The Brittle City & The Sunken City is an artist book written, designed and hand-printed by Joyce Campbell. Featuring three photo plate inserts, the book sounds a warning about the consequence of humanity’s failure to address the Anthropocene and asks us to feel and imagine ideas about system degradation and collapse.

The limited-edition book of 52 copies pays homage to a 1949 publication, Prisons,by Aldous Huxley on the Italian artist and architect Piranesi, published by the Trianon Press. The design utilises a range of vintage lead type, photopolymer text plates and laser cut image plates derived from Campbell’s photographs. The books were made on an Asbern Proof Press by Brittle City Press, an imprint of Wooden & Leaden Publishers of Tāmaki Makaurau with the generous support of Creative Arts and Industries, Waipapa Taumata Rau/The University of Auckland.