So here's an "older" (April 2015) project I did with the author of "Awake in the Dark",  Paul Laville, whom I got to know by chance (more or less), because he wanted to use one of my photographies ("Dark Mask") for his first books cover.

I've wanted to make an artbook in cooperation with a writer/author for al long time, I just didn'k know anyone. So when I met Paul I thought I'd take the chance and ask him to write a text for me, which I was going to illustrate. 

The outcome of this project is "The Siren". 
It's completely done in screen printing and hand bound by myself.
The poem is written in Pauls handwriting.

Here are some pictures of it:

 

Pictures © Tanja Hehn

 

Also I did an exta print to go with each artbook (I did an edition of 20 booklets):

 

 © Tanja Hehn

And here's Pauls beautiful poem:

The Siren

In a world of ice and freezing fog,

In a forest of blackened wood,

In a putrid swamp, a foetid bog,

In a hollow ringed with skulls I stood.

I know not how I got here.

I know not when I came.

I know she craves my lust and fear,

I know it, to my shame.

She took me from a dream one night,

She sang her Siren cry.

She took my soul and, squeezing tight,

She sucked and fucked me dry.

And when I awoke my hands were red,

And when I awoke I began to bawl.

And when I awoke my kin lay dead.

And when I awoke I buried them all.

In the hollow ringed with skulls and skin,

In the horror now I crawl,

In the deep, dark wood where I feed my sin,

In the bloodied gloom in animal thrall

She rises from the stinking mire.

She opens her putrid mouth and loins.

She sings in terrible, ancient choir,

She screams in triumph and with me joins.

Upon my bones and meat she feasts

Upon my sex her harridan bite.

Upon my shame and fear she feeds.

Upon my soul, each frenzied night.

Until there’s nothing left to see

Until I’m spent and gone,

Until there’s nothing left of me;

Until then the nightly Siren’s song.

Paul Laville 

Jan 2015

I really like working with Pauls, so I hope we'll realize some new projects together in the near future.