Archive for the ‘Doug Spowart’ Category
PHOTOBOOK ANXIETY – A paper by Doug Spowart
What follows is a transcript of the paper presented at the ‘Borderless Futures: Reimaging the Citizen’ Symposium as part of the 2015 Ballarat International Foto Biennale. Selected images from the presentation accompany the text to illustrate concepts raised. The text is relatively conversational as it was ‘performed’ rather than read to the audience.
PHOTOBOOK ANXIETY… a paper by Dr Doug Spowart
I doubt that Henry Fox Talbot or Anna Atkins realised in the 1840s what an impact that the photobook would have in the 21st century and the role it plays in the self-publishing revolution that we are witnessing today. The old publishing and bookselling paradigm is now redefining itself and trying to maintain its composure and power over their once lucrative territory. Now every photographer wants and can make their own books – but they need the inspiration found in the latest photobooks and they need to be kept informed by the movers and shakers of the discipline as to what is happening now, and what are the future trends and opportunities.
As a result there is a heightened anxiety for constant and direct personal connection with the pulse of this worldwide phenomena. Social media is the communication vehicle of choice and participants in the photobook network are driven to frenetically seek updates, reviews, new releases, posts about their books and the latest gossip through social media channels.
The anxiety surrounding this activity is palpable and the frisson of social media, particularly Facebook, is the powerful tool for this necessary communication as well as for community building in the burgeoning indie publishing photobooks movement.
Welcome to ‘Photobook Anxiety’ otherwise known by its clinical title PBX. It is driven by the sufferer having an uncontrollable desire to be a part of everything photobook happening in the world. It is characterised by the sufferer constantly checking social media –
What are the signs that of those suffering from this malady?
Wishing I could be there…
There are so many events that happen worldwide it’s impossible to get to all of them let alone one. In a recent Facebook newsfeed the frustrated respondent posted ‘Oh I would freaking kill to be there…”
A sampling of the year’s calendar includes these events:
- Photobook Melbourne February
- Art Book Melbourne – May
- Photo London – May
- Auckland Festival of Photography (Photobook Symposium) – May
- Kassel Foto Book Festival – June
- Obscura Festival of Photography (Photobook Day) – August
- Perimeter book sale last weekend
- Book Case Study in the Netherlands – September
- Aperture at Photo Paris – November
I should have bought a copy of…. Out-of-print/Limited editions/pre-orders
Trent Parke’s Dream Life, probably Australia’s greatest ever photobook, is an excellent example of a rare and out-of-print photobook. Originally selling for around $60 in 2001 it is now is impossible to get for prices less that 25 times that amount.
One was listed on Amazon recently for 1550 Pounds?
Earlier this year one was offered in a Photoeye’s Auction – with a day to go it was $ 895 I did not see the final hammer price…
Last year Abebooks listed one for $1084 in this very town (Ballarat) – I’ve just checked and the Known World Bookshop down the street and they have sold the book.
Limited Editions and Pre-Ordering
Adding to this PMX is the trend particularly among American photobook suppliers like Photo-Eye to advertise limited supplies of signed books which can be ‘pre-ordered’ with specific cut-off times and dates. Even these can be out-sold before you hear about the offer being available as in the case recently with Sally Mann’s Hold Still.
Recently Australian Bloom Publishing offered little badges with the text ‘Print Forever’ as white text on a black background. These were ‘snapped-up’ and a following post Bloom advised that the badges were ‘all gone’! But advised FB Friends to ‘Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks’. PMX now demands that Bloom is followed closely so you won’t miss out on the following offers….
You anxiously await the posts and stories of people you follow…
Who hasn’t been following the exploits of photobook officiando Sam Harris and his latest book The Middle of Somewhere. Sam’s posts have taken us a long on the journey illustrated by images that could well form the basis of a new book. As FB friends we saw the posted images of the design stages and felt his excitement at seeing the book on bookshelves at major European shows and being on a table at Arles with the book. The anguish of the missing visa to re-enter Australia and the joy of being back in Australia and the Balingup sunset at home… Oh! And the set up for his exhibition and book launch by Alasdair Foster at BIFB…
You anxiously await the posts about new stuff…
FB Friends – People who you respect and believe know what’s going on offer advice on books to look at, and get before they are sold out. Adding to PBX phrases like ‘Look what I got today from Photoeye, Alejandro Cartagena’s latest book. It will be gone before you know it’ and ‘Holy moly!!! If you can get your hands on a copy of Mariela Sancari’s brilliant ‘Moises’, do it now. Only 500 copies.’
A couple of days ago Anita Totha from the Photobook Club Auckland posted that Broomberg+Chanarin’s latest book was available: ‘Better get your hands on this now…’. Even Bloom has a new pin — gotta get that! And what about Martin Parr badged clothing and accessories … could that be going a bit far…?
