Character Journal by Paul Heintz

Character is a multimedia project by French artist Paul Heintz. It crosses the boundaries of fiction and documentary to find Winston Smith, the famous character in the 1984 novel by George Orwell. Paul Heintz comments (translated from the French):

I often imagined meeting a character from a novel, wondering if it would fit the image, physical, psychic, that I got used to reading. I then looked for namesakes of emblematic romantic figures, with the desire to confront my projections with the reality of those who bear a name charged with a history that is not theirs. I stopped on Winston Smith, the hero of 1984, who seemed to me to join my research concerns: zones of tension between intimacy and politics, individual and fiction, authority and social norm. According to the English directory, there are at least 25 people with the same surname as this character currently residing in London. Here I am in the footsteps of Winston Smith.

The book Character Journal was designed by Atelier Choque Le Goff together with Quintal Atelier and published by Les Éditions Extensibles in an edition of 300 copies. Maria is used for the jacket and cover as well as for titles, running titles and page numbers in the interior. An unidentified serif and IBM Plex Mono are used as text typefaces.