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In 1976, Bantam Books published The R Document by Irving Wallace. Almost thirty years later I incidentally discovered a copy in a neatly bound Reader's Digest tucked away at a Goodwill Store. Although the story is nearly thirty years old, it depicts uncanny similarities to our own current political climate and legislation, such as, the patriot act.

The R Document tells the story of a political conspiracy involving an FBI director, Tynan, who would like to bring about a police state in an effort to control crime, but the proposed 35th Amendment would undermine the Bill of Rights. Enter our protagonist, the Attorney General, Christopher Collins..

The (R) Doc Series is a group of digital collages for the basis of a handmade book. The series employs the technique of erasure: the act of erasing, rubbing into, scraping out or removing from existence (ref: m-w.com) -- as a way of altering the original text. As seen in many so-called "declassified" documents, words of concern are blackened out, removing not only content, but context. The viewer of the document is then left with the various fragments to piece together into their own interpretation.

The (R) Doc Series explores the removing of randomly selected words to create a new, visual rhythmic pattern to the text, the change of context when words of different levels of importance are obscured or erased, and the recycling of a timeworn text from it's original linear form into a non-linear aberration.

Tech: Traditional and digital photography. Final collages constructed in Photoshop. Book: wood and decoupage.