You lament the gaps you’ve identified in your collection!
PBX will cause ‘sufferers’ go to extraordinary lengths to try and fill them… An ‘Ask Meta Filter poster exclaims ‘Help me get my hands on Trent Parke. I mean, his books. It’s driving me mental. I must get Trent Parke’s “Dream Life” and “Seventh Wave” … Replies state the value of the book with responses like ‘Ouch’, ‘And no Dream/Life to be found. Snif’
In another post on ‘The Online Blog’ Kelvin, a respondent from Melbourne, brags about ‘poking his head’ into a second hand bookshop on the way to buying some biscuits from his local Subway store and asked if they had a copy of Dream Life ––– they did, and sold it to him for $70
So busy trying to be ‘in it’ you have no time for your own work
Doug Stockdale of The Photobook blog recently posted ‘a change to my photobook commentaries’. He’s overwhelmed by the ‘dizzying rate’ of new photobooks and the quality and creativity of these books. Stockdale comments that they need ‘a shout out to the photographic community at large to increase awareness’ and that is what his blog attempts to do. However he’s finding that there’s not enough time for his own projects so he announced a a more ‘concise’ Facebook format for the blog in future posts…
Just how pervasive is PBX?
Using SM for personal communications
A few days before Mothers Day this year a Brisbane acquaintance received notification that Ciaran Og Arnold’s ‘I went to the worst of bars…’ book was available in a bookshop in Amsterdam – She posted ‘I want this for Mother’s Day’ Her partner responded in less than an hour – ‘You got it’. Weeks later she triumphantly able to post that the book has arrived.
That you know the picture backgrounds for each photobook commentator’s blogs…
Every photobook supplier, commentator, collector or archive has a standard background that is used for his or her social media presence:
Perimeter Books in Melbourne has the shop-view, sometimes with a table of books with Justine or Emma’s hand.
The Indie Photobook Library is the tabletop and a MAC laptop computer keyboard
Asia Pacific Photobook Archive used a knotted wood plank background for quite a while then, the floor of their old space and then confused us all by using every background imaginable.
Can’t walk past a second-hand bookshop – or bookshop markdown table without feeling a twinge to look inside
The anticipation of being rewarded with wondrous things is such a strong motivator
Spending more than you can afford building your library
The anxiety of photobook collectors was certainly shaken by a FB post from the State Library of Victoria about Karl Largerfield’s personal library. I suppose it comes down to getting one’s priorities right when it comes to collecting and personal finances.
Gotta make sure I’ve got the dates of the next Art Book Fair locked-in to my diary
Were you one of the 16,000 who went to the Melbourne Art Book Fair? If you weren’t there you probably heard and read about how amazing it was. Now you don’t want to miss out on the next one… Well, the ‘Sydney Volume 2015 – Another Art Book Fair’ is on in 2 weeks…
Lifeline book sales are marked on your calendar
The Benjamin Effect!!
Photobook collectors will feel a connection with Walter Benjamin and his essay on ‘I’m unpacking my library’. In it he states ‘Of the customary modes of acquisition, one of the most appropriate to a collector would be the borrowing of a book with its attendant non-returning.’[i]
But there are ways more desperate than that – stealing books. A significant photobook identity recently admitted that his last resort to save his favourite book from being held in library limbo by committing an act of ‘Bibliokleptomania’.
Benjamin also has something that any PBX sufferer can take heed of and that is: ‘Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.’[ii] And that must inspire those inflicted with PBX to go and make a book of their own…
Antidotes / To Feed or Cure
- Reviewing your social media strategy – set your FB preferences to ensure you get ‘Notifications’ and that your selected ‘Friends’ are listed as ‘Family’;
- De-friend people who post what they ate for breakfast or pics of their cat – unless the cat is reading a book! (FB Friend Judy Barass posted this as a response to this point);
- Find new FB Friends – sources of quality information – like Harvey Benge, Stockdale’s The Photobook Blog, Foam, Dazedigital.com, Selfpublishbehappy.com, and Remote Photobooks for what’s happening in New Zealand;
- Develop equity in social media: Giving = Getting. That is ‘Like’ things that you like, ‘Comment’ and ‘Share’ things adding your own comment to make it interesting for you FB Friends;
- Don’t just ‘lurk’ on FB otherwise things that you may be interested in will disappear from your Newsfeed as FB may think that you to not engage with the content;
- Looking at allied book disciplines like artists’ books and zines;
- Sharing your books – I’ll give you mine if you give me yours. I’ll buy yours if you buy mine;
- Donate and contribute to photobook archives like the Indie Photobook Archive and the Asia Pacific Photobook Archive;
- Grow your local – connect with events and people doing things in your region;
- Lobby art institutions, libraries and criticism networks for more photobook content; and
- Become an active advocate for photobooks.
