The Accidental Fold

The Accidental Fold is Saskia de Brauw's debut artist book, a diaristic record of small discarded things she picked up and scanned over roughly six years on the road.

Working with a handheld scanner she carried between fashion shoots and travels, de Brauw assembled images of a playing card found in Cambodia, a broken sandal seen in Marrakech, a rusty nail from Marfa, Texas, and threads swept from a Chanel fitting-room floor, objects she calls "evidence of presence." The book was designed in close collaboration with art director Erik Haberfeld, French-bound with a visible glued spine, and issued in January 2016 as a first edition of 500 softcover copies housed in a recycled-cardboard slipcase with a folded, poster-format dust jacket.

De Brauw studied fine art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam before becoming known internationally as a fashion model, and has continued to move between the two practices throughout her career. The Accidental Fold marks her return to an object-based collecting practice rooted in her training as an artist, and was followed in 2018 by a second book, Ghosts Don't Walk in Straight Lines.