VISUAL ARTIST
KOOK
Kook is a typographic and photographic cookbook by photographer Mayke Swemle and typography and graphic designer, Mark van Wageningen. This work can be read as a series of recipes, a typographical design or proof and a series of photographs. Above all, it is an autonomous work of art.
The photographs are part of the series, Be Prepared, in which 'prepared' animals play the lead. In the photographs, an artificial world is created, one that might in fact exist. Animals are posed in classic, familiar stances, evoking human responses to living animals. At the same time, they are not alive, and there is a kind of motionlessness, which generates a completely different feeling in the viewer. Are they prepared for us? Are we prepared for them?
Mark van Wageningen's typography is based on the DNA of his Gagarin family. Especially for this book, he developed Sonia Gagarin, a new member of the family.
Their book was made as a gift to the clients of print company Bijto and their own (new) clients. After publishing Kook, Mayke and Mark were asked to make this idea into a cooking column by NRC Next for their full color magazine. Janneke Vreugdenhil made the recipes. Sometime later this collaboration led to the publication of the book Carnivoria.




