Messages - Hardcover

Messages consists of three simultaneous presentations: visual with forty-four black and white photographs; emotional through nine written messages which are philosophical and poetical interpretations of human condition in different parts of the world; as well as audio in the form of a 12 inch vinyl record which consists of twenty different recordings from six different countries over a 18 year time span. Always looking for ways to portray this project with as many dimensions as possible and with as much poetic wonderment as I myself felt, I included a short film titled Finding Messages. It shows the atmosphere in which I worked from the original footage, done in different times and different places. A 15 minute preview of a full length feature film titled "A Last Migration" is the ultimate Message in this project.  The vinyl record is a symphony composed, sequenced and edited by the artist from her audio recordings recorded in different places around the world, 1999 to 2016, and is presented in a special slipcase with the "Messages" book as part of the same project. Includes an exclusive access code to an ultimate Message: a 15 minute online preview of Julia Calfee's feature film A Last Migration. "We receive Messages in different ways. They are simply signs that are found in everyday life, often ignored but always present; in dreams, in nature, or in different belief systems. Some of these Messages are found in faraway places, others are within our lives. I did not go out of my way to find these Messages, they were there waiting for me and are as present today as when I found them." (from the book Messages, page 3) "This book, this vinyl record, this film is finished but searching and finding Messages is a life long project for me."

An artist whose media are photography, video, audio recordings, and writing, Calfee has spent most of her professional life living and working in Europe and Asia. She majored in art history at the Sorbonne, Paris. Her projects are always long-term, as she seeks to understand and portray what goes on beneath apparent realities. Her work has been shown in museums and galleries in France, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Singapore, and the USA.
A Glacier's Requiem, includes black and white analog abstract photographs of the glacier as well as recordings of the vanishing glacier songs, is presented with both a book and a 12" vinyl record and was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2016.
Her newest project, Messages, portrays a universe teeming with life that is invisible to ordinary sense perception through black and white photographs, written Messages, audio recordings and a film. Messages will be published and internationally distributed by Kehrer Verlag in 2018.
A Last Migration, her work in progress, is a feature length film, which portrays the true story of the daily life of a female shaman as she migrates with her small family and reindeer over the mountains of Siberia. A 15 minute preview is included with the book and vinyl record Messages.
Messages (Keherer Verlag, 2018); A Glacier's Requiem (Kehrer Verlag, 2016); Inside the Chelsea Hotel (powerHouse Books, 2008); Spirits and Ghosts (powerHouse Books, 2003); Mountain Spirits of Mongolia (Richard Lieu Foundation, 2002); Photogeneses/Têtes (Foundation Miro, 1995) are distributed internationally.