I was recently alerted to this extremely useful listing of upcoming international photography portfolio review events for 2011 and 2012. It is found on the website of independent curator Moritz Neumuller, The Curator Ship. Another useful listing of review events, with a bit more international diversity, is found at the website for The Festival of Light.
Neumuller also has a a list of available opportunities, grants and useful information in the field of photography and visual arts.
Some of them are calls for participation, others are study grants, residencies or testimonials. (You might want to bookmark the site.)
Two months ago, in an “open letter” to The New York Times posted on his blog, the bookish and book-centric photographer Alec Soth raised some interesting points that I’d like to pick up on. His letter—an appeal, really—was in response to both the coverage, by The Times, of the recent NY Art Book Fair, (sponsored by the ever-rebellious and now-well-established non-profit organization Printed Matter) as well as a blog posting over at The News Gallery.
Soth had just participated in the NY Art Book Fair with his publishing company* Little Brown Mushroom. By all accounts over the last two months (meaning, in emails from friends, acquaintances, colleagues at other publishing companies and the many Twitter, FB and blog postings) the fair was a big success both in attendance and financially for many of the participating organizations.
The blog posting that got under Alec’s skin had reported on the event and commented on the scores of attendees who thronged PS1. But there was, essentially, a condescending tone to the piece, which then went on to quote “a real author”, Paul Auster (who kind-of has nothing to do with art books in any professional way, but is a really good author). What particularly irked Soth** was the expression, by the writer, that the NY Art Book Fair was “technically” an art book fair, but that there were titles by writers and philosophers as well. (Read it here). The writer emphasized the non-art book writers and publishers, thus skewing the impression of what the fair was about (and why the scores of people had come out to attend).
It also irked me, on several different points. One of those is a sore spot I have surrounding the media discussion on publishing in general. According to the larger cultural and journalistic media outlets (both in print and in other forms), the outlook on publishing is decidedly not rosy. “The Death of Publishing” is proclaimed regularly, and then CEOs of major publishing houses are quoted, recounting drops in sales and other horrors. The ever-present (and decidedly boring) debate on e-books vs. printed books is another regular piece of the puzzle that is chewed up and regurgitated back to the masses as an extremely important part of the dilemma and shifting landscape in “publishing” (see * below).
Fine. We get it. The big guys wish more people would buy their products. We know. And they wish they could predict the future of how “new technologies” will impact how people buy their products. Again. We know. Isn’t that pretty much the history of all commercial interactions for the last, umm, several millennia?
What would be interesting would be to report on where there actually is thriving activity.*** Which comes back to Soth’s point. There is a real-life, thriving photography-book culture that is diverse, sustainable and extremely exciting (and which rarely gets reported).****
I echo Alec’s lament that a “purveyor of culture”, such as The New York Times, rarely covers any serious art or photography books, even in their Book Review supplement (though Richard Misrach got a shout-out in a holiday Coffee Table books of 2010 list for his “Destroy This Memory”. Of the few remaining fine-art photography magazines left—Aperture, Blind Spot, PDN, American Photo, 8 Magazine, Daylight, FOAM (who am I missing?)—most, but not all, feature 2-4 pages of book reviews, but rarely is the photographer-as-author truly delved into. (It’s also not their mission, as publications, to do so.) Round-ups of Best Books lists provide interesting commentary once a year, but even then, those lists get mixed in with things like “Bestselling Books” of the year lists, which only serve to emphasize what we already know: the public still likes horses, kittens, sunsets and celebrity.
The world of art magazines follows more or less the same pattern as photography magazines when it comes to books. There is the occasional review, but no one has really picked up the thread of the artist-as-author on any regular basis. Bookforum, the sister publication to Artforum, might seem like the logical place to read about art books, but it was conceived as the “literary supplement” to their older sibling and pays minimal attention to art books*****.