In conclusion
Ultimately it’s hopeless and PBX sufferer must give in to their base desires and needs and participate with energy, vigour and indifference to other aspects of your life….
Finally: A thought from John Waters…..
Thank You – And – SEE YOU ONLINE….
Benjamin, Walter. “Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting.” Translated by Harry Zohn. In Illuminations, 69-82. New York: Schocken Books, 2007. Reprint, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1968.
[i] Benjamin, Walter. “Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting.” Translated by Harry Zohn. In Illuminations, 69-82. New York: Schocken Books, 2007. Reprint, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1968. P62
[ii] ibid p61
DOUG to speak @ Ballarat Foto Biennale Symposium
Photobook Anxiety graphic
On August 29 I’ll be speaking at the Symposium: Borderless Futures, Reimaging the Citizen which is taking place at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. The speakers program is amazing with presentations relating to the topic of the symposium.
My presentation is entitled PHOTOBOOK ANXIETY: SOCIAL MEDIA AND INDIE PUBLISHING and the abstract is as follows:
The photobook is at the core of a self-publishing revolution. The structure of the old publishing and bookselling paradigm is now reshuffled and redesigned. Now every photographer wants to make their own books – they need the inspiration found in the latest photobooks and to be informed by the movers and shakers of the discipline.
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As a result there is an emerging heightened anxiety for personal connection with pulse of this worldwide phenomena. Social media is the communication vehicle of choice. Everyday participants in the photobook network frenetically seek updates, reviews, new releases, post about their books and the latest gossip through social media channels – this anxiety is palpable.
This paper will discuss the frisson of social media as a powerful tool for communication and community building in the indie publishing movement of photobooks.
HERE’S THE LINK TO THE PROGRAM AND TO BOOK – Check out the BIFB Program as well:
http://ballaratfoto.org/event/psc-symposium-borderless-futures-reimaging-the-citizen/
BIFB PSC Symposium logo
Hope to see you there….
THE ARTIST & PHOTOBOOK MELBOURNE
The forum panel….Photo: Anthony McKee
In February this year Melbourne hosted the biggest photobook event ever in this country. Called Photobook Melbourne the event brought together exponents, collectors and critics from around the world as well as from around Australia and New Zealand. Hundreds of books were handled, read and appraised in the many galleries and venues that came on board to support the event.
Martin Parr and Gerry Badger in their second volume of The Photobook: A History (2006), recognised artists who worked with photographs in a specific chapter entitled Appropriating Photography: The Artist’s Photobook.
Participants in the artists’ book discipline have been active indie, DIY publishers worldwide for sixty years or more and many of them use photography in their books. They have well established networks, events activities, awards, critical debate and collectors both private and public.
At a time such as Photobook Melbourne where all things photobook are celebrated and discussed it may be worthwhile to consider what concurrence may exist today between the artists’ book and the photobook. How do artists consider their use of photography and the photograph in their books? Is there any sympatico between the photobook and the artists’ book.
To address these and many more questions I was supported by the Photobook Melbourne organisers Heidi Romano and Daniel Boetker-Smith, to convene a forum to bring the voice of the artists’ book into the photobook conversation. The participants in the forum were; Dr Lyn Ashby, Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison, Peter Lyssiotis, Des Cowley and Dr Victoria Cooper (who was co-opted as Georgia Hutchison withdrew due to personal reasons in the final days).
The proceedings of the forum, with the support of the participants, have now been formed into a PDF booklet that can be downloaded FREE from this site. To provide a taste of the presentations I present the following quotes from the texts:
The PDF Forum book
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DOWNLOAD HERE: PM-OTHER PB-BOOK
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Lyn Asby
Lyn Ashby
I make books. With few exceptions, these are hand-made, limited-edition books that would generally be considered to be “artist’s books” using the standard codex form. These are not photographic books. That is, the photograph is rarely the core of the meaning or purpose of the book. But I often use components or aspects of photographs and composite these with graphics, texts, drawings and painting etc, all of which feed into the overall material on each page.
Gracia Haby + Louise Jennison
Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison
For those of you who we have yet to meet, we are besotted with paper for its adaptable, foldable, cut-able, concealable, and revealing nature. In our artists’ books, prints, zines, drawings, and collages, we use play, humour, and perhaps the poetic, to lure you closer. And sometimes this will incorporate photography. For us, it is not the medium that is always of greatest import, but the message. And so, we use found photographs in our artists’ books and zines not because they are photos, but because of what they can enable us to say, and what we hope you might feel.
