IAN WHITTLESEA — Trataka, The Everyday Press, 2020

Ian Whittlesea, Trataka. The Everyday Press, London, 2020. First edition. Softcover; 200 pages, 15 × 22 cm; four-colour offset printing; 200 sequential photographs. ISBN 978-1-912458-10-3.

Trataka consists of 200 photographs recording a single white candle burning in daylight until it disappears. Whittlesea photographed it individually at two-minute intervals over approximately six hours, so what initially resembles film stills is actually the residue of a sustained physical exercise in attention. Matter is progressively converted into light, heat and, finally, smoke.

The title refers to the yogic practice of concentrating on a fixed point, traditionally a candle flame. Whittlesea explicitly proposes the publication as meditation aid, flick book and memento mori. It belongs to a longer strand in his practice in which books operate as what have been described as ‘instruction manuals for transcendental exercise’, connecting language, diagrams, colour, light and bodily practice.

Trataka does not document an artwork that happened somewhere else. The book is where the work happens.

The candle becomes photograph. The photographs become sequence. The sequence becomes duration. The book becomes an apparatus for looking.

It belongs to an important lineage of printed matter that exceeds its apparent category. It can be read, watched, flicked through, meditated with, or simply retained as an object. Its function changes according to placement and use.

There is also something particularly precise about its treatment of disappearance. Usually the archive exists to prevent disappearance; Trataka methodically records it. Every subsequent page contains slightly less object than the page before it. By the end, the physical subject has disappeared while the publication remains. The object disappears. The document accumulates.

Its TNR significance is less about scarcity than about classification: recognising an apparently modest artist publication as a complete conceptual object rather than supplementary publishing.

Condition: sealed in original shrinkwrap; shrinkwrap split and loose at lower-left corner with minor handling to the wrapping. Book itself appears unread.

Securely packed; tracked UK and international shipping available.