For this handmade book assignment in the Digital Lab 6 course, I show students different techniques such as: sewing a book using the Smyth method, Japanese stab binding, adding a hard or soft cover to a sewn book block, and dry mounting. All the printing is done here at Dawson College by students using the double sided Canon printer (which prints matt) or the single sided Epson printers.

Examples of different binding used to create the books.
- Japanese stab binding with a soft cover
- Smyth binding with a hard cover and a ribbon (and nice textured end papers)
- Japanese stab binding with a soft cover. Pages were folded in half but were printed double sided so there are hidden images inside the folded pages.
- Smyth binding with a soft cover. A box with embroidery and covered in binding cloth. All images inside the box were dry mounted to individual matt boards.

Kate Hutchinson

“In MURDER, Simoneau’s works do honor to the Japanese master in a violent and modern way. This same violence, juxtaposed with the calm and gentleness of his mother's instinctive images lets us presume a romantic – maybe even watered down – vision of both his childhood and of the past. The omnipresence of such oppositions and tensions in Simoneau’s work is due to the fact that his focus centers primarily on the simultaneous presence of power and vulnerability, on the unique and fleeting coexistence of strengths and weaknesses. The sublime, the horrible, attention, negligence, youth, old age, gentleness, violence, day, night, life and death: the layers are multiple and the proposal complex.”

“Murder” by Guillaume Simoneau - MACK Books - MACK Books Twitter - MACK Books Instagram

Guillaume Simoneau graduated from the Dawson Professional Photography Program in 2000. You can see more of Guillaume’s work on his site http://www.simoneauguillaume.com and you can follow him on his Instagram and on Twitter