Des Cowley
Des Cowley
History of the Book Manager, Collection Development & Discovery, State Library Victoria
One of the challenges for libraries and collecting institutions is to build representative collections of contemporary books and ephemeral works created by artists, photographers, and zinemakers. Artists books, photobooks, and zines generally circulate outside mainstream distribution channels – publishers, general bookshops, distributors – and are effectively off-radar for many libraries. It is therefore incumbent upon staff in these institutions to build networks and relationships with the communities creating this work in order to be informed about what is being produced, and to ensure this material is acquired and preserved for future researchers.
Peter Lyssiotis
Peter Lyssiotis
I had a friend who lived in Belgium. He died a while back. Before he did, though, he painted a pipe on a canvas and underneath it he wrote “This is not a pipe”.
To continue my friend’s mission I say “This is not a book”.
The artists’ book is rather a workshop, a garage; a space where a time-honored craft is practised: it is here that the world gets repaired, reconditioned, reassembled.
Victoria Cooper
Victoria Cooper
The digital cutting, dissecting, layering and suturing of the photographic quotations is an absorbing process through which the visual story emerges. I then materialize this virtual image of the narrative as a physical book in many forms: scroll, concertina or codex. Rather than images on a gallery wall, the narrative space of the book offers for me an endless potential for interplay of the corporeal and the imagination through the idiosyncratic experience of reading.
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DOWNLOAD THE BOOK HERE: PM-OTHER PB-BOOK
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PERFORMING the BOOK @ SLQ – Siganto Artists Book Seminar
The Siganto Artists’ Books Seminar 2015
On June 20+21 the 2015 The Siganto Artists’ Books Seminar took place at the State Library of Queensland. Attendees were presented with a one–day series of lectures, performances and a forum addressing the diversity of the artists’ book and importantly visual and creative research being undertaken by Fellowships supported by the Siganto Foundation.
State Librarian Janette Wright welcomes attendees to the seminar
The State Librarian Jeanette, introduced by MC Christene Drewe, spoke of the Library’s Artists’ Book Collection. This was followed by Dr Marie Siganto from the Siganto Foundation who spoke enthusiastically about the Foundation’s support of the Artists’ Book Collection.
Dr Marie Siganto makes a presentation to the attendees of the seminar and presents 2015 Fellowships
A significant theme of this years’ event was based around the idea of artists’ books as performance. Brazilian artist, performer and academic Amir Brito Cadôr’s presented his keynote address The Book as Performance – he also performed a book reading of Momento Vital by Brazilian artist Vera Chaves Barcellos.
Amir Brito Cadôr makes his keynote presentation
In the morning session 2015 Siganto Foundation Artists’ Books Fellows Clyde McGill and Julie Barratt presented progress reports on their research projects. Jan Davis discussed her 2014 Creative Fellowship and presented the completed artists’ book to the Library. The book was entitled Drawing on the ground and referenced the historical aspects of work and toil on Queensland farms. Reference material for Jan’s book came from diaries, books and documents held by the Library. Her artists’ book features text fragments and line sketches – the book was bound by Fred Pohlman and the cover was styled to resemble an old station journal.
Julie Barratt discusses her Siganto Creative Fellowship
Clyde McGill discusses his Siganto Artists’ Book Creative Fellowship
Jan Davis discusses Drawing on the ground, her Siganto Artists’ Book Creative Fellowship
Doug Spowart discusses Jacob Raupach’s Radiata
As the 2014 Siganto Artists’ Books Research Fellow I presented an illustrated lecture on my experiences as a researcher of the Australian Library of Art, a selection of the range of books I encountered that employed photography from very minor references in text to conceptual pieces based on photographs. This list included:
Anne Wilson in, Tock 01-01-2000, 2000
Codex Event: Darren Bryant .. [et al.], Wild Cherry Tin Mine, 2006.
Vince Dziekian, Blooms Books, 1993-4.
Barbara Davidson, Different moods of the Opera House, 2001.
Felipe Ehrenberg, Generacion 1973
Peter Kingston, The Blue Mountains, 1987.
Michael Buhler, Oblique Lines, 19-.
William Copley Notes on a Project for a Dictionary of Rediculous Images, 1972.
Adam Broomberg + Oliver Chanarin, Holy Bible, 2013.
Judy Barrass, Eden-Monaro in Summer, 2001.
Juli Haas, The oyster book of lessons from the memory room, 2007.
Jihad Muhammad aka John Armstrong, Ten menhirs at Plouharnel, Carnac, Morbihan, Bretagne, France, 1982.
Angela Callanan, 7 Signs of Absence, 2010.
Susan King, Photo bio, 2011.
Malcolm Enright, Western Wisdom, 1998.
Pierre Cavalan, Artists Book, 1998.
Compiled by Kay Faulkner Indulge, 2006.
