Dabire Collective

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Wallace Stevens

While studying graphic design at Tehran University, Shahrzad Changalvaee focused on several projects combining photography and typography. By employing the words as incarnate palpable objects, Shahrzad tries not to use the word just as a representation of a concept, but to have it as a thing which plays and performs.

This series based on and inspired by a poem by Wallace Stevens (American poet 1879-1955) is part of her B.A. thesis project in 2006. Segments of the words are printed on transparent paper and are cut in multiple places to imply a foliated feel. Shadows and the body of the words are intertwined under the yellow, echoing the concept of the poem, which talks about the reader becoming the book itself, becoming the truth in the summer night.

All images © Shahrzad Changalvaee.