DariusHimes

["Embarrassing Books", by Penelope Umbrico]

Pretty much the best annual contest for book-loving photographers is about to END on July 16, a mere 3 weeks away!*** I’m talking about Photography.Book.Now, version 2.0, folks. Hosted by Blurb, one of the acknowledged leaders of the print-on-demand revolution, the Photography.Book.Now contest is important for several reasons. Besides the big carrot of $25,000 USD (just ask Beth Dow how fun it was to receive that last year, no strings attached), and other goodies and parties along the way, it’s a chance to get your work in front of a group of top-notch judges who will all be judging the entries in New York shortly after the end of the contest in mid-July.

[*** I'm one of the judges in this contest, heading up the team for a second year.]

But, to be honest, the educator side of me thinks this contest is important because of how it gets photographers to think outside of the box and to think in relation to the book as a separate entity, one that is a combination of many arts.

Let me explain. …

A book, in general, is a very democratic and accessible vehicle to disseminate ideas, in the form of either text or images—two primary advantages are that books require no electricity and can be returned to again and again, unlike an exhibition, for instance, or the Internet.

Creating a successful book involves editing and sequencing and design all in light and in line with an overriding concept which has to be determined ahead of time. Asking yourself ahead of time, “Who is this book for?” and “What am I trying to accomplish with this book?” is extremely important.

The three categories of this years’ contest—Fine-Art, Editorial and Commercial—are designed to encourage photographers to think about books the way publishers do. Let me restate that: the categories require that photographers think like publishers.

The fine-art category is extremely broad and the most subjective, in that photographers and artists using photography can do whatever they want to produce their book. Books from “art” photography publishing houses—like Nazraeli Press, Twin Palms, J&L Books, Aperture, Phaidon, or Radius Books—are often “name” driven and rely on an audience that recognizes that name, whether that’s a really huge name, like Annie Leibovitz, or someone lesser-known, like Julie Blackmon. What is most important in relation to this category is that the content of the book is driven by the personal, artistic concerns of the artist/photographer, and not by “market conditions”.

Editorial photography, which is the second category, is a much different animal than “fine art” photography and book making. Let me state two things at the outset, though. I’m not really interested in or trying to stoke the debate surrounding questions about what constitutes “art” photography. First of all, anything done well is done artfully. If it serves the goals that one sets out with, then “art” has been employed. With more “utilitarian” tasks, art enhances the outcome—think of “the art of cooking” or “the art of furniture-making.” There are more abstract tasks, such as teaching or public speaking, which also benefit from thoughtful and inspired attention, and which employ “art”. So, in our case, I don’t want anyone to think that any of the three categories don’t somehow employ art or don’t constitute artfully done work.

Editorial and commercial photographers often serve patrons other than themselves, however, and this is a big distinction. So, an editorial photographer sent on an assignment to cover X, may find themselves with a much larger, broader, more engaging body of work than will ever get published in a magazine. And they may want to turn that project into a book, and get it out there to a wide audience. Likewise, a commercial shooter ofter has photographic skills that translate into a broadly accessible visual language, and can be used for a “commercial” book project. Publishers often conceive of book projects in-house and then commission commercial photographers to produce work for the book. [cont'd below]

[Image Collection #1: Instances of Books Being Read (from home-decor and home-improvement webistes and catalogs), 2007, by Penelope Umbrico]

Perhaps some concrete examples would help. A new book from Princeton Architectural Press—Bamboo Fences, by Isao Yoshikawa and Osamu Suzuki—is a great example of a commercial book project, in my mind. It’s about a very specific subject—bamboo fence building in Japan, written by Yoshikawa—and Suzuki’s photographs perfectly illustrate the work and convey the physical and abstract beauty of these objects. It’s primarily a photography book, but is supplemented by the text. The name of the photographer (or even the author) is not what will drive the sales of this book. It’ll be bought by architects and interior design folks that are hip to the subject matter.

Here’s another example: Bird, by Andrew Zuckerman. It has a specific subject matter that has been very artfully photographed by a commercial photographer. The audience for this book—and by that I mean ultimate sales for this book—is hoped (by Chronicle Books the publisher), I would guess to be upwards of 50,000+. Who doesn’t like birds?