Debra Gibson, Kamikaze, 2004.
Dick Jewell, Found Photos, 1977.
Julie Barratt, Collateral damage, 2008.
Alison Knowles, Bread and Water, 2004.
David King, Raw deal, 1997.
Valerie Keenan HY1, 2001.
Tim Johnson, Fittings, 1972.
Christian Boltanski, Scratch, 2002.
Amanda Watson-Will, Judy and the Jacaranda, 2010.
Phillip Zimmerman, High tension, 1993.
Jan Davis, Solomon, 1995.
I then disclosed the principal research product the paper: The artists’ book, the photobook and the photo-a spectral approach, as well as recommendations to the Library for photobooks to be relocated from the General collection into places that reflected the significance of these books in the history of photography and the photobook. I also supplied Photobook Publishers and Info URLs that could be used by anyone wanting to keep up with new photobook releases an purchasing opportunities. I particularly noted that the Library held no Trent Parke books and provided, as an example, his book Dream Life that could have been purchased in 2000 for around $60 is now sold for $1,000+. Highlighting the need for the SLQ to be pro-active in purchasing contemporary book for modest outlay – rather than waiting until they are nearly unaffordable. I also highlighted the need for institutions to engage with and maintain links with artists’ book and photobook self-publishers as they exist outside of the usual publishing structures. I quoted Des Cowley, the State Library of Victoria’s History of the Book Manager from a statement made by him in his presentation at the ‘Other Photobook’ forum at Photobook Melbourne. He said:
… It is therefore incumbent upon staff in these institutions to build networks and relationships with the communities creating this work in order to be informed about what is being produced, and to ensure this material is acquired and preserved for future researchers.
My presentation concluded with two quotes from book artist and mail art aficionado Ulises Carrion that I felt related to the contemporary artists’ book and photobook. Carrion states:
I include books in the category of
living creatures … : they grow, reproduce, change colour, become ill and finally die.
At this moment we are witnessing the final stage of this process.
… if books are to survive they have to change. And [artists’] bookworks is the real possibility that books have for survival.
Schraenen, G. (1992). Ulises Carrion : We have won! Haven’t we?
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HERE IS THE SLQ VIDEO OF THE SIGANTO FELLOW’S PRESENTATIONS
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Other artists’ book performances included: Virginia and Julie Barratt’s The Morning After, one by Clyde McGill and a performance by QUT drama students of the three-part book Robert Bringhurst’s artist’s book New World Suite number three: a poem in four movements for three voices. The performers were Thomas Yaxley, Emily Weir and Meghan Clarke and was directed by QUT lecturer Floyd Kennedy.
Clyde McGill performs his book
The afternoon concluded with a forum moderated by Louise Martin-Chew on the topic of collaboration. The forum participants were Clyde McGill, Julie Barratt and Doug Spowart. Each participant discussed a project that involved collaboration and questions were posed by Louise to bring out important points from each panelist. The most interesting aspect of this forum was when questions from the floor created heated debate around the idea of the physical book and its experience verses the virtual online experience.
Julie answers a question in the collaboration forum
On Sunday many local and interstate stallholders presented their work for an Artists’ Book Fair in the Knowledge Walk at the SLQ. Tours of selected artists’ books from State Library’s Artists’ Book Collection were well attended and provide rare access to special books from the Australian Library of Art Collection. The two-day event was significant for the opportunity for artists’ book aficiandos, makers, collectors and readers to engage with the physicality of not only the books but also to touch with the extensive community of the book. Our thanks must go to the SLQ, particularly Christene Drewe and Helen Cole, and to the Dr Marie Siganto and the Siganto Foundation for their continued support of the artists’ book collection of the Australian Library of Art and events such as these. Doug Spowart
State Librarian, Janette Wright views a tunnel book by Wim de Voss
What follows are a range of images from the Seminar and Artists’ Book Fair
Tim Mosely promotes the ABBE Conference @ QCA in July
Sue Poggioli at the Artists’ Book Fair
Amir and Noreen Grahame
Julie Barratt at the Artists’ Book Fair
Julie Barratt, Monica Oppen and Helen Cole Artists’ Book Fair
A section of the Artists’ Book Fair at the SLQ
Doug Spowart and Wim de Voss
Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper and their C.R.A.P. display
Clyde McGill and Anne Kirker
Helen Malone at the Artists’ Book Fair
Helen Cole, Michael Wardell and Clyde McGill at the Artists’ Book Fair
Sandra Pearce at the Artists’ Book Fair
Amir Brito Cadôr with Helen Malone
Amir Brito Cadôr with Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart
Adele Outteridge and Wim de Voss
Judy Bourke at the Artists’ Book Fair
Presented by SLQ with the generous support of the Siganto Foundation. All photos and text ©2015 Doug Spowart
REPORT on SIGANTO ARTISTS’ BOOK RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP @ SLQ
Doug Spowart at the SLQ with his Security pass
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A PHOTO OPPORTUNITY: Looking for photos in the Australian Library of Art
As the inaugural Siganto Artists’ Book Research Fellow I have had an opportunity to access the State Library of Queensland’s resources including the significant artists’ book collection held in the Australian Library of Art. During the Fellowship I have engaged in specific research related to my proposal and in doing so it has enabled the creation of a much-needed critique on photography and the artists’ book. It has enhanced my understanding of the photography and artists’ book creative products and has placed me in a position of knowledge of these disciplines, the nature of these creative works, their collection and description.
