The first meatspace exhibition of images from the 1984 project are going on display for one night only – Tuesday 12 April – as part of the Books vs. Cigarettes event at the London Word Festival. The event starts at 7pm at Dalston Boys’ Club, 68 Boleyn Road, London, N16 8JG.

Day 214: the

I’m super-honoured to be part of this Orwell-themed evening, which will feature a fierce debate between comedians, writers and performers about the relative value of books versus, well, cigarettes, based on Orwell’s original essay and delicious cakes made from Orwell’s recipes.

My contribution to the evening will be 14 of the the photographs I took, out of the 369 photos of the first three paragraphs of 1984 I took from January 2010-February 2011. Here’s the blurb:

There are 369 words in the first three paragraphs of Orwell’s paranoid dystopia 1984, and, in an effort to come to terms with an expensive new camera, Aleks Krotoski took a photo of these words in succession every day of 2010. Over 12 months, she got lost in the visual semantics of Orwell’s prose, becoming half-woman-half-environment-scanner, pushing her mental health and her photographic capabilities to their limits.

Here, she exhibits 14 of the 35 instances of the most dull and functional – yet arguably the most essential – of these 369 words: the word “the”.

You’ll be able to buy postcard sets and other merchandise at the event, which will also be available from here soon.