Further: here are two examples of books that have a pretty broad “trade” appeal, but which are not really “commercial” books the way I’ve talked about the books above. They are Jonah Frank’s Right, Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League (Chronicle Books), and Articles of Faith by Dave Jordano (Center for American Places). In my mind, both of these books probably stemmed from assignments, and once embarked upon, held a fascination for the photographers, blossoming eventually into the book length projects we see on the shelves. Both have more of a storytelling quality to them then either Bamboo Fences or Bird. In that sense, that come out of a “documentary” tradition, but are presented in as appealing a way to as broad an audience as possible.

In either the editorial or commercial category, I would emphasize again that you need to think like a publisher if you are going to submit to that category. Visit websites of publishers (like this one and this other one) and read the “catalog copy” that they produce about their own books. It’ll give you great insight into what type of audience they are aiming for. In many ways, creating an intelligent, succesfull commercial is as hard as creating a successful fine-art project.

[For more reading on the current explosion in the art & photobook market, you'll all have to wait for the book I'm co-authoring with Mary Virginia Swanson about just that. It will be published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010. For a self-taught graduate seminar in your hands, pick up The Photobook: A History, Volumes 1 & 2 by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger (Phaidon) or a copy of the newly released WordsWithoutPictures.org conceived and edited by Charlotte Cotton at LACMA, to which I contributed an essay.]

And lastly, a huge shout out to Penelope Umbrico, whose work with photos from Flickr is smart and stunning. Penelope, if you’re reading this, I hope we all get to see a book of yours someday soon!

This is your last chance to submit to the Photographic Center Northwest contest, with the photography world’s most Web-savvy misstress, Jen Bekman! Fancy-amazing gallery director Ann Pallesen is the organizer and is sure to treat your entries right. I say, “Do it now!”

So, just do it, now.

As the semester winds up amidst uncertainty about the future of the College itself, some of my students from PHO 406 (History of Photography III) are preparing for the opening of their BFA thesis exhibition. Both Cougar Vigil and Adam Figliola have produced beautiful bodies of photographic work that bodes well for their creative futures. The opening reception is tonight, May 14th from 5–7 pm at the Marion Center for Photographic Arts on The College of Santa Fe campus. Congratulations to all the students!

Adam Figliola:

Cougar Vigil:

In 1988, I was an 18 year-old BFA Photography major at Arizona State University, in Tempe, AZ. Bill Jay and Bill Jenkins had both thrown lit matches into the straw of my Iowa farm-boy mind that year. My childhood understandings of images and the potency of pictures were simply burned up in a semester or two under their impassioned tutelage.

In bi-weekly photo history lectures, Bill Jay, the archetypal story-telling scholar, was excitedly describing for us how early practitioners of photography were either falling off cliffs atop their glass-plate-laden mules, or accidentally poisoning themselves with gun cotton and ether under the ferocious heat and humidity of canvas tents which served as their field darkrooms.

20 years after I first met him, Bill Jay has passed away. In September of 2007, I spent half a day with Bill at his condo in MIssion Beach, CA (just outside San Diego) interviewing and photographing him for PDN magazine (which can be read here). I also had great fun going with him to the Infinity Awards in May of 2008 (which I blogged about here) where, true to self, he delivered a rather cranky but poignant assessment of the “state of photography.”

The night before the awards, Mary Virginia Swanson (who has just posted a wonderful entry on her blog here), Denise Wolff and I sat with him at Good Burgers in mid-town Manhattan, listening to him describe his recently purchased plots of land in Costa Rica, where he was going to happily live out his days, mere yards from “the most beautiful strip of beach” you can imagine. Maria, at the local cantina had promised to teach him Spanish, and his daughters would periodically visit, he told us. It appears that he has done just that, passing in his sleep this past Tuesday.

During that New York trip, and before, during my time with him in Mission Beach, Bill emphatically stated, “I’m done. I have no more to say.” Photography, as he knew it, was dead. But it was the community around him that had changed, and had truly “passed on”, in a very real sense. When Bill received the Infinity Award, it had been 50 years exactly since his first published piece. He felt a sense of completeness—or at least he stated as much—having reached that marker. It seemed like a good time to sell everything and move to a hut on a beach. He seems to have been exactly where he wanted to be, and that’s not a bad thing.

Visit Bill Jay on Photography for dozens of his articles and photographs of photographers.