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In this research my particular interest is in the intersection of photography and the artists’ book. Over a four-month period from October to January in 2014-5 I worked in the Fellows Room and in the Repository at the SLQ. During this time I engaged in a variety of activities that related to my proposed research activities. These included:
- A review of artists’ books in the Australian Library of Art collection looking for the presence of photography
- Creating and using a spreadsheet in which the review was logged
- Documentation of books containing photography
- Selected books were considered for critical evaluation
Robert Capa’s ‘Slightly out of focus’
I was also interested in books that have emerged as being significant in the newly documented history of the photobook and also the ALA’s acquisition of contemporary photobooks. I found in the library’s general collection many key seminal photobooks like Robert Capa’s 1947 Slightly out of focus: [the story of a war photographer], Henri Cartier-Bresson’s 1952 The decisive moment, and Richard Avedon’s 1976 Portraits. While some of these books are difficult to find, expensive to buy, and have been re-released in modern printings the original book is an important touchstone for those interested in photographic history. The ALA collection also revealed surprises with my discovery of a Japanese ‘Provoke era’ book from the 1960s and Broomberg and Chanarin’s ‘The Holy Bible’ from 2013 – both books representative of key approaches to the photobook and the use of photographs in creative book publishing.
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Doug Spowart in the SLQ Repository
I attended the library usually 4-5 days per week. After an initial settling-in and establishment of my methodology for work I began near-daily research in the Repository. I usually worked on a 3-hour time limit per session during which I viewed and reviewed as many books as possible. My methodology involved direct contact with the book and an engagement with the physical and the metaphysical. I held each book, I turned each page, I read each word (where text existed), I made my assessment and logged the results of the appraisal on my spreadsheet and photographically documented the book. It was a slow and intense process that has resulted in a significant resource which has the possibility to reveal interesting facts about the photo in the artists’ book.
An integral aspect of the review process was the haptic experience of encountering the book, opening its enclosure, clamshell or paper wrap, and sensing the book’s activation by this act. I found that these books were entities to themselves, a containers for sharing the artists’ vision, idea or narrative. Some perhaps were being read for the first time in a while. And in the quietness of the Repository the books revealed themselves to me… At the end of each 3-hour session I was quite exhausted. Although the ALA staff were always interested to hear my report of the favourite ‘book of the day’.
What intrigued me was the diversity of the media and the message that artists place in the creative vessel of the artists’ book. I found myself seduced as much by books of abstract, textural or other non-photo print forms as I was with books with photographs in them.
Working through the library’s catalogue I often found myself looking up obscure books, different editions of books, photographers, topics and references allied to my research interests. I would request these items and they would be delivered to me. I would stack and categorise these books relating to different research interests. Subsequently, as my desk grew with more and more books, I requested a printout of my personal loans. The librarian assisting me looked surprised as the printer spat out around 50 items. One of my life follys is collecting books and there came a time when this personal library-in-the-library would need to be returned, as I was to exceed my loan limit.
Doug Spowart reading a book at the SLQ
During my Fellowship I was able to develop and complete a significant paper outlining a way of categorising the presence of the photograph in the creative book production genres of artists’ books and photobooks. Entitled, A Photo Spectrum: Book genres and photography, it encompasses the limited edition livre d’artiste through artists’ books, zines, self-published photobooks, designer photobooks and limited edition deluxe photobooks. This paper is presently being held by an American publisher to be included in a book on the contemporary photobook. I intend to discuss this outcome in the seminar. Another paper about contemporary photobooks written during the Fellowship entitled, Everyone a publisher, was published in the recent special issue on artists’ books in the State Library of Victoria’s La Trobe journal. I also coordinated and chaired a forum on The OTHER Photobook – Artists’ books and Zines at the Photobook Melbourne event in February, and in May I spoke on Encountering a photobook at the Talking Culture Symposium of the Auckland Photo Festival. The Siganto Fellowship assisted in providing me with time and a place where my activities could be dedicated in the pursuance of my research.