As I’ve said elsewhere, there is a whole new generation of photographers (and many non-photographic artists) who see the book as their primary expression. Not just as a container for artwork, but as the final piece itself. The book is the message and the vehicle at one and the same time.
Unfortunately, there is no printed publication that details the world of printed, published (and self-published) art and photography books. (But can’t you feel the need and desire for it building??)
Perhaps I’ve simply talked myself into the proverbial corner of wanting to receive a monthly or quarterly magazine that surveys the field of art and photography book publishing… Wait, I used to edit a magazine like that! (Perhaps I’m just feeling sentimental over the holidays….)******
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* This probably warrants a small discussion about what constitutes a “publishing company”. In the world of art and photobooks, which is what the NY Art Book Fair celebrates, a publishing company is any person or organization, no matter how small, that produces books. Printed Matter itself is a bastion of the small-press activities that are sprinkled across the continent. Little Brown Mushroom, as a publishing company, is essentially Alec, who is a full-time photographer, producing the occasional title of his own or someone else’s work, helped out by his one or two studio assistants (along with one or two interns at any given time).
** Soth is a sometime contributor to the Times’ online blog, The Opinionator.
*** This is another very sore point for me. There is a pathos of complaint, criticism and negativity that permeates our media culture. Wait, actually it permeates our entire social structure. It’s really not useful. In fact, it’s downright dangerous. The words we utter are expressions of the ideas that fill our minds (and often our hearts). To effect a change at the level of culture may sound impossible. But it isn’t. To acclaim, praise and search for the positive takes a bit more energy, and if anything, it just feels different than complaining, criticizing and being negative. Yet, it has wide-ranging effects in our world and social interactions.
**** And I’ve just co-authored a book about it called Publish Your Photography Book (with Mary Virginia Swanson, Princeton Architectural Press, Spring 2011).
***** I’ve written for Bookforum about photography books, including an interview with Stephen Shore and a review of The Theatre of the Face, by Max Kozloff.
****** First, let me say that I realize I’m complaining about a culture of complaining. But regular readers will also realize this is a rare semi-rant. I’m not even that mad! I should also make the point that the magazines listed above do spend time and devote pages to interviews with artists and photographers, for some of whom the book is key to their practice. I’m definitely not being critical of them. And secondly, can someone please show me a better way to use footnotes in a blog entry!?
Publish Your Photography Book, by Darius D. Himes & Mary Virginia Swanson
Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN 9781568988832
7 x 9 inches (17.8 x 22.9 cm), Paperback, 224 pages
25 color illustrations ; 50 b/w illustrations
Coming Soon (publication date 1/17/2011) Watch this blog for more info!
$29.95 £18.99
From the Princeton Architectural Press website:
We live in the golden age of the photography book. Since the early 1990s, the number of photography book publishers has continued to grow while technological developments have placed more tools for bookmaking directly in the hands of photographers. For the students and working artists who have chosen photography as their primary means of expression, having their own photography book is seen as a passport to the international photography scene. Yet, few have more than a tentative grasp of the component parts of a book, an understanding of what they want to express, or the know-how needed to get a book published. Publish Your Photography Book is the first book to demystify the process of producing and publishing a book of photographs. Industry insiders Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson survey the current landscape of photography book publishing and point out the many avenues to pursue and pitfalls to avoid. This expert guide is organized in six sections covering the rich history of the photo book; an overview of the publishing industry; an intimate look at the process of making a book; a close review of how to market a photo book; a section on case studies, built around discussions and interviews with published photographers; and a final section presenting a wealth of resources and information to aid in the understanding of the publishing world. Publish Your Photography Book also includes a number of additional interviews and contributions from industry professionals, including artists, publishers, designers, packagers, editors, and other industry experts who openly share their publishing experiences.
Darius Himes was a founding editor of photo-eye Booklist and is a cofounder of Radius Books, a nonprofit company publishing books on the visual arts. Himes is also a lecturer, consultant, and writer who has contributed to numerous publications.
