This Equals That

Aimed at children ages five and up, this clever and surprising picture book by artists and collaborators, Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin, takes young viewers on a whimsical journey while teaching them associative thinking and visual language, as well as colors, shapes and numbers. Through a simple narrative and a rhythmic sequence of photographs, the book generates multiple meanings, making the experience of reading the book interactive—parent and child must ask questions and come up with their own answers, drawing on the child's imagination. Each spread presents a new relationship that changes and shifts as the book unfolds, with the last picture relating again to the first, forming a circle. Through playful and inspired sequencing, everyday scenes are transformed into a game of pairs, enjoyable for adults and children alike.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 80
Publication date: 2014-09-01
Measurements: 7.7 x 7.6 x 0.5 inches
ISBN: 9781597112888

By the time you get to the end of this book, you’ve undergone a kind of visual tuneup that will make you see the world around you more clearly, and make it much more interesting too. –The New York Times
The clever pairing of images build a small encyclopaedia of visual associations and equations, and encourage readers to think about number, shape and colour and the lovely ways in which fragments of the world mirror each other and slot together. –The Photographer’s Gallery Blog
This Equals That…takes viewers on a whimsical journey, while introducing them to the fundamentals of visual literacy and teaching them associative thinking –Aperture learning guide

Jason Fulford is a photographer and cofounder of the non-profit publisher J&L Books. He has lectured at more than a dozen art schools and universities and is a contributing editor to Blind Spot magazine. Fulford’s photographs have been featured in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, Time, Blind Spot, Aperture, and on book jackets for Don DeLillo, John Updike, Bertrand Russell, Jorge Luis Borges, Terry Eagleton, Ernest Hemingway and Richard Ford. His published books include Sunbird (2000), Crushed (2003), Raising Frogs for $$$ (2006), The Mushroom Collector (2010) and Hotel Oracle (2013).
Tamara Shopsin is a graphic designer and illustrator whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Good, Time, Wired, and Newsweek. She has designed book jackets for authors including Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Lindbergh, and Vladimir Nabokov. Two volumes of her drawings have been published under the titles “C est le Pied!” and “C est le Pied II”. In her spare time she creates and sells novelties and cracks eggs at her family’s restaurant in New York, Shopsip’s. She is currently a 2012 fellow with the nonprofit Code for America.