SEVEN STONES at the HILL of the WITCH: PHOTOGRAPHS by JEAN McMANN Fine Printing JUNGLE GARDEN PRESS 2005
SEVEN STONES at the HILL of the WITCH: PHOTOGRAPHS by JEAN McMANN.
FINE PRINTING. LIMITED EDITION of only 100 COPIES, each SIGNED and NUMBERED.
Published by the JUNGLE GARDEN PRESS, Fairfax, California, 2005.
Eleven finely printed, loose leaves in a handmade clamshell box. The leaves are:
SEVEN FINELY PRINTED B&W PHOTOGRAPHS, each beautifully printed on its own leaf. The photographer, Jean McMann, SIGNED each photograph on the backside, and included handwritten information about the Stone or Cairn in each photo, the year the photo was taken, the limitation of the printing (in this case #41/100) and the date she signed the photo (2005). The photograph leaves have deckled edges.
A Title Page.
A Poem by Kimo Meyer, b.1859 d.1919, translated from the Gaelic.
The photographer's statement of her multi-year photographic journey among the Loughcrew kerbstones and cairns.
A Colophon / Limitation Page. The limitation page is hand numbered, signed and dated by Jean McMann.
The clamshell box is covered with silk cloth, it measures 9.5x9.5 inches. The 11 leaves measure 9x9 inches.
CONDITION: The 11 leaves and the clamshell box are all in FINE condition. Each photograph would look great mounted and or framed.
From the Limitation Page:
******Archival pigment prints were printed on Somerset rag paper at Urban Digital Color, San Francisco. The printing is letterpress using Janson type on Somerset paper. It was done at the Jungle Garden Press, Fairfax, California. John DeMerritt, Emeryville, California, made the boxes for the edition. Of the edition of 100, this is copy number 41.******
From the Photographer's Statement leaf:
******I photographed these kerbstones again and again from 1989 to 1992, lying behind my splayed tripod in the wet grass of Irish summer mornings. They stand on the rest of a hilly ridge now mostly called Loughcrew, about fifty miles southwest of Dublin in county Meath, Ireland. For centuries the place was known as Slieve na Callighe or Sliabh na Cailli (the Hill of the Witch or Hag). The stones are part of a Neolithic ceremonial center, a site of veneration and pilgrimage built sometime around 5,500 years ago to house and honor the dead. It also may have served as a tribute or means of connection to the sun, moon, stars, as well as to the earth and its seasons. Together with sacred architecture worldwide, the many stone monuments in ruins at Loughcrew speak to us of the purpose and meaning of human existence - our births and deaths, the deeds and events of our lives over time. Deep-rooted and comforting, these stones represent the power of human imagination and our connection to the cosmos.******
About the Photographer, Jean McMann:
******Jean M. McMann graduated from the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley with both a Master of Arts in Design in 1976 and a Ph.D. in Architecture in 1991. She taught courses in writing, photography, and cultural studies at her alma mater and at the San Francisco Art Institute. She authored Riddles of the Stone Age: Rock Carvings of Ancient Europe, and Altars and Icons: Sacred Spaces in Everyday Life. Ms. McMann lived in Mill Valley, California, with her husband, Doug Muir. Both were noted photographers. Jean McMann died in 2015 (her husband a year later).******
As of this writing, after an extensive search on the Internet, I could only find one copy for sale, listed for $650.