A friend of mine, Negar Mottahedeh, is a professor at Duke University, where she teaches Introduction to Film Studies (as well as being a writer and thinker on film, culture, the arts and innovation, among other things). As a semester-end group project, she cooked up the idea of a Twitter film festival. What exactly does that mean, you ask? It involved setting up a blog featuring YouTube clips from various films that were screened at different hours, as well as setting up a shared Twitter account (twitfilm) and then tweeting about them as a form of class discussion. Oh, I wish I could have taken that class (or at least known about it ahead of time)!

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran this piece about the film festival on the 15th of April, and the unique in-class assignment is sure to get broader attention in the education and film community at large.

Listen to Negar talk about the festival (courtesy D21-Projektblog).

[Now.... how can I apply this to my own classes?? hmmm...]

There are David Sedaris “lovers” and “haters”. I’m an admirer, and when it comes to this particular story, I inevitably find myself nearly on the floor laughing, tears in my eyes. I remember the first time I came across this story. I could NOT stop laughing. Reading this out loud to my mother, Fay Himes, a former minister with an over-charged sense of humor, is one of my fondest memories. Listening to my mother as she enters into one of her laughing fits is like witnessing a force of Nature. It is awe-some, frightening, and mesmerizing all at once. It’s also impossible not to laugh with her. Mid-way through my reading of this story to her, she was on one knee, leaning out of her chair, her whole face red, tears streaming down her cheeks, laugh-screams coming out of her so loudly that they pierced through your whole body. Like I said, it’s one of my fondest memories. That, and listening to her sing and play “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” off the Life of Brian soundtrack on our family, upright piano.

If you haven’t read or heard this, I hope you enjoy. [Be warned, this approaches blasphemy for some. And remember, God loves laughter.]

Jesus Shaves, by David Sedaris

“What is an Easter?”

“It is,” said one, “a party for the little boy of God who call his-self Jesus, and, you know… like that.” “He call his-self Jesus and then he die one day on two morsels of lumber.” The rest of the class, jumps in offering bits of information that would have given the Pope an aneurysm. “He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your Father.” “He make the good thing and on the Easter we be sad because someone make Him dead today.”

This last week, a painter of whom I had never heard was brought up in an indirect conversation (by Ed Ruscha, of all people). Augustus Vincent Tack was born in Pittsburgh, spent a large part of his life in New York City, but maintained a portrait studio in Washington, DC, painting the likenesses of political and military figures from the first half of the 20th century. (Self-portrait below)

What he is less known for are his abstract works that loosely reference the landscape—Nature, as a leaping off point—and aspire to spiritual, mystic themes. His abstract works, who some mention as very early examples of Abstract Expressionism, were created almost exclusively for Duncan Phillips, the wealthy steel baron who left The Phillips Collection to posterity (and our benefit). This collection, situated in DC, houses works by other painters and abstractionists including Paul Klee, Georges Bracque, Mark Rothko and James McNeil Whistler.

According to history, Tack’s abstractions were commercially unsuccessful (imagine that!), but he continued to pursue them independent from his commissioned portraits and landscapes which he made in the style of the day. That aspect to the story sounds, in itself, timeless. What paying patrons want to see is rarely what the artist him/herself would like to produce, but the economic realities of life bear down upon us all, regardless of what century we’re talking about. Thankfully, Tack kept exploring his personal work, and thankfully there was one patron for whom the abstractions were powerful, moving, and worthy of collecting.

Tack’s work is mentioned briefly in a chapter titled Nature Symbolized: Painting from Ryder to Hartley, in the book The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting, 1890-1985, published by Abbeville for a massive, sweeping exhibition at LACMA in 1986.

And a gorgeous little descriptive landscape….

Two weeks ago was the Palm Springs Photo Festival. I loved it. I was a panelist (hosted by Michelle Dunn-Marsh of Chronicle Books and formerly of Aperture), a portfolio reviewer, and a happy camper. The reason for my happiness? Rocks and scrubby bushes, 70+ temperatures, straight-up searing desert sun warming my lizard heart/brain, mid-century modern hotels w/ pools, and some damn fine photography.

Debbie Fleming Caffery gave an evening talk at the Annenberg Theater of the Palm Springs Art Museum. Copies of her new Radius Books title—The Spirit & The Flesh—were on hand and all copies sold out in 15 minutes! Good job, Debbie.

My favorite portfolio was by Verner Soler, a Swiss-born, Los Angeles-based photographer who has been working on an extended project that circles elegantly around themes of mortality, aging, and being far-removed from one’s extended family.