Mary Virginia Swanson is a consultant in the area of licensing and marketing fine-art photography. Swanson frequently lectures and conducts workshops and educational programs for photographers and students.A respected judge of competitions and awards as well as portfolio reviewer, she is widely recognized for her blog Marketing Photos, a valued resource for photographers.
At the end of last year (2009) Miki Johnson and Andy Adams coordinated a “cross-blog” discussion about the future of photography books. Over forty bloggers participated with a range of amateur and professional voices piping in and adding their thoughts to the mix.
The interest in the subject of photobooks* has continued unabated and various fairs devoted to the Photobook are popping up around the world.** With the 3rd annual Photography Book Now contest deadline fast approaching (sponsored by Blurb and featuring a whopping $25,000 grand prize), a few of us that love photobooks thought we would initiate another online discussion about self-publishing—where we’ve come in the last few years in terms of perception, creativity and technology.
Please feel free to add your comments here or post in-depth thoughts on your own blog and send us the link.
—Darius Himes, Santa Fe, June 30, 2010
*I recently tried to order the Chinese edition of Robert Frank’s The Americans only to be told it’s not available in the U.S. Who knew (besides Martin Parr and the elves at Steidl) it would even be published in China?!
**The first annual Fotobuch Tage in Hamburg, Germany was well-attended and had, as part of the programming, a photobook dummy exhibition during which the public got to vote for their favorite not-yet-published photography book.
What would happen if the printed book had just been invented in a high-tech world in which people had never done their reading from anything but computer screens? The unquestionable advantages of the computer would not be threatened by this new product but the people, who so love to compare apples with pears, would be quite bowled over by this ultra-modern invention: after years spent chained to the screen they would suddenly have something they could open like a window or a door – a machine you can physically enter! For the first time knowledge would be combined with a sense of touch and gravity – this new invention allows you to experience the most incredible sensations, reading becomes a physical experience. And after experiencing knowledge only as a bundle of connections, as a system of interacting networks, suddenly here is individuality: every book is an independent personality, which cannot be taken apart or added to at will. And how relaxing these new reading appliances are, their operating systems never needs updating – the only thing that changes over the course of time is the message that they contain, which is always open to new interpretations.
—By Juan Villoro, in an article in last month’s adn CULTURA (an Argentinian culture magazine) about the “future of books.”
[kindly pointed about by reader David Christensen, and translated via SignandSight.com].
The Premise: A Crowd Sourced Blog Posting About Photography Book Publishing
Andy Adams, the creative juice behind the online magazine Flak Photo recently contacted me about a “crowd-sourced” blog posting relating to photobooks, in conjunction with Resolve, the Livebooks blog. Was I game in posting something on my own blog? Sure. I’m always game for a discussion about photobooks.
Miki Johnson, an editor and contributor to Resolve kick started the discussion with a smattering of provocative questions: “What do you think photobooks will look like in 10 years? Will they be digital or physical? Open-source or proprietary? Will they be read on a Kindle or an iPhone? And what aesthetic innovations will have transformed them?”
On Monday night, the 9th of November, I had the real privilege of participating in a conversation with Roger Ballen live at the SVA auditorium on 23rd street in Manhattan. Roger Ballen’s work has fascinated me for a long time, and I was thrilled to be able to engage him in dialogue before an audience in New York City. Hosted by SVA and introduced by Chair of the Photography Department, Stephen Frailey, the evening proved to be one of riveting photographs and thought-provoking dialogue. My own introductory notes are below, followed by a video of the evening as well as two passage—one from C.G. Jung and another from Robert Sobieszek’s essay for Shadow Chamber—that I used during the on-stage conversation.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”—Alan Kay
Last night, on a beautiful, balmy, breezy September eve in New York City at Tribeca Rooftop, Blurb.inc hosted the awards ceremony for the 2009 Photography.Book.Now contest. As lead judge not only did I MC the evening event, but I got to give a very deserving photographer by the name of Rafal Milach from Warsaw, Poland $$$TWENTY-FIVE-THOUSAND-U.S.-DOLLARS. Not only did it make him happy but it made me very, very happy.
