast by the cut pages.

The series of panels create an implied double helix codex which functions like a codex pop-up book when it is in its magnetic fastened covers, and like an 18 foot long Great Wall of China (with multiple possible arrangements) when the magnetized double-spined full paper case is unattached and the codex is allowed to stand.

All materials are archival quality.
Double accordion bound magnetic binding by Sophia Kramer of White Iris Books.
Measures 11.25×9.5″ when closed; 18′ x 6″ when fully extended.