— Isle of seven cities
Publisher: The Eriskay Connection
220 × 280 mm / 160 pages
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A phantom island is an island whose existence has been accepted for a certain period of time (sometimes centuries) and has been mentioned on maps, but which has subsequently been removed because it has been proven not to be real. There are many possible explanations for these geographical fictions: geopolitical and economic interests, cartographic copyrights, rumours, memes, hoaxes, legends, and more. These phantom islands have never physically existed, but they have had a real impact on the Western world, some even triggering conflicts or civil wars.

Six years ago, Stéphanie Roland began researching these islands during her travels and visits to geographical institutes. Over time, she has collected a great deal of material, and produced a series of experiments and works exploring this ghostly world, made up of images and videos that reflect the visual paradoxes of these entities.

Isles of Seven Cities contains the stories of Eon Island, Hy-Brasil Island, Aurora Island, Antilia, Isle of Demons, Island of California, and Podesta Island. The book is not a monograph, but rather an artist’s book – a hybrid edition that combines the visual and textual narratives of these seven phantom islands. Fictional and real archives meet in a non-linear, fragmented logic, as a meta-island emerges from the whole, questioning the complex perception of reality in a post-truth era.


Concept and photography: Stéphanie Roland
Design: Rob van Hoesel
Lithography: Sebastiaan Hanekroot (Colour & Books)
Production: Jos Morree (Fine Books)





— Event Horizon / L’horizon des événements
Publisher: The Eriskay Connection
215 × 300 mm / 96 pages
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Event Horizon is constructed as a fictional narrative that immerses the reader in a nocturnal and mysterious atmosphere of anticipation. Stéphanie Roland (BE) shows childhood from an unusual perspective. Not the carefree, light-heartedness with which one would usually associate childhood. It rather shows the gravity and mysteries that this period of life also involves. The children in the book are frozen and absent, like the ghosts of distant memories that the mind was unable to accurately recreate.

Event Horizon depicts these children as well as their ‘mental images’. Visions of the future, ­disturbing memories and strange dreams from the subconscious. The book’s stream of images is only interrupted by deep blue pages, containing nothing more than ascending dates. Are we are looking at the past from a distant future? Or do we see the aftermaths of unknown events?

With a taste for anticipation, Roland creates a slightly menacing cosmos, a singular world where a magic ball can become an unidentified planet, a horse floats in the night sky and an astronaut is lost on a construction site. Both utopian and dystopian at the same time, this project has become a playfield of multiple photographic experiments.


Award
- Unseen Dummy Award

Collections
- Tate Modern
- FOMU, FotoMuseum, Anvers
- Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi
- Le Fresnoy – studio National des Arts Contemporains, France
- Artist Book Collection (C.L.A.), Brussels
- Vecteur, Charleroi
- Bavarian State Library (manuscripts and rare books library)
- University of Bergen Library 
- Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Belgian platform for Photobooks, Antwerp

Concept and photography: Stéphanie Roland
Design: Rob van Hoesel
Lithography: Sebastiaan Hanekroot (Colour & Books)
Production: Jos Morree (Fine Books)
Print: Wilco Art Books (NL)
Binding: Brepols (BE)







Stéphanie Roland Studio