In many ways, Blurb is inventing a part of the future, and their support of books and photography is phenomenal. So, one more “Thank You” to Eileen and the Blurb crew (Robin, Lori, Brenna, Mike and the rest of the team + Wendy and the NYC collaborators for putting on an amazing evening).
Below is the text of my prepared statement for the evening:
There has been a lot of news of DEATH, DYING and KILLING in recent times and I don’t just mean the dozens of wars and armed conflicts worldwide. When we listen to the media we hear that newspapers are dying and photography is dead. They say that digital killed analog, bloggers killed print-journalism and any number of magazines are listed on deathwatch websites.
If you believe it there is carnage and unprecedented global upheaval from which we’ll supposedly never recover.
Personally I think all of that is a load of bull.
I’d like to suggest that this “is what real revolutions are like,” to borrow the words of Clay Shirky, a brilliant social commentator. They involve slippery and exciting change that cannot be controlled by the usual methods.
I fully agree.
“The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.”
And so it is with us assembled tonight. We are here not because one technology has killed another, or because some set of industries are in danger of dying, real as that may feel. We are here to celebrate newness, innovation and the glorious creativity of the human spirit. And yes, CHANGE. Whether we know it or not, we are living through revolutionary times.
When someone demands to know whether print-on-demand will kill publishing and whether newspapers and magazines will die “they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution.” As Shirky says: “They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be lied to.”
I cannot tell a lie.
But I can say that books are ancient vehicles for the dissemination of ideas and resonate with us as objects even today. Photography, by contrast, is no more developed than a toddler in the scope of human history. It is a gift of modernity and it is changing rapidly before our eyes … and all of that is as exciting as anything I can think of.
To be attached to old ways and outdated systems in this new day is foolhardy and naive, for who can any longer believe that technologies won’t change radically every six months or more. And who cares!? Change is inevitable. Has anyone mentioned we are living in the 21st century? I don’t know how all of these changes will affect the larger industries many of us work in; no one really does. But I do know that we are the future—we are the architects and the builders and there are more and more powerful tools at our disposal every time we blink our eyes.
So let me remind everyone to please take out your cell phones … and make sure they are on. Please Tweet, Blip, Facebook, Blog and Qik video anything and everything you want. We are witnessing changes the likes of which previous generations could never dream.
The Photography.Book.Now contest was not just another “photography” contest. This was a photography-book contest—and specifically, one that celebrates print-on-demand technology. Many thanks and shout-outs to all the photographers who submitted, attended the party and decided to participate in something fresh and exciting, without really knowing where we’re all headed.
[Posting this entry from 34,000 ft & the future. Here is the full text of Clay Shirky's talk on the state of newspaper publishing. Follow me on Twitter @dariushimes]
The winners of the Photography.Book.Now contest have just been announced (Reuters announcement here & PDN article here)!
Out of the winning titles selected by the great team of judges, of which I served as Lead Judge, Rafal Milach‘s “Black Sea of Concrete” stood out as the best overall photobook. It stands as a wonderful embodiment of all of the criteria I asked the judges to consider: strong photography, important subject matter, vigorous edit and intelligent sequencing, combined with a thoughtful attention to those elements that are specifically book-centric, including type treatment, page-layout and cover design.
At the heart of the contest was the combination of photographs and books. The contest was not just about photographs, but about photographs in book form.
Overall, Milach’s book is one that I think people will want to return to repeatedly. He enlisted the assistance of a designer and an editor, and in doing so exhibited care and attention to the book, as a whole, acknowledging his own strengths and weaknesses in the process; it was truly teamwork that led to a better end-result. As lead judge, I’m extremely proud to have been able to award the Grand Prize to a relatively young photographer and book artist and I look forward to seeing more from him in the future.
