“The Night Life of Trees”.Artists from the Gond Indigenous community in central India have a special relationship with trees. Trees are for them a daily connection with the natural world, and the belief that trees are busy during the day providing food and shelter for humans and animals, and only at night, when they finish their daytime functions, are they free from revealing his true spirit, he served as the main idea for a book presenting the vision of the Gond trees.
The nightlife of the trees is full of intricately drawn tree views by three of the best artists in the Gond tribe. Renowned art critic John Berger called it “a book where the nightingale sings until morning …”
John Berger was an inspiring figure for Tara books long before he even existed as a publisher at the hands of Gita Wolf, its creator. “It was from him that we learnt to look at and think about art in a way that no one had taught us before. As young feminists, his ideas became a kind of foundation, a place from which it was possible to set out and look at things differently..”
“when Tara came into being, twenty-two years ago, […] We were inspired by how Berger forged his own path with great integrity; and admired his ability to put across complex ideas in a simple and unpretentious way […] the most important thing we learnt from him was a way of connecting: aesthetics with politics, form with content, art with labour,...“. (Making connections: A tribute to John Berger)
Each copy of the book is screen-printed, bound and hand-numbered by Tara Books in Chennai. The printing process consists of color layers sequentially, with each layer thrown through a screen printing to create what is called printing. A single copy of the book consists of about 83-85 prints, which are created with meticulous care.
Our handmade books are artists’ books as well, but rather than create a small number of expensive books, we chose, quite deliberately, to publish a larger number of modestly priced ones. “We have built a team of artisans who make these books in larger numbers, and this scale of production makes them affordable to a wider group of readers. The balance we strive to achieve, in terms of scalability, is to keep the artisanal aspect intact, ensure fair wages, and still keep the price point at a level that is rewarding for both the maker and the buyer.“
The book’s designer Rathna Ramanathan,(Nothing is Impossible: Sustainable Design and Production) took her cue from the title to suggest printing the book on black paper, to evoke the feeling of the forest at night.
The first edition of The night life of trees was published in 2007, with a circulation of 1,000 copies, and now in 2021, it reaches its 15th edition in English (37,000 copies), together with the 33 editions of the book published in 8 languages. . (In total more than 120,000 copies).
Tara Books is an independent publishing house created in 1994 by Gita Wolf that defines itself as a group of writers, designers and artisans of the book who favor a non-hierarchical mode of operation, informed by feminism and other movements for social justice, and where design is an integral part of his books.
His projects combine aesthetics and politics, not only in the sense of making a political manifesto, but also of creating well-designed illustrated books that have a didactic point.
They periodically organize exhibitions, related to the topics they explore and expand their books, as an important part of the cultural work they do. At the same time, they offer prints, cards, and stationery as a way to provide an additional source of income for themselves and their artists and craftsmen.
Looking to the future
As William McDonough put it, ‘design is the first signal of human intention’. As designers and producers of content, we have the obligation to first ask ourselves before we produce more things to put out into the world. What are our intentions? What values do we wish to propagate? What kind of world are we leaving as a legacy for future generations? The Tara Books model gives voice to the stories of a marginalised people, builds on local talent, materials and processes of production, and is the output not of an anonymous corporation but of a collective of individuals working together. That is a practice that is worth sustaining for present and future generations.
More about John Berger at 3Peusdegat
More about the book and Tara Books