Cover Story. Смоляное чучелко — 23 (2022)
I decided that this time the cover should feature a photograph. I tried taking the photos myself but was not satisfied with the result. Then I started browsing Instagram, and I liked the works of Hans Jacob Haarseth. Hans lives in Norway. He is a graphic designer and photographer. I immediately realized that I had found exactly what I needed. There’s a reference to the first album cover and a hint at the meaningless work immortalized by Sisyphus.
The location in the photograph is a small town called Vardø (quite close to the border with Russia), where he and a friend spent a few days in an abandoned campsite in an industrial zone. It was there that Hans took a series of photographs, one of which now adorns the cover.
In creating this photo, Hans used a Lensbaby Composer. This is quite an interesting lens with the ability to tilt the optical axis, which allows you to shift the focus area in the photograph (the first such lens was created by American photographer Craig Strong using a corrugated hose from a vacuum cleaner). After that, Hans converted the image to black and white in the Canon RAW converter. A small adjustment of contrast — and that’s it.
When adding text to the photograph, I used the Futura-ExtraBold CY font. This is the same font used for the ILFORD film logo. A little Easter egg.