Ian Howard 1947 Sydney
Action Man Story (1976)
Subtitled “A Parable about a Universal Soldier and his Public” and told in 72 scenes Action Man Story relates the experiences of a young man who joins the Army as soon as he leaves school. “All the scenes in the book are in fact based on film footage from the Second World War which the artist discovered in the archives of the BBC, though the main figure in the book is that of a twelve-inch high American doll known colloquially as ‘G.I. Joe’. After projecting the film stock onto a screen standing behind the carefully posed figure of the doll and taking single-frame shots of the various tableaux…, Howard then made negatives of suitable frames and then printed them on high contrast materials. A charred, somewhat corroded image is the result”. 25.5 x 20.0 cm. Self-published Montreal, Canada.
Catalano, Gary 1983, The Bandaged Image : A study of Australian artists’ books, Hale & Iremonger.
Oppen, M and Lyssiotis, P eds. 2011, The Silent Scream: Political and Social Comment in Books by Artists, Ant Press for Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, Petersham. p.12 pp. 64-5