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?”
Language and Books
What these questions assume is a common understanding and definition about how the term “book” is being used and in my opinion, so many of the discussions around photography books are sloppy because of a lack of precise language. Language and books are intimately connected—clay, stone, leather, vellum, wood, and paper all share the distinction of being used to carry words and symbols and ideograms which refer back to a spoken vocabulary, to a spoken language.
The desire and ability to create written languages is uniquely human and whole civilizations have been built around and because of them. (cf. Steven Pinker’s books, particularly The Language Instinct). The very notion of a “written language” implies a material upon which the language is written or recorded, and a brief survey reveals all sorts of variations on a theme—tablets, stellae, scrolls, screens, accordion-folded papers, bags of inscribed bones, hinged wood panels, and of course sheets of paper bound with thread all dot the history of humankind’s desire to record and convey the written word. It was Gutenberg’s invention of movable type that moved humanity into a new era, one of ever-increasing facility with reproducing the written word.
So, shoot forward to the 21st century and we have all sorts of ways that written language is conveyed to us, beyond vellum, stone tablets and sheets of paper bound with thread—the primary advancement is that we have now added electronic media, both audio and visual. But as to the act and the effect of reading the Psalms, a sheet of vellum with calligraphy from the 12th century is essentially no different than a Kindle. They are physical objects upon which one can read the written word.
The Future of Books
Over on eyecurious, Marc Feustel, who maintains the blog from Paris, adds his two-cents to this crowd-sourced blog posting and points out that the current discussion among publishers is “that the e-book revolution is primarily going to affect non-illustrated books.” This is how he approaches the questions: “Firstly, there is the question of technology. This debate should be placed into the larger context of the debate on the future of books, period.”
I would beg to clarify this, though. Publishers are not really debating the future of “books,” if by books we mean the future of “recorded human language.” They are debating the future of the sales of printed books in the quantities they are used to. Think for a moment about this same discussion, which we’ve witnessed over the past decade, in relation to the music industry. It would be meaningless to say, “The music industry is debating the future of music.” People aren’t listening to less music nor are less people listening to music. Our global population is growing at unprecedented rates and I guarantee you they are listening to music and looking for entertainment. What publishers—big publishers—are fretting about and debating is how the digital medium has affected their sales of written language on sheets of paper bound between two covers and sold as books. Make sense?
Before we go on, I’d still like to emphasize that the future of “books” is secure. And by that I mean that the future of human language written on sheets of paper bound between two covers will exist with us for millenia into the future. I’m betting on history. With a printed book, there is no need for electricity to access it—a lap and a pool of sunlight or a single candle are all that’s required. The fleeting nature of access to electricity and utilities that huge portions of the world’s population has to deal with will necessitate printed books for centuries still, if not perpetually into the future. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. In my mind, there simply is no replacement for a physical object. Think about the Torah, the Bible, the Qur’an, the Upanishads, the Hidden Words, the Kitab-i-Aqdas, the Bhagavad Gita—all of these sacred works, which have shaped societies and will continue to shape societies, are books that are used daily by 100s of millions of people. Having to rely on electricity (which we’ve only had societally for less than 200 years) seems particularly ridiculous.
Photography and Books
Photography has also existed for less than 200 years. But when it comes to the reproduction of images, the discussion revolves around the same concerns as with the written word. It’s just as easy to carve an image as it is to carve a letter (which, after all is an “image” itself, a symbol that indicates a sound which, when combined with other sounds creates a word, which in turn is a symbol for an idea or an object that exists in the world).
An “image” of a man on a tablet-sized sheet of vellum, drawn by a 10th century monk and an image of a man seen through a browser window on a tiny white “tablet” computer made by a 21st century photographer, are both more or less the same, when seen from a certain vantagepoint.
So, is a pdf a “book”? Or is a pdf a book in potentia? It is definitely a conveyor of both written language and images, whichever you like. And as an electronic artifact, it has it’s own pretense to existence. However, to me, a pdf or a website or an “ebook” are not books in the same way that a stone tablet or a scroll or a sheet of papyrus are also not examples of books. They are vehicles of recorded human language, true. But a pdf is a pdf. A website is a website. A stone tablet is a stone tablet. A set of pages with either written language or images on them (reproduced in any manner of methods), gathered and bound together in some fashion = a book. It is a thing I hold in my hands. It is material and concrete.
