Doug’s Cabin
Karianne Bueno
The Eriskay Connection
Softcover
192 pages
190 × 300 mm
2019
ISBN 9789492051431
For over forty-five years, Doug has been living in the desolate rainforest of Vancouver Island, Canada. I met him on his campsite in 2010, and he has been in my thoughts ever since. What is it like to live on the far-flung edges of the world? How do you survive in a forest full of wild animals, without the faintest trace of a cell-phone connection? I have always dreamed about a life away from society, but would I dare to actually live it?
When I visited Doug with my camera two years later it seemed his sole interest was to talk about the history of his forest. There had been close communities here: first, a group of pioneers, and later a military radar station, where Doug used to work as a carpenter. Their remains were scattered across his campsite – everyday utensils, and even entire buildings. Doug had plans. He would build a hostel; his site was to be an open-air museum, a monument for forgotten times. But the forest permeates everything, and the rains pulverise wood and paper. For Doug, it is a losing battle.
To better understand Doug, I immersed myself in the history so dear to him. Over the following years, my once tangible photography project about living away from society turned into a labyrinth of stories across multiple layers of time and reality. I would find myself completely caught up in them, as though within the jungle itself. I began to wonder: do we actually have control over our lives? Are our choices made as consciously as we like to imagine? Or are we bound by fate? What remains after we are gone? Doug’s Cabin is a multi-layered, fable-like photobook, published in the early Spring of 2019 by The Eriskay Connection. My own photographs are interwoven with texts, drawings (by Medy Oberendorff) and found footage.
About the Author
Karianne Bueno (b.1979) lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). She graduated from the HKU University of the Arts, Utrecht (NL) and has a Masters degree in photography from the AKV|St.Joost, Breda (NL). She exhibited at a.o. New York Photo Festival, New York (US), Kunstverein Leverkusen (GE), Unseen Photo Fair (for LhGWR), Amsterdam (NL). In her work and photo books, Karianne Bueno explores utopian places that are unaffected by the human urge for makeability. She delves into new sceneries looking for her long ago washed-out memories, dreams, book snippets and movie scenes that were concealed by her everydayness. A story gets woven whilst photographing these fragments. Her projects in Belgium and Japan resulted in the photo books Asper and Haiiro in which her excellence as an editor and storyteller stands out.
About the Publisher
The Eriskay Connection is a Dutch studio for book design and an independent publisher. We focus on contemporary storytelling at the intersection of photography, research and writing. In close collaboration with authors we make books as autonomous bodies of work that provide us with new and necessary insights into the world around us. The key for us is to convey the essence of their work through high quality editing, design and production. Our editions are mainly offset printed and bound in The Netherlands and we strive to work with local producers and sustainable materials as much as possible.