Doug speaking at the Auckland Festival of Photography
As a result of the Fellowship I am working on projects that include the presentation to the SLQ of a strategy for the continuing purchase and collection of contemporary photobooks in the ALA. Still in development is the preparation and design of a book of selected works from the ALA collection that were fundamental to my research thesis on the photo in the book.
At the Siganto Artists’ Book Seminar (Click here for the Blog post) I will present a paper outlining the curious and interesting aspects of my ALA review including amazing books that need to be seen, held, and pages turned so that they can share the maker’s communiqué, and stimulate the reader to encounter … the photo in the book.
Dr Doug Spowart
2014 Siganto Artists’ Book Research Fellow
WOTWEDID BLOG: 2014 in review – interesting facts + stats
The WordPress.com stats people prepared a 2014 annual report for our WOTWEDID blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
DOUG’S PHOTOBOOK @ Phoenix Art Museum Self-Published Show
In Focus – banner
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Doug’s Blurb book ‘Proposal for New Australian Landforms’ has been accepted in to the INFOCUS: Juried Exhibition of Self-Published Photobooks at the Phoenix Art Museum in the United States. The exhibition will be on show from August 23 to September 28, 2014 in the Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography. The information that follows in this post comes from the Phoenix Art Museum’s site. http://infocus-phxart.org/photobooks/
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About this Exhibition (From the Phoenix Art Gallery’s website)
Earlier this year INFOCUS, the Photography Support Organization of Phoenix Art Museum, called photographers to send examples of their self-published photobooks. The purpose of the exhibition is to explore the range of ways that artists are using newly available commercial technologies in order to express themselves. A jury, made up of seven industry professionals including, Founder, Indie Photobook Library – Larissa Leclair and authors of Publish Your Photography Book Mary Virginia Swanson and Darius Himes, reviewed 271 submissions from 15 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. The exhibition represents the 151 books they chose, as examples of the wide range of photobooks being produced today.
We asked for books of any subject including retrospective, project-based, souvenir albums, fictional narrative, exhibition catalogues, poetic, biographical, or children’s books, and welcomed collaborative or collective books in addition to those by a single author. We found that in a well-crafted book, the artist considers every element of the book’s design, and uses each to enhance the finished product. Among the selections are noteworthy selection of paper weight and surface; cover material; printing method and reproduction quality; font style, color and size; text placement and justification (centered, aligned to the right or left); endpaper and title page design; binding (spiral bound, hard bound, paperback); size and placement of the images; sequence of the images; and inclusion (or exclusion) of and placement of the caption information.
INFOCUS – Photobook display (from the INFOCUS page)
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Read a few words from the curator, Rebecca Senf
From the earliest years of the medium’s history, photographers have embraced the book form as a way to present, organize and disseminate their work.
Books allow photographers to expand their reach to a much larger audience and to control the presentation of their work. Publishing a body of work also increases prestige and permanence; by creating books, artists know that their printed volume, in libraries and private collections, will long outlive them. Within the art field, there exists a reverence for books, a reverence that acknowledges the care and attention that went in to producing them.
Publishing photographic books has rapidly changed over the last twenty years, with the impact of technology on book publishing and photography. Costs of paper, printing and binding have increased and profit margins for traditional publishers are narrowing, creating a risk-averse climate in which unknown artists have difficulty getting books published by existing presses. The bookstores where we once browsed and purchased books are being replaced by online retailers, which in turn, changes our patterns of buying and the way products are marketed. Furthermore, many types of reading (including news, correspondence, and recreational fiction) have moved away from sheets of paper and bound books to digital displays of various kinds.
Despite these massive shifts in how they are made, the desire to produce photographic books is only increasing. Young photographers want their artwork to be presented as a book, and photographic books continue to be produced, discussed, admired, coveted, collected, and sold.
“The Process and the Page: Developing Photographic Books,” on view at Phoenix Art Museum from March 29 to August 17, 2014, presented book-making materials from the archival collections of the Center for Creative Photography, to show how photographers have participated in the creation of their photographic books over the course of the last 100 years. Now, with the INFOCUS Juried Exhibition of Self-Published Photobooks, we can shed light on an important new phase in the story of photographic books – the ability of photographers world-wide to produce high-quality books of their work through self-publishing.
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The Jury
The photobooks in this exhibition were selected by:
Abigail Nersesian – Librarian, Phoenix Art Museum
Jennifer Barnella – Retail Sales Manager, Phoenix Art Museum
Joshua Chuang – Chief Curator, Center for Creative Photography
Becky Senf – Norton Family Curator, Center for Creative Photography
and Phoenix Art Museum
Mary Virginia Swanson – Co-author, Publish Your Photography Book
Darius Himes – Co-author, Publish Your Photography Book
Larissa Leclair – Founder, Indie Photobook Library
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Doug’s Book
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My book deals with the political scene and is a parody of the potential for government agencies and politicians to do absurd things for, as they call it, ‘the good of the people’.