Back to the 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?”
Out of the 5 questions posed by the instigators of this crowd-sourced blog posting, the first and the last, if taken from a creative standpoint, are impossible to answer. “What will new music composed for the piano sound like in 10 years?” Who knows.
But when it comes to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th questions, they all revolve around electronic technology. And I am suggesting that this is simply another query about the materiality, about the physical vehicles that will be used for disseminating language or images. Will they be read on a Kindle or an iPhone? Yes, sure. They already are. Will they also be printed? Some will, no doubt, and some won’t. Will some of the larger traditional publishing houses incorporate more and more ebooks into their inventory? Yes. Will some small, new companies deal *only* in electronic media? Of course. Will some photographers choose to release their images only through an electronic platform, and will that platform be open-source or proprietary? Sure, probably some will, and probably some won’t. Are there still guys (and girls) that use letterpress out in their garages in Brooklyn? Yes. Are there some photographers who only shoot digitally? Yes, of course. Will technologies continue to change and advance and will humans adapt to those changes? Yes.
As I think more about these questions, it may be more useful to ask, “What will book publishing look like in 10 years?” Again, I come back to the music industry as an example. The word that pops to mind is “fracture”. 50 years ago—even just 20 years ago—there were really only a handful of large music conglomerates that controlled most of what we, the consumers, were able to access. But it has fractured so much so that no matter where you live, I guarantee you there are at least a half dozen “record labels” in your town. In Santa Fe,too, there are at least half a dozen “publishers”—one or two person operations that curate small lists of books and publish them under a company name in very small quantities.
The photography world is now filled with scores, if not hundreds, of “photography book” publishers. Shane Lavalette, with his brilliant Lay Flat photography magazine, is a “publisher.” Companies like Hassla Books, Rathole Books, Errata Editions, Radius Books, Nazraeli Press, Twin Palms, J&L Books, Fraenkel Gallery are all “publishers” and they are *all* one or two or three person collectives; hardly “traditional” publishing and hardly the ones that are making a fuss about the “future” of books. It’s the bigger houses that are lamenting the future of the only thing they’ve known—large offices in Manhattan with just as large company rosters and overhead, putting out titles that used to appeal to 10s and 100s of thousands of customers, customers who are now a little more selective and might just buy a book from those kids from Brooklyn than from the big house in the City.
Photography book “production” and photography book “publishing” may also be a useful distinction to make. Any artist or photographer that makes a book, whether using a Xerox machine or using a platen press and a litho stone is producing a book. And if they made 10 of them and sold them, can they rightly be called a publisher? Generally, no. But small art book publishers often aren’t making too many more copies of something than that. 250, 500, 1000 copies of a book can hardly be called “mass production”. However, producing someone else’s words and images in book form in any quantity and then distributing and selling that to the general public is probably the best practical definition of “book publisher” that I can come up with.
Over on Conscientious—Jorg Colberg’s photography based blog—he laments that there are not more “experimental” books being produced. He implies that it’s the big ones—the big publishers—that are not willing to take a risk. By big, I would assume he means publishers like Abrams or Rizzoli or Chronicle. But when it comes to smaller presses, there is a ton of experimentation going on—experimentation in terms of artists published, experimentation in terms of sizes and formats and bindings and materials, and experimentation in terms of engagement with the (history of the) medium.
A Word About Print-on-Demand
For the past two years, I’ve been involved with the judging of the Photography.Book.Now contest sponsored by Blurb. Eileen Gittins, Blurb’s founder and CEO, needs to be commended for so passionately pursuing this new technology and for placing it in the hands of everyday and professional photographers alike.
Print-on-demand is a powerful new tool in the toolbox of photographers, but because it is so new, many photographers are still using it straight “out-of-the-box” so to speak. Not a single photographer that submitted to the contest took the print-on-demand book and altered it from the way it comes from Blurb, which, when dealing with a creative community, was surprising to say the least.
