Semester 3 - Images: Books..

One of the biggest question that is appearing at this moment is should the images made for this project make an appearance in book format, I’m fully in two minds about this..

The photographic book industry is huge and there’s a lot of great books out there, where do you think my money goes each month….There are a lot of positives in showing work this way for sequencing, sizing etc

But for some reason this project does not seem at this current moment to lend itself it the work, I’m not even sure why that is, think I’m concentrating on envision the exhibiting side of the work.

I also know the trinity of engagement of time, cash and thought are not forthcoming at the moment.To be very honest the time spent on InDesign means my InDesign skills are a little rusty which makes it even more so time consuming, also wondering whether  i could do a pamphlet instead

The direction of this work means the way of exhibiting the show for assessment purposes has taken over the need for a publication.

I’ve decided to revisit the idea after deadline

I have numerous book projects about it including the more important one on the Mancunian Way, I feel this body of work is still uncompleted and in desperate need of finishing for piece of mind and sanity. Get that one done first.

Thinking about the “popularity” of the photo book though, is it the idea of collecting the image and having it on the shelf, my photobooks give me much pleasure by just existing on the shelf, some because of the time and place they were bought and what that means to me and other just knowing I have access to them in well printed on a page formats.

Having the time to look at the images is not something that’s available to me just yet but I see that it’s possible just around the corner, I’ve bought some great books for this project including William Eggleston The Democratic Forest and Richard Wentworth/ Eugene Atget Photographers Gallery catalogue, looking at this imagery shaped some of the work too. The pain I felt at not being able to experience certain books is still there though, not being able to see the work in a form that can be valued alongside the experience of the exhibition is something that I won’t forget.

Is the majority of image viewing (after screens of course) through the medium of the photo book these days? What does this tell us about the way photography is going? Will only people who access these books usually quite expensive and needing space to store have them? Library collections become that little more expensive; hopefully they’ll still hold copies for people to view.

Long live the photobook.

Abstract// Long Story Shortly Told: Should I make a book? Isn’t there too much out there is it the best medium to show this work or indeed any work?