100 Books

Two interesting books released recently which use the number 100 as an organizing principle.

Seattle 100: Portrait of a City is the culmination of a three-year project by Seattle photographer and filmmaker Chase Jarvis. Jarvis spent 36 months photographing a curated collection of creative people in and around Seattle. The book compiles 100 of his black-and-white portraits of the Seattle-based artists, musicians, writers, scientists, activists and filmmakers. Many of the photos are beautiful, and it's a worthy attempt to capture a snapshot of a city’s culture through its people. Jarvis is donating a portion of his proceeds from sales of the book to the King County arts and culture organization 4culture.

The Exquisite Book is a project dreamed up by designers Julia Rothman , Jenny Volvoski and Matt Lamothe, inspired by the Surrealist parlor game Exquisite Corpse. The editors asked 10 groups of 10 artists to contribute a page to the book. The first artist was given a few words to inspire their drawing, and each of the following artists only saw the page that immediately preceded their own. Each artist was given two weeks to complete their page, and the whole process took approximately five months. In addition to the three progenitors, the book features beautiful contributions by Caitlin Keegan, Lisa Congdon, Eunice Moyle, Tom Neely, Kelly Lynn Jones, Susie Ghahremani and Lorena Sim.

The book was designed by the New York design team ALSO and just published by Chronicle Books.