Here are some ideas for “experimentation” with print-on-demand: have the book block created using print-on-demand technology and then take that block and have it bound in a cloth of your choosing at a local bindery; produce a hard cover print-on-demand book and produce a letterpress dustjacket on paper of your choice; design the book for a different trim size, print it in the larger size from Blurb and then have it professionally trimmed to your designed size—you’ll be sidestepping the limits on possible trim sizes; print two slim volumes—one print-on-demand and one using some other method—and have a slipcase or box produced to house the set; use the paper or trim sizes intended for non-photo print-on-demand books and make a photography book. These are just a few general ideas, but I genuinely hope to see more creative innovation with the book form in this next set of contest submissions for 2010 (the contest will launch sometime in the early Spring of 2010, so stay tuned).
With all of the interest in photography books and the history of photography as seen through publishing, there can only be more and more innovation ahead, which is truly exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing the fruits of these discussions over the months ahead…
[Feel free to post comments. I'll keep 'em flowing through here...]
“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]
Over the past 2 weeks, there has been an outpouring of excitement about the Photography.Book.Now 2009 contest and the impending DEADLINE at noon on July 16th! Here’s a quick round-up of all the press:
There are several interviews with me as the Lead Judge of the contest:
Photographer Cara Phillips, one of last year’s Photography.Book.Now runner-ups, maintains a wonderful blog. She’s just posted an interview with me about the contest. Photo-eye Director Rixon Reed interviewed me for their online magazine. Photographer and blogger Douglas Stockdale also ran a few questions past me. And the Live Books folks posted a short interview with me on their blog.
Other online shout outs about the contest:
Amy Stein, a photographer who recently published her first book (via the Critical Mass Book prize), made mention of the contest on her blog. Hey, Hot Shot! (a fabulous Jen Bekman project, who was one of last years’ judges) posted a nice little piece, as did Lesley A. Martin (Publisher at Aperture) on the Aperture blog. Lesley was also one of last years’ Photography.Book.Now judges.
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 year’s 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!
All of the judges have been chosen, confirmed and posted on the Photography.Book.Now 2009 contest website. It’s an amazing line up of critics, curators, gallerists, photo editors and photographers. If you have ever thought of producing a book and have wanted to show it some of the best names in the business, this is your chance!
Last year I was privileged to play a major role in the first occasion for what turned out to be an inspiring and surprisingly well-attended contest. Photography.Book.Now 2008, which was hosted by Blurb and included a range of photography industry sponsors (like American Photography, JPG magazine, Flickr, etc), is now set to begin again, for a second time, with the same Grand Prize ($25,000!).
And, I’m privileged to be part of this whole thing again, acting as the chair of the judging committee. Honestly, I can’t tell you how much fun it was to look at over 2000 entries from around the world. We’re all excited and confident that the entries this time around will only increase, the question is, by what magnitude.
This year, there will be 3 categories (as opposed to just the 2 from last year): Fine Art, Editorial, Commercial. The wording for these 3 categories can be found here, on the Photography.Book.Now website.
The judges, who will be announced in the coming weeks, will be drawn from the international pool of photography professionals with backgrounds in the arts and editorial work, and will include magazine picture editors, gallerists, photographers and museum curators. We had an amazing line-up of judges last year, and this year will be no different.
In case anyone had forgotten, Beth Dow won the Grand Prize last year with her beautifully seen project, In the Garden. The rest of the winners and runners-up can be found here, on Blurb’s bookstore site.
One of things that is most exciting to me—and was to many of the judges—is the chance to see photographers, of all types and backgrounds, engaged in envisioning their own work in book form. For many of us, as publishers, curators, picture editors and gallerists, we are actively involved in looking at photographic work on a daily basis and the book is a central form of expression within the medium. To see so many fresh voices engaged in this process was truly inspiring, and we’re looking forward to that same level of intensity again this year.
So get cracking on either a new project or finish up an existing one, get it worked up as the best book you can muster, and submit it to the contest, which runs through July (see the contest website for more details). Regardless of whether or not you win, the chance for such an illustrious panel of judges to see your work is worth it alone.
