In Handbook of the Spontaneous Other, Aikaterini Gegisian assembles a wide range of found photographic material originating from Western Europe and the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Through a sequence of 59 collages, the book reworks imagery taken from magazines, tourist publications and popular media, transforming familiar visual codes into something unexpected and critical.

By repositioning photographs associated with leisure, desire, exoticism and consumer culture, the project challenges the ways bodies, nature and pleasure have traditionally been represented within Western capitalist imagery. The collages disrupt these narratives, creating new associations that feel surreal, ironic and psychologically charged.

Structured across nine chapters guided by shifts in colour, mood and sensation, the book gradually constructs an alternative idea of identity and pleasure — one that escapes the conventions and limitations imposed by dominant visual culture.