The Healing Power of Poetry
CLIENT
HANUNE
TIMELINE
05/2019 - 12/2019
SERVICES
CREATIVE DIRECTION, EDITING, PHOTOGRAPHY, PUBLICATION DESIGN
Hanune is a book of poems written and independently published by Jo BouSaleh. This collection of works recounts the dizzying promise of love, the sinking feeling of loss, and the light that beams through after the storm.
Jo was familiar with our experience in self-publishing and entrusted us to bring the project to life from conception through to production. We worked together to develop a direction and flow for the book, and we shot an original collection of film photography to accompany Jo’s words. The finished product is an artful account of self-exploration and discovering the healing power of poetry.
There’s a lot of magic in film photography: the texture and depth, the emotion, the inconsistencies. It draws a lot of parallels with the imperfect beauty of real life, and it serves to capture the nostalgic and introspective nature of Hanune quite perfectly.
“When I was writing Hanune, it was an idea that was slowly coming to life. I met with Similar Space based on seeing the quality of their work on other projects. It was a creative match for me, and their guidance with this endeavour was exactly what I needed to bring a project such as Hanune into a tangible, sellable book.
With such vulnerability involved with something like this, self doubt is inevitable and the genuine approach taken by Similar Space made me feel at ease. They honoured my words beautifully and captured the poems with the film photography, all of which are now found in the published book. I was so happy with the entire process and the final result, that truthfully, I couldn’t imagine working with another team on my next project.
Building something from a thought and an idea to a finished product was such an amazing process, and I was so happy to share this experience with Similar Space.”
—Jo Bousaleh, Author of Hanune
MORE WORK: ENSŌ, INDIGENOUS WOMEN OUTDOORS, OBABIKA, ALL