200 Days, 200 Photo Books
Christien Meindertsma: Pig 05049
Flocks, 2007, ISBN 978-90-812413-1-1
“A French adage1 neatly states that nothing goes to waste in a pig. Christien Meindertsma offers a modern industrial illustration of this timeless maxim: her book Pig 05049 documents the fate of a single pig, post-slaughter. The skin, the meat, the bones, the innards, the blood and the fat all end up in sausages, insulin, cigarettes, ice cream and even the book Pig 05049 itself! The powerful concept and equally strong design (the animal’s yellow plastic ID ear tag dangles from the cover) make Pig 05049 an exceptional photobook. Documentary precision abounds: each object, reproduced to life scale (1:1), is shot against a white backdrop, while an index befitting a scientific tome arranges every chapter. The self-published Pig 05049, in its fourth edition since 2007 for a total of run of 11,000, has had resounding success extending far beyond the circle of photobook aficionados.”
1 Tout est bon dans le cochon.
- Rémi Coignet, the author of the blog Des livres et des photos.
