Jan Mayen

First edition. An exceptionally elaborate artist’s photobook in which De Middel revisits the story of a failed 1911 expedition to the remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen. Working from the surviving expedition archive and a script written by its cameraman, De Middel reconstructed the journey on the Isle of Skye, combining historical material with newly staged photographs and hand-coloured imagery. The resulting sequence deliberately blurs documentary evidence, reconstruction and fiction. The physical construction of the book forms an integral part of this narrative: the principal concertina unfolds to reveal eleven subsidiary concertinas, creating a complex succession of images and viewpoints.