SEE THE BLURB PREVIEW HERE: Doug’s Book.
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CLICK the link below for a list of the accepted entries and links to the books
INFOCUS Photobook Exhibition list
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COOPER+SPOWART EXHIBITION: Speaking About Place
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Speaking About Place gallery layout
Speaking About Place: the Nocturne Project
Victoria Cooper & Doug Spowart
Cam Robertson Gallery, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, 19 July – 17 August 2014
Our arts practice is informed by our ongoing and evolving connection with Place. Our Place-Projects are influenced by the context and the consequences of living within a constantly changing landscape. We work with a range of photographic concepts and techniques, from the camera obscura, through analogue processes to the digital forms of the medium. Our work is presented as visual narratives in artists’ books, photobooks, exhibition images and, more recently, blogs and social media.
Through our Nocturne documentary photography and Facebook social media projects, we have explored connections with Place in urban and regional communities throughout Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. For us the phenomenon of nocturnal light transforms these everyday spaces. Buildings, busy street corners, quiet alleyways all become filled with the dramatic light of a movie scene. In 2013 and 2014 we were given the opportunity, through funded Artists-in-Residence (AIR) programmes, to undertake Nocturne projects in the regional communities of Muswellbrook, Grafton and Bundaberg.
In this exhibition we present a selection of images from three years of our Nocturne Projects. The work shown here adds to the recent Childers Art Gallery exhibition of this project, by the inclusion of social media elements. Therefore in this gallery we invite viewers to connect with the work in a forum outside the virtual space of Facebook. To enable this connection to take place we have created folios that contain transcripts of Facebook/Place/Storytelling from each of the three AIRs.
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About the photographs
We photograph in the early evening nocturnal light, a time of day where the afterglow of sunset and the glow of streetlights transform the everyday experience of place for the viewer. Images created at this time require long camera exposures and therefore produce photographs that can capture blurred movement of people and vehicles. Another important aspect of the Nocturne aesthetic is the effect of colour and the juxtaposition of coloured lights in the different situations of ambient daylight, artificial lighting, car head and taillights.
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Exhibition viewers reading Facebook responses
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More than photographs
The photographs in themselves have no intrinsic meaning – it is the viewer, with their experience and memory that brings life to the image. In this moment of connection they may recount a personal narrative or connect with the historical significance of the place. This collaboration between photograph and viewer is exciting and vibrant – expanding the potential for the documentary image to go beyond the vision of the photographer.
As the Nocturne project has evolved, we have discovered the importance of sharing place stories through images, words, in person and online. Through Speaking about Place we have extended the potential for this project to share the transformative nature of lived experience and everyday life in each community.
The Western Downs town of Miles is scheduled for a social media Nocturne project later this year.
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CLICK HERE To download a PDF of some of the Facebook narratives Catalogue-Comments-interact-FP3
Community comments about the photographs on Facebook
The online Nocturne Projects can be accessed at http://nocturnelink.com
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Link to The Toowoomba Chronicle online news story:
http://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/showing-cities-in-a-new-light/2323064/
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A selection of images from the opening and associated events
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Toowoomba Chronicle photographer Kevin Farmer gets a Nocturne reverse-photo with us – From The Chronicle Instagram feed
Exhibition invitation featuring the Toowoomba Town Hall Xmas 2012
The opening of ‘Speaking About Place by Ashleigh Campbell
Some attendees at the opening
Maureen Trainor and Kevin Scattergood visit the show
Jess Martin’s Nocturne Cup Cakes…
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Visit http://nocturnelink.com to connect with our Nocturne Projects
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Installation photos and documentation of the artworks and text ©Doug Spowart
Instagram photo and news story © The Toowoomba Chronicle and Kevin Farmer
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My photographs and words are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/
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MEMORY COLLECTIVE: Super Moon + Phoenix
Eighteen months ago Toowoomba artist Damien Kamholtz began a project that was to bring together a team of local artists to participate in a conceptual artwork that would have many states and private and public iterations. The first public presentation of the The Memory Collective was at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery in August/September 2013.
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Two weeks ago a key element of The Memory Collective project was altered yet again into a new state. This took place near Cabarlah at a symbolic time for Kamholtz, the recent super moon…
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Here is part of the document made on that July evening.
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Damien Kamholtz before the burning Photo: Cooper+Spowart
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The super-moon rising and the embers of the phoenix rising
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Aftermath of the fire
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Aftermath: ashes of the painting the next morning. Photo: Damien Kamholtz
…. this is not an ending for the Memory Collective…
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THE BACKSTORY OