Tag: Aperture
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Words Without Pictures, edited by Alex Klein (Aperture, 2010)
Including an essay by Darius Himes (among numerous others)
ISBN 978-1597111423
6 x 8 inches, Softbound, 510 pages
Words Without Pictures was originally conceived by curator Charlotte Cotton as a means of creating spaces for discourse around current issues in photography. Every month for a year, beginning in November 2007, an artist, educator, critic or curator was invited to contribute a short unillustrated essay about an aspect of emerging photography. Each piece was available on the Words Without Pictures website for one month and was accompanied by a discussion forum focused on its specific topic. Over the course of its month-long “life,” each essay received both invited and unsolicited responses from a wide range of interested parties. All of these essays, responses and other provocations are gathered together here. Previously issued as a print-on-demand title, we are pleased to present Words Without Pictures to the trade for the first time as part of the Aperture Ideas series. The contributors are Amy Adler, George Baker, Christopher Bedford, Walead Beshty, Sarah Charlesworth, Charlotte Cotton, John Divola, Shannon Ebner, Jason Evans, Harrell Fletcher, Paul Graham, Leslie Hewitt, Darius Himes, Soo Kim, Sze Tsung Leong, Miranda Lichtenstein, Sharon Lockhart, Allan McCollum, Kevin Moore, Carter Mull, Marisa Olson, Arthur Ou, Anthony Pearson, Michael Queenland, Allen Ruppersberg, Alex Slade, A.L. Steiner, Penelope Umbrico, James Welling, Charlie White, Mark Wyse and Amir Zaki.
Excerpt from the essay “Who Cares About Books?” by Darius Himes
Purchase on Amazon
Tags: Aperture, Charlotte Cotton
Posted in Book Review, My Published Writing | No Comments »
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
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.
That’s it. Now go make a book!
Tags: Amy Stein, Aperture, Blurb, Douglas Stockdale, jen Bekman, Photo-eye, Photography Book Now
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
(“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 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!
Tags: Andrew Zuckerman, Aperture, Blurb, Center for American Places, Chronicle Books, Dave Jordano, J&L Books, Julie Blackmon, Naraeli Press, Penelope Umbrico, Phaidon, Photography Book Now, Princeton Architectural Press, Radius Books, Twin Palms
Posted in Events & News, Photography | No Comments »
Monday, April 6th, 2009
The Printed Picture, by Richard Benson (MoMA, 2010)
Reviewed in Aperture 194, Spring 2009, by Darius Himes
ISBN 978-1-57687-510-0
8.25 x 11 inches, Hardcover, 338 pages, numerous illustrations
Excerpt from the review by Darius Himes:
Benson, a photographer and master printer, has a methodical mind and approaches his subject systematically; The Printed Picture is thus, at its most basic level, a textbook—though the writing is never pedantic or stuffy. Benson developed the material presented here over the course of thirty years of teaching at Yale University, and reading his words is not unlike the experience of being in a lecture hall. Each chapter presents a class of printing processes (such as “relief printing” or “non-silver processes”), and each derivative process within that chapter is limited to a double-page spread complete with illustration and detail enlargement. Entire processes are distilled to three or four paragraphs at most—digestible, succinct, and engaging.
In the first 100 pages of this 338-page book Benson takes great pains to cover all the known processes, and offers a sturdy and admirably comprehensible outline of the fundamental approaches to reproduction prior to photography. In the book’s first four chapters he discusses relief, intaglio, and planographic printing—the triumvirate of ink-on-paper printing techniques—along with early multiple-impression color processes and such elementary printing methods as stencils, rubbings, silhouettes, and the typewriter. All these early techniques, some of which have been around for centuries (in certain cases millennia), seem to have played an important role on the inexorable passage toward the invention of photography. …
The Printed Picture will speak most clearly to those readers who have spent years in the halls of art schools and love the smell of ink and turpentine, who wax poetic at the sight of fixer-stained trays, or geek out over a mammoth-plate albumen print. By the end of the book, it is clear that materiality and man’s incessant curiosity are the central themes of The Printed Picture. The love of objects and of evidence of the artist’s hand—as un-digital as that may sound—are still both relevant and worthy of celebrating. —Darius Himes.
Tags: Aperture, MoMA, Richard Benson
Posted in Blog, My Published Writing, Photography | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
Traditional chemical photography is an extraordinarily flexible field, which, even as it disappears, has hardly been touched.—Richard Benson
The Spring 2009 issue of Aperture (194) arrived today with my review of Richard Benson’s recently published book, The Printed Picture. The book, which stands on its own, also accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, and which, thankfully, is still open for viewing (through July 13, 2009). For ANYONE interested in the history of image-making, reproduction techniques, and the history of photography and photographic practices, this show (and book) is an absolute MUST.
Here’s an excerpt from my review of the book:
Benson, a photographer and master printer, has a methodical mind and approaches his subject systematically; The Printed Picture is thus, at its most basic level, a textbook—though the writing is never pedantic or stuffy. Benson developed the material presented here over the course of thirty years of teaching at Yale University, and reading his words is not unlike the experience of being in a lecture hall. Each chapter presents a class of printing processes (such as “relief printing” or “non-silver processes”), and each derivative process within that chapter is limited to a double-page spread complete with illustration and detail enlargement. Entire processes are distilled to three or four paragraphs at most—digestible, succinct, and engaging.
In the first 100 pages of this 338-page book Benson takes great pains to cover all the known processes, and offers a sturdy and admirably comprehensible outline of the fundamental approaches to reproduction prior to photography. In the book’s first four chapters he discusses relief, intaglio, and planographic printing—the triumvirate of ink-on-paper printing techniques—along with early multiple-impression color processes and such elementary printing methods as stencils, rubbings, silhouettes, and the typewriter. All these early techniques, some of which have been around for centuries (in certain cases millennia), seem to have played an important role on the inexorable passage toward the invention of photography. …
The Printed Picture will speak most clearly to those readers who have spent years in the halls of art schools and love the smell of ink and turpentine, who wax poetic at the sight of fixer-stained trays, or geek out over a mammoth-plate albumen print. By the end of the book, it is clear that materiality and man’s incessant curiosity are the central themes of The Printed Picture. The love of objects and of evidence of the artist’s hand—as un-digital as that may sound—are still both relevant and worthy of celebrating. —Darius Himes.
Enjoy!
Tags: Aperture, Museum of Modern Art, Richard Benson
Posted in Book Review, Photography | No Comments »
Words Without Pictures (Aperture, 2010)
Short Track, by Jake Mendel
Bird Watching, by Paula McCartney