Heavy Stuff Indeed

Designer helps create a bone-jarring book of images captured by Iraqi veteran.

Riley And His Story, which features images captured by Iraqi veteran Riley Sharbono is featured in the Walker’s massive new exhibit “Graphic Design: Now In Production.”

Image credit: Photos by Riley Sharbono.

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By: David Jarnstrom

Editor’s note: The Walker Art Center’s latest exhibit, “Graphic Design: Now in Production,” is the museum’s largest installation since 1989. The exhibit, which continues through Jan. 22, 2012, explores the growth and changing scope of graphic design over the last decade. This is the second installment in a three-part series about designers featured in the exhibit.

Matthew Rezac considers himself lucky. The 35-year old graphic designer has carved out a pretty unique niche for himself in the Twin Cities. He doesn’t work for a mega-corporation like Target or one of the countless advertising agencies that employ much of the area’s creative talent.

Rather, his clients are mainly artists and art organizations such as the Weisman and the Walker art museums—the latter of which Rezac served as a fellow upon completing his degree at the Minneapolis School of Art and Design (MCAD).

Adhering to the DIY ethos learned in his youth as part of the Sioux Falls’ punk rock/hardcore music scene, Rezac’s freelance career has always operated in a self-sufficient, cost-effective manner. This approach has allowed him to be more selective in whom he chooses to work with.

“That’s the advantage I have,” says Rezac from his Minneapolis home/studio. “My overhead is pretty low so I can actually do work I love for clients that don’t have as much money.”

Such is the case with Rezac’s involvement with Riley And His Story—a bone-jarring book comprised of images captured by Iraqi veteran Riley Sharbono during his time as a nurse at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The book is featured in the Walker’s massive new exhibit “Graphic Design: Now In Production.” 

“We didn’t have a publisher, we didn’t have any money, we just kind of did it,” says Rezac. “But I was instantly interested because I’ve got this weird political bent, probably from the punk rock days. We worked on it for eight months for free, basically.”

Monica Haller, a classmate of Rezac’s at MCAD, first conceived of the project in order to help Sharbono, a long-time friend, make sense of the traumatic events he experienced overseas. As a visual artist and a writer, Haller’s work often focuses on the difficult transition veterans make when going from active duty to civilian life.

By design, the aesthetic of Riley is extremely stark. Its pages are mainly comprised of minimal text and hyper-realistic, full-bleed photographs shot by Sharbono.

“At the beginning we tried some really awful things where the design hand was much more obvious and a lot heavier,” explains Rezac. “We did weird manipulations with the images and text overlaying them—it was too much and too ugly.”

“We ultimately decided to just let the material breathe,” Rezac continues. “The design needed to be invisible. It’s pretty heavy stuff and it doesn’t need any help in making an impact. It just needed to be Riley’s images and Riley’s words in the end.” 

Heavy stuff indeed. The images become unbearably brutal in the middle of the book as Sharbono and his colleagues tend to a massive influx of soldiers and prisoners injured by mortar attacks on the prison grounds. Close-ups of massive lacerations and terrified faces have been permanently burned into Rezac’s mind’s eye.

“There’s certain images that I still can’t look at,” Rezac says solemnly. “Every time they’d come up on the screen when we’d be working I’d be like, ‘Ugh!’ But I’m glad that it still freaks me out—that means I didn’t get desensitized to it, even after we worked on it for so long. It was a little intense at times.”

Numerous revisions were made before Rezac and Haller hit on what they felt was the proper flow for the story. “I hate the word cinematic, but I kept thinking of it as a film project in a way,” Rezac says. “With this project there was no precedent really—which is why we really struggled with the presentation at first. I fell back on movie pacing and movie language in the end.” 

Riley is a good fit with “Graphic Design: Now In Production,” because Rezac (along with Haller) had to wear his editorial hat while helping Sharbono organize and present his difficult material—thus illustrating the ever-growing creative responsibilities modern-day designers have eagerly embraced.