First edition, first impression of Thirty-Six Views of the Moon by Ala Ebtekar. Medium format hardback in new condition.

About

Taking his cue from Omar Khayyam’s poem, Ebtekar produces a vignette of windows to the moon, inviting us to shift the direction of our gaze. In his process, the artist works with a photographic glass plate negative of the moon from the Lick Observatory archives in Northern California, treating each book page with Potassium ferricyanide and Ammonium ferric citrate (cyanotype) to make the surface of the page light-sensitive. Then, Ebtekar exposes the pages overnight in the UV-light emitted by the moon.
This project challenges viewers to imagine the the moon looking at us, seeing ourselves as the objects of the moon’s billion-year gaze. There are four unique editions to the work, each produced under the moonlight of a season (i.e. winter, spring, etc.), and each with its own unique bibliography. The artist’s proof is the only edition made with moonlight from all four seasons over the span of one year.