Free Online talk - The Road is Wider than Long
Free Online talk - The Road is Wider than Long
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The Road is Wider Than Long, surrealist photobook by Roland Penrose
Join Antony Penrose, Roland Penrose's son as he discusses the book and journey behind it.
As Lee Miller and Roland Penrose travelled through a world that was on the edge of the beginning of World War II both of them took photographs, capturing the surreal, landscapes and documenting the traditions of people such as the Roma, whose ways of living would later fall victim to politics and world events. At the end of their journey Lee returned to her life in Cairo, Egypt. Roland to London, where using his photographs he made what is now known to be one of the earliest examples of a British Surrealist photobook.
He wrote: “On my return to London I was seized by a desire to celebrate this brief and stimulating Balkan adventure […] the scenery, the people that Lee and I had enjoyed […] making of it a scrap book or visual diary dedicated to her.”
A surrealist love poem, drawn from his own memories and records. He called the book ‘The Road is Wider than Long’.
The Surrealist photobook narrates their journey through Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. It originated as a hand written book with tipped in photographs professionally bound in shoe leather which he gave to Lee. He soon also then adapted it for self-publication through his own London Gallery. The first edition printed was 510 copies in a wide range of monotype fonts inspired by the Dada movements use of fonts, and some lines in colour. The extra ten copies had photographs tipped in over the dot screen block printed images, and small illuminations that he added in watercolor. Roland used these ten as personal gifts with the first one bearing the inscription “For Lee who caught me in her cup of gold”. Other copies went to artist friends such as Paul and Nusch Eluard, Man Ray and Max Ernst.
The illustrated talk by Antony Penrose is 45 mins and followed by a Q&A
Facimilie copies of both the hand written and the first printed edition dedicated to Lee, of ‘The Road is Wider than Long’ are being specially printed by the Lee Miller Archives to accompany the exhibition of photographs by Lee Miller and Roland Penrose from the journey that opens on the 20th May at Farleys House & Gallery. The publication date is Lee Miller's birth date, 23rd April.