Ocean Front Property by Mark Templeton

Ocean Front Property is a photobook designed by Nicolas Polli, with texts by Brad Feuerhelm and Ezekiel Honig and a soundtrack on compact cassette. The soundtrack was originally released on Senufo Editions as a CD in July 2020.

From Graphical Recordings:

“I was in search of water and the effect its absence had on me,” writes Canadian sound artist and photographer Mark Templeton about his second photobook, Ocean Front Property. From this sense of absence and geographic isolation grew a new body of work with two components: A book of color photographs, made entirely in the landlocked province of Alberta (“where the nearest ocean is a thousand kilometers away”), and an Audio Experience (a ‘soundtrack’ to the book, included as a digital download or available on a limited edition cassette).

The design of the text pages is simple and sober: one background color and one typeface, Dominicale, which brings the design to the pages and the audiotape. “Dominicale” sounds medieval, and in a way it is, although its profile is humanist and its details have a crafty flavour. From the Altiplano typeface information:

Twentieth-century revivals of early humanist type, like Monotype’s Bembo, were interested in these poetic, floral qualities, which were interpreted in a way that looks fine and mannered in comparison to the originals. Dominicale is interested in the opposite: it interprets the primitive, rough setting of the early printed book into a bold, angular structure; it ignores the geometric for the energetic, and looks for its details to woodcutting.