They look for

Stijn Van der Linden

They look for

animals, but all they find are trees

They look for is the second cast by photographer Stijn Van der Linden. When he visited Corcovado and other national parks in Costa Rica years ago, he noticed how other visitors were mainly interested in spotting animals. They let the immense diversity of the plant kingdom pass them by, while just that blew Van der Linden away.

Especially in the seemingly endless variety of tree species, he got lost. He did so again several years later when he was editing the photos from his trip and trying to create order in his images of natural beauty. ‘They look for’ forms an extension of his trip and is an ambitious attempt to turn his experiences of Costa Rica’s greenery into an atmospheric visual story.

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Design & concept

In honor of Café Cliché, the design was provided by book designer Tina De Souter. The concept in Stijn’s head was translated by Tina into this gem full of “printing candy. This included experimenting with margins, picture-in-picture technique and gave the book shorter indented pages, different papers and a special binding technique (Otastar).

Each time, Tina succeeds in reinforcing the artist’s concept in its book form. An example: In the Otastar binding method, 2 softcovers are glued together in the spine. This way you create a kind of 2nd cover. On this 2nd cover, you immediately discover another printing candy, namely the title

The title of the book isThey look for for. This was printed in a clearly legible foil print in the paper. But the concept actually tells us that travelers were particularly attentive to the curious animals they encountered in their path. They did not seem to realize that they were in a Valhalla of beautiful tree species. Therefore, the title “They look for” was complemented by a baseline in a subtle (read: blurred) blind: “animals, but all they find are trees.