Stratagems (an overture) — Seaton Street Press

︎ USD $30 (plus shipping)
︎

Stratagems (an overture)
by Lindsay Buchman

Stratagems (an overture) is a visual document of archival materials, film stills, and photographs, part of an overarching project, Everything I've Ever Loved, which considers Orange County, California's history of landholdings, subdivisions, conservatism, and underrepresented narratives through the lens of a mixed-race Chicana and a transracial adoptee. The project explores autobiographical accounts of place, combined with broader social histories within the geographic region of Southern California, examining how location, place, and belonging shape racial imaginaries. The publication offers a glimpse into how a veiled understanding of self, distinct to transracial adoption, and informed by place-based racism, can be contoured by regional politics and geography. The project features photographic negatives from the 20th century, paired with the iconography of the Valencia orange, a symbol for Orange County's name and an emblem of migrant labor in its farmlands; these central images are contrasted by image-making from regional locations, parklands, coastlines, and neighborhoods that comment on the preservation of 'natural' land within the southernmost part of the County. The book includes found and constructed archives spanning from the mid-1900s to the present, intentionally compressing time through the mediation of film, Super 8, HD video stills, and digital photography translated through Risography.

Archival research was conducted in the public archives of the Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center, located at the University of California, Irvine (Irvine, CA), and the Orange County Archives (Santa Ana, CA). Archival images are courtesy of OC Archives—all other images and text by the artist.

---
Singer-sewn softcover, 5-color Risograph book, 36 pages, 10.25 in. x 7.25 in., third edition 150, 2025

Printed by Lindsay Buchman
Published by Seaton Street Press

© LINDSAY BUCHMAN

Seaton StreetPress

︎︎︎ BACK

Seaton Street
Press

^{︎︎︎ BACK}