The other winners include:
Kurt Tong, who won in the Editorial Category with People’s Park (below, top) Joshua Deaner, who won in the Fine Art category with I Sell Fish (below, bottom)
And Dennis Kleiman, who won in the Commercial category with Volume One
Read the story on PDN here (with more photos). Read the Blurb blog here. To join judges and winners at various meet-ups around the country (+London), click here.
About Photography.Book.Now
Photography.Book.Now is an international juried self-published book competition, and a celebration of the most creative, most innovative, and finest photography books – and the people behind them. Now in its second year, Photography.Book.Now offers photographers of all stripes the opportunity to showcase their work to a world-renowned panel of judges, and take a shot at a $25,000 grand prize. Submissions closed on July 16, 2009. For more information on prizes, sponsors, and upcoming social events, visit www.photographybooknow.com.
Back in the spring of this year, the good folks at Mus Mus (who prefer to remain anonymous) approached me about contributing to their new Mus-Mus project, @Paris. I gently declined due to an already overflowing plate, but they came back a month or so later and asked again, “just to make sure.” I think I again gently declined, but by the time they knocked on the door a third time, I had been thinking about what I would contribute to an online photo-project about Paris.
What I had been thinking about was the above photograph.
Since childhood, this photograph has been lodged in my memory banks. Truth be told, it’s my only connection to Paris. I’ve never been to the city, and while the romance and history of the city definitely has its hold on me, I’ve just never had occasion to get there.
But I’ve been there numerous times through the history of the life of Abdu’l-Baha and the talks he gave in that city almost exactly a century ago. I wrote back and said that if I were to contribute it would be about this photograph, and was that ok? The Mus-Mus folks were so enthusiastic and encouraging that I was glad I had decided to say Yes.
The essay is now written and the @Paris project is live and launched. And to be completely honest, of all the work I’ve been busy with this summer, this is my favorite thing. My piece is just one small touchstone of a much larger, thoughtful online “archive” of photographs by contemporary photographers, about Paris. The jurors were Stephen Shore, my good friend Denise Wolff, of Aperture, and curator/writer Ulrich Baer, who also contributed a wonderful, lengthier essay about Paris and photography. The archive is here. An excerpt from my essay is below:
In 1908, the Young Turks of the Committee of Union and Progress revolted against the despotic Sultan Abdu’l-Hamid. This brought to an end the centuries-old Ottoman Empire and paved the way for a semi-secular government based in the ancient city of Constantinople. With that singular, revolutionary act, all political and religious prisoners throughout the Empire were freed. Abdu’l-Baha Abbas, the man in a white turban pictured in the middle of this photograph, tasted freedom for the first time since childhood. He was 65 years old.
This photograph was made in Paris in the autumn of 1911. Abdu’l-Baha stayed in the city for nearly two months, near the Trocadero Gardens adjacent to the Avenue de Camoëns. After over 50 years of exile from his native Persia, and imprisonment for espousing the universal ideals of the teachings of his father, Baha’u’llah, he had left, by steamer ship, the prison-city of Akka where he had been under house arrest since the age of 24, and embarked on a journey to the West. First London, then Paris and eventually New York City hosted his visit as he sought to create new bridges between the peoples, cultures, religions and ideals of the East and West.
In this photograph, we see Abdu’l-Baha standing at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, with the Champ de Mars visible in the hazy background….
mus-mus is a collaborative photography space that yokes ideas and images together in an experimental and playful way that seems most appropriate for an internet based salon of an increasingly post-consumer world. In keeping with this ethic we prefer a mildly anonymous position and ‘authorlessness’. Keeping mouths shut about who we are, we hope you will better know the pictures, projects and ideas.
Photography: A Very Short Introduction
Words Without Pictures (Aperture, 2010)
Short Track, by Jake Mendel
Bird Watching, by Paula McCartney