KU Associate Professor Tim Hossler

2 Boulevards: Ward Parkway + The paseo (mlk blvd)

2 Boulevards is a collaborative book/exhibition project between art director Tim Hossler and photographer Mike Sinclair to document two of Kansas City’s iconic boulevards: Ward Parkway and The Paseo (recently renamed MLK Blvd.). 2 Boulevards will gather together selections from Mike Sinclair’s recent work as well as new photography to tell a 30+ years of KC photographic archives as well as new photography to express the character of each boulevard and how it functions in the city’s visual and historical landscape.

In the books Every Building on the Sunset Stripe (1966) and Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), artist Edward Ruscha explored how photographic books could document the everyday streetscape of the city. In the early 20th century, French photographer Eugène Atget used photography to document a transforming Paris. His photographs preserved a city of which little still remains. By referencing Ruscha and Atget’s work (and presentations of that work), Tim Hossler and Mike Sinclair plan to create a document that preserves our visual memory of Kansas City.

The almost finalized document takes the form of a book that present Ward Parkway and The Paseo in the spring and summer months with the ‘natural’ environment in its most dense state. The theme of ‘Nature in the City’ has become a connection point for both places, and the visual similarity of each boulevard’s green-ness has led the book to be designed in spreads that collages half an image of one boulevard next to half an image of the other. While the main format of the document is a book, the spreads can be separated into large posters that makes the book itself serve as exhibition material.

The expected print date of the publication is mid April and Tim Hossler will be using support funds provided by the KCDC to look for possible co-publishers and distributors in addition to exhibition opportunities.

BOOK SPECIFICATIONS:
Photographs by Mike Sinclair
Art Direction & Design by Tim Hossler
Size: 11.375 x 15 inches (spread 22.75 x 15 inches
4-color offset printed
Nested spreads (no binding)
20 color images (10 of each boulevard)
40 pages