My headline is slight disingenuous: There actually is no simple recipe for photobook making. If you asked ten people about how to make a photobook, you’d probably end up with ten different answers. That said, from what I can tell, most photobook makers seem to agree on quite a few things. So I thought I’d throw my own thoughts into the mix. I hope that some people might find them useful
Link: La Lettre de la Photographie
Jakob Tuggener’s Fabrik, published in Zurich in 1943, is considered to be a milestone in the history of photography books. The series of 72 photographs in this Photo Epos of Technology is oriented toward the expressionist aesthetic of the silent movie. It imparts a sceptical view of the destructive potential of unbridled technological progress, at the time the Swiss military industry was producing weapons for World War II.
Gervasio Sánchez’s book “Disappeared” explores the nightmare of forced disappearance not just in South America but around the world: Cambodia and Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Spain. The countries span the globe, but “the violence, the tragedy, the pain and loss and suffering, however, are the same,” Carmen Contreras Gomez, the managing director of the Obra Social Caja Madrid, writes in the introduction
Link: La Lettre de la Photographie
20 Now: Contemporary Photographers is a book that presents 20 western photographers to South East Asia. From Adam Fuss to David Hilliard’s Panoralic photography, the book shows different approaches and ideas to the medium of contemporary photography.
Reprints of older photobooks, commonly known as second editions, have been one way for newer generations of photographers and students of photography to become familiar with and learn from artists who came before them. Books have served me by informing and inspiring me throughout my own photographic practice for more than two decades.
Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography celebrates the nexus of these two phenomena in a one-of-a-kind collection that features more than two hundred works by more than forty postwar artists and photographers. Thematically grouped into topics ranging from the rise of celebrity culture, suburbia and dystopia, avant-garde architectural landscape design, and the cult of the body, these images offer a rich study of the cultural connotations of the swimming pool.
Eric is a modern day typologist, with an amazing range of projects. His website is an incredible reflection of the potential of looking at our world. Eric works and lives in Paris and has a long roster of international exhibitions
But by God, I can’t stop picking up The Place We Live, and it’s my turn to write for the blog, so here we go.
From Aperture and The Cleveland Museum of Art, Is This Place Great Or What by Brian Ulrich is the publication of his ten-year Copia project, documenting the consumer-centric atmosphere of contemporary America. The project grew from Ulrich’s curiosity at whether the 9-11 request of George W. Bush for Americans go out and shop to support the country was truly taken to heart. As economic turmoil overtook the country, it was clear that what Ulrich was documenting was a massive story. Separated into three sections, Is This Place Great Or What is a triptych of the collapsing American consumer system.
This week, while Mr. Ríos Montt is under house arrest, Ms. Simon is reprinting her book “Guatemala: Eterna Primavera, Eterna Tirania,” a chronicle of the worst of the war years that builds upon her 1988 volume “Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny.” This time, she has raised $20,000 through Kickstarter to help produce 4,000 copies on glossy stock and with sewn bindings that will be sold for about $10 each. More important, she has set aside some 1,000 copies to be given away to schools and teachers in Guatemala.
