Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Last Possessions of Professor Aronnax

Inspired by Jules Verne's classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Lee Krystek created this wonderful collection of props and ephemera- The Last Possessions of Professor Aronnax.

"My first job was to get or make a journal that could pass for one owned by a French academic in 1866. One of the prerequisites for the journal was that it should have removable pages to make it easy for me to create the contents. I found someone on Ebay who makes journals that fit the bill. The one I selected has a leather cover with rough-looking paper. The pages are held in with a string that double as a means to tie up the journal when not in use. It looks precisely like what I might expect somebody to be carrying as a diary in the mid-19th century."




Despite having a bias against static displays I particularly like the project's presentation. A great deal of thought went into the selection and creation of the documents and props, but their arrangement within the shadowbox kicks things up to the level of true art. You could stand in front of it, picking out all the little details and references to the source material, and easily lose track of time.

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