“About one year ago, right after my first book was published, I started to make a ton of new book dummies. I can’t even tell you why I was so obsessed with creating something new, but somehow it was the only thing I cared about. I didn’t even have a lot of new images, and still, all I wanted to do was to make stuff without having to socialize.

By doing all these book attempts I realized that I'm mostly interested in the feeling that the actual act of creating provoked. I mean, yeah, maybe the final piece looks interesting, but what about the excitement that artist felt when he first thought about his new idea, or the chaos in his head, the self-doubt, the ecstasy and fulfillment. That was what I was actually looking for and what I wanted to express. I didn't realize that it wasn't about publishing something but about doing something. It was only about sitting at my desk and trying to be as honest as possible with myself.

That was probably also the reason why all the book attempts felt so wrong. I focused way too much on what others would think about my work and not on what I needed to do in order to be happy with what I created.

During that time I also created scrapbook pages. But doing them felt more like procrastination when I had no idea for a new dummy.”

– Josh

“A few months and a lot of notebooks later, I showed my work to my professor and he asked me to try to make a book only with scrapbook pages.

It was such a relief to finally allow myself to work with my notebooks. For some reason I didn't even dare to think about doing a book only with scrapbook scans before - probably because I was way too afraid to repeat myself after my first book. And by doing so I completely suppressed what I actually wanted to do and what needed to get out of me.

Suddenly it wasn't procrastination anymore but my main focus and I loved it. For about three months I had nothing in mind but creating scrapbooks. Almost every day I woke up at around 4 or 5am because I was too excited to sleep, sat down at my desk and played around with prints and notes. And I felt like the most fulfilled person on this planet. ”

– Josh