Eloisa Cartonera
Recently a friend showed me a collection of handmade books that she had collected in Argentina. The books have a distinctly low-fi feel with cardboard covers, hand-painted titles, photocopied texts and staple bindings. The raw beauty and conservation of materials immediately seduces.
The books are produced by Eloisa Cartonera. This organization seems to be a community oriented, non-profit art collective/recycle center whose mission is to employ the urban cardboard gleaners and publish work by experimental or under-published South and Central American writers. The gleaners, who are often homeless, unemployed families,are paid well-above the going rate for scrap cardboard; their children are paid to paint the covers. And the sale of the books helps to support the project.
Hernando Gómez Salinas goes into great detail (in english and spanish) explaining the history and mission of the organization on his blog, Buenos Aires Spotting (he is also a contributor and copywriter for this interesting site The uncool hunter, “a vanguard in the anti-global no trends”).
[…] first exposure to Eloisa Cartonera actually came from a Printeresting post that Amze did more than two years ago. A friend of his shared some pictures with him and he in turn […]