Phlogiston, Clifton Meador

'Phlogiston is based on photographs taken in southern Poland and the Czech Republic. I felt an unexplained sense of dread there, and, while walking in one city, I observed that the earth was black—perhaps filled with ashes. I imagined where those ashes might have come from, and I found it hard to breathe, as if the air was full of something besides oxygen.

The long-disproven scientific theory of phlogiston attempts to explain combustion. According to this theory, phlogiston is an elemental principle of fire, and burnable substances are a mixture of phlogiston and ash. The phlogiston in an object is liberated during combustion and absorbed by the air. The remaining ash reveals the true form of the burned material. This theory explained why combustion in a closed space ceases—the air in the closed space becomes saturated with phlogiston, and since it cannot absorb any more, combustion ceases.

Once I was looking at everything through the lens of the Holocaust, even simple things became ominous and filled me with dread—trains in particular. This book breaks down photographic representation into elemental dots and marks, and the text breaks all the rules of typography. Something is wrong here, and the graphic form and typographic handling of Phlogiston present a horror movie told in broken, incomplete scraps.

The long-disproven scientific theory of phlogiston attempts to explain combustion. According to this theory, phlogiston is an elemental principle of fire, and burnable substances are a mixture of phlogiston and ash.

I was photographing in Southern Poland, and I felt an understandable sense of dread there—my imagination filled with images from the past. While walking in one city, I observed that the earth was black—and my morbid imagination filled it with ashes.
I found it hard to breathe, as if the air was full of something besides oxygen.'

- Clifton Meador

Self Published
Edition of 125
46 pages
212.7 x 273.05 mm