I wrote in a few posts back that for the PhotoLucida Conference, I had quickly prepared an artist book of my Displaced portfolio. I wanted to write about how creating that piece helped with the reviews and how I am using the information exchanged to move forward with the creation of three upcoming artist books.
I have always felt that making books would be my path… even before I knew I wanted to be a photographer. In a way, I feel like I have spent my entire career working to put myself in a position to make books. This path started when I had to create portfolios of my architectural projects in college, continued when I became a book designer for Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC and then as a graphic designer. I sometimes feel that even my love of photography is rooted in the fact that I am creating things that are so perfect for the book format… that I became a photographer in part because it was easy to encase the projects in books.
When deciding who I was going to meet at PhotoLucida, I knew I wanted to see the few people there who were involved in book publishing either as representative from publishing companies or as agents. About two weeks before the reviews started, I committed to showing Displaced and felt like if I could, I should try to get a book dummy together. I found a local bookbinder, Phil Poehlein (www.bookcraftsonline.com) and went about designing and printing the pages. If you’ve ever done this yourself, you know how difficult it can be editing and especially sequencing your work. You start to look for clues for pairings, mini-stories to emerge, and any other tools to help organize the story. You learn how to hold back some of the most powerful images, meaning, not to flaunt them, but make them more easily digested; you learn that in some pairings you may elevate the meaning of others that you weren’t even sure should be included in the first place; you start to see the story take shape and question for the thousandth time, “Am I being true to myself, the images and the narrative?”. This turned out to be an instinctual process, one that I didn’t have the luxury of contemplating for long because I had to get the whole thing to the binder in time.
I was so glad that I had gotten this completed before the reviews started for many reasons. First, I was able to allow not just the reviewers, but other photographers a different way of seeing my work, one that I felt was more intimate. Second, during the big open-to-the-public portfolio viewing, I could show a handful of people larger prints while moving the book around to others who couldn’t fit into the small space I had to show the prints. I was able to expose my work to a larger group of people because I had the dummy there and that is a good lesson for any public event like that… diversify the viewing experience.
One of the more helpful discussions I had was with Melanie McWhorter, the Book Division Manager at photo-eye in Santa Fe. We talked as fast as we could (in the 20 minutes we had) about limited editions, how photo-eye could sell the book. She was encouraging, as were others who saw the dummy and I left all of the reviews thinking if I could create these chapters of images and end each with a small artist book, I’m not sure I would even need to pursue the galleries as hard as I do. I wouldn’t turn a show down, that’s for sure, but I would be content, in my own world, making these objects of beauty for a small appreciative audience. Suddenly, I felt a huge burden lifted. I didn’t have to follow the trends of 60×120 prints. I could still make the small prints I was growing fonder of making and not have to worry about how my work would look next to somebody else’s gargantuan prints in a gallery. I would extend my love of craft and continue the narrative of each project with decisions I would now make about book cloth, binding, print size, sequencing, font selection, etc. It was another discovery of who I wanted to be as an artist. The understanding enabled me to make my first portfolio with a book in mind as the final piece, not a gallery show. Still Standing, Standing Still, which I will post shortly would not have been shot the way that it was, had I not understood from the beginning how I wanted it shown in the end.
So… to bring you up to date… I have conversed about costs, limited editions and many other details that go into the making of a book with two bookbinders, one out of Austin Texas, named Jace Graf of the Cloverleaf Studio who has done beautiful work for Sean Perry and others and John DeMerritt of John DeMerritt Bookbinding in San Francisco who is also highly respected as a book and boxmaker. I feel lucky because John is coming up to Portland this weekend and I will be able to squeeze in some face-to-face time with him tomorrow. The questions to consider at this point are: limited edition size (physical and quantity); book cloth and binding options; whether to letterpress the pages; what paper to print on; and, of course, cost, cost, cost…
I’m showing you a few quick snaps of the book dummy I created for Displaced just to give you an idea of where I’m heading with this. I will post more on my progress. It should be an interesting meeting with John tomorrow.
Displaced Book Dummy #1
Displaced Book Dummy #2
Displaced Book Dummy #3
