MARC YANKUS’S LITTLE YELLOW BOOK
By Elizabeth Forst
MARC YANKUS’S IMAGES HAVE A DREAMLIKE QUAILTY. And as dreams, his imagery can be clear or cloudy, the meaning straightforward or tangential. A collage artist, whose illustrations have been used on everything from book jackets to Broadway posters, Yankus uses the technology of computers to blend, bend and otherwise manipulate photography, illustrations and text. For many years, the photography he used to create his illustrations was a combination of archival and stock photography. But several years ago he began using primarily his own photographs in his illustrations, as well as some archival images. “Part of it had to do with copyright considerations, “he says. “But I think it also adds a richness to the work.”
Yankus has always liked to create unique promotion pieces for his work—he’s made boxes, accordion mailers and two books. His most recent one—which he created and mailed out last year—was a charming miniature portfolio of images that could, at first blush, be a children’s book from another, simpler age.
The cover of the promotion, as it turns out, was originally a children’s book that Yankus discovered in a used-book store. “I collect old books, and I particularly like little books, “he says. What struck him about this particular book was the title: Circumstances Alter Cases. “I thought, ‘What could it mean? That life’s events affect you, and you change?’ And I thought it would be interesting to do a promotion, a little photography book, with that as the title.”
But that idea came later. Another book was the inspiration for this project, one that he also found in a used-book store. “I came across a photography book that was published in the 1920s or 1930s,” he says. “And that was the original inspiration. I wanted to experiment with juxtaposing images [as they had done in this photography book]. I didn’t originally intend to make a promotion piece, it just took on a life of its own.”
The promotion piece itself is little more then 5 x 4 inches, but it packs a wallop in terms of imagery. Yankus has filled it with 30 manipulated photographs. “I wanted to send the message that my work is diverse and to show the range of what I can do.,” he says. “I can shoot nature, I can shoot people, I can shoot objects, Lifestyle, Urban. I also wanted to make something unique and fun—and I wanted it to be a gift. I wanted this book to be something that you’d want to keep.
In keeping with the uniqueness of the presentation, Yankus kept the mailing small, “ I only mailed out 45 of these, to a very focused, select group,” he says. “I picked people whose work I admired, who I felt had a similar vocabulary and who I felt would be a really good match.”
He mailed this tiny jewel of a book to a handful of Broadway theater advertising agencies, book publishers and magazines. Among the art directors to receive it was Mary Parsons of The Atlantic Monthly, who immediately felt it was a keeper. “It’s very idiosyncratic and there was a certain sensibility that I responded to and I loved a lot of the imagery—some of it is fresh and vivid, and some is very dark, “She says. “It’s also so beautifully reproduced, it’s luscious, so I responded to it tactically as well.”
She didn’t have any work for Yankus at the time, but she liked the piece so well, she saved it—which, of course, is not always the case. And when Yankus called a week or so later to follow up, she knew instantly who he was. Which is not always the case either. “Sometimes I have to struggle to remember the promotion, “she says. “Bu this time, I knew immediately. It was, ‘Oh, you did the little yellow book.’ ”
If she wasn’t already sold on Yankus, he completely won her over when he told her that he’d only mailed out a small number of the promotions. “I felt he really wanted to work for this particular magazine, “she says. The phone conversation also prompted her to look at Yankus’s Web site, www.marcyankus.com, and she recognized some of his images from covers of books she had read. All of which led to an assignment several months later, when the magazine need illustrations for a story on the October 1999 crash of Egypt Air 990. “We needed a specific image from his little promotion [which Yankus altered slightly for the magazine], “she says, “and he developed four new images for the inside.”
Part of the reason the quality of promotion is so high—and the mailing itself was so small—is because Yankus did everything himself—from selecting the imagery to designing the book itself to printing and binding each one. There are, he says, benefits and drawback to being this hands-on. “Because it’s self-published, it allowed me to put a lot of images into the book and have complete control over the printing quality,” he says. “Also, the cost was moderate rather then extremely expensive.” But the decision to self-publish did put a crimp in the number of promotions he did. “I originally intended to do about 100,” he confesses. “But it was so time consuming. I could only produce about 45 before I went insane.”
He estimated that his biggest expense was the equipment. He bought a stale-binding machine, a paper cutter and a high-quality printer. “I spent $3500 on the printer alone,” he says. “So the equipment may have cost me more than I made on this. But because I plan to use it all again on other projects, it all works out.”
Printing the covers was his biggest challenge. “I used watercolor inkjet paper, “he says. “And because of the thickness of the paper, the printer jammed frequently, which made it slow going.” The cover is a reproduction of the children’s book—which was published in the early 1920s and shows it age. “I played with the color of the cover, added color to the children,” he says. “But the [discoloration] is there, in the original book.”
Yankus estimates that it probably took a month to select the images for the promotion. He began by reducing a large selection of his favorite images to thumbnail size and then printed them out on a large piece of paper so he could look at them all. As he winnowed out photographs, he continued to print out his selections on large pieces of paper so that he could see how they related to each other. “Finally, I started to look at different ideas for spreads,” he says. “That was probably the hardest—yet the most enjoyable—part of the job.”
Yankus is self-taught as a photographer. He studied fine art at the School of Visual Arts in New York City before turning to illustration. Until 1990, all of his collages were done by hand. Then Photoshop arrived, and he began to experiment with that. He did so well that, he says, “Adobe put me in its annual report the first year that Photoshop came out as an example of someone using it. I was their first poster boy for Photoshop.”
Yankus is currently at work on his next promotion project—another accordion mailer. But he fully expects to create more unique promotions in the future. “I enjoy doing them,” he says. “I always seem to choose the most difficult things to make.”
March 2002