Jon Horvath
Jon Horvath
This is Bliss
Softcover
11.8 x 9.4 inches
280 pages
Edition of 500
Yoffy Press
Co-published with Fw: Books
2022
About the Book:
A Welcome Message from the Prince of Bliss
The quiet kingdom of Bliss sleeps on a hill above the Snake River. It is dilapidated barns in fallow cornfields and white potato cellars stuffed with the future french fries of America. Cowboys ride their horses through the country as they guide their grazing cattle. The locals satiate their thirst at Jenny or Frank’s bars and fill their bellies at Ziggy’s Gas and Grill. Life in Bliss is simple, but not simplistic. Our hamlet is content, yet proud of our humble community and gracious natives, so we eagerly show it off to all who come and visit.
This Is Bliss is a transmedia narrative project investigating the vanishing roadside geography and culture of a rural Idaho town named Bliss. The project considers how mythologies of place and happiness collide, and are frequently confounded, in a location with a complex narrative of booms and busts that reflects the complicated history of American Idealism and Manifest Destiny. All that remains in Bliss is two gas stations, a school, a church, a diner, and two saloons to service its 300 current residents. Through a thorough look at the contemporary landscape and its residents, This Is Bliss contrasts romantic visions of the American West with its contemporary reality and considers how the heights of idealism are envisioned on both a personal and cultural level.
Photographs by Jon Horvath
Co-published with Fw: Books
Book review by Joe Cuccio |
The monograph This is Bliss by Jon Horvath, published by Yoffy Press, is a multi-layered visual depiction of the town of Bliss, Idaho, and provides both a physical and symbolic understanding of what this place meant to Horvath himself.
Horvath found himself at a life crossroads when creating this body of work, and the visual styles deployed play well into the complexity of this time in his journey. There is a nice balance between poetic imagery, documentary style, and even found photographs and objects. To utilize all of these different modes of creating a body of work is a challenging task, but Horvath successfully deploys each type of image to create what he calls a, “...visual approach to a short story cycle.”
Image by Jon Horvath
Jon Horvath
The mixed media works seamlessly flow from one page to the next. Yoffy Press does a phenomenal job in sequencing both color and monochromatic imagery, as well as the graphic layout of the book is so diverse. The spreads are complex and the viewer is drawn in as they go through this book through the usage of multiple different types of displays such as full-bleed spreads, middle-positioned single images on both the right and left page, the occasional bottom weighted spread, and even spreads split into quadrants.
One may find the complexity of this book’s design disorienting at first glance, but the images that are shown throughout justify this unique approach to sequencing. Horvath’s work is so much more than images created in one way; he is a multi-dimensional artist who sees things from a holistic point of view. The way he makes imagery necessitates such a multi-faceted approach to the structure of the book itself.
This work showcases to the viewer that small towns are much more than they appear. They can be deeply layered and complex places. Bliss, Idaho is more than just meets the eye, it is a place that does justice to its name by displaying happiness in a unique form. Horvath found a new understanding of happiness through his interaction with this seemingly banal Western town. He did not allow for the work to simply comprise beauty in the everyday, but rather a happiness and aesthetic value found within the rich history of this place.
As someone who has never visited Bliss, I cannot say this for sure, but I do believe wholeheartedly that Horvath does great justice to the sense of wonder that can be found within the limits of Bliss, Idaho. It makes the viewer step back and realize that places all across not only the United States but rather the world can be seen through a lens that it is more than what the surface reveals.
Image by Jon Horvath
Image by Jon Horvath
