Telephone is a game children play in a circle, taking turns whispering a sentence into the next person's ear, arriving at nonsense once the phrase has gone around full circle.

The book Telephone is an extension and elaboration on the guessing game one plays while trying to read and comprehend signs and or labels in a foreign language, be it during a trip in another country, or while browsing through a diaspora food store or magazine stand. in doing this, one clings to cognates, gleans from context, and relies on images.

Armed with a pronunciation key for the Cyrillic alphabet and a native understanding of Polish, a sister language with plenty of true (and false) cognates to offer, I set out to document the typographic landscape of the predominantly Russian neighborhood of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. I then used the skills and tools I had to decipher the signs, with results not far off from those of the children's game.

Perfect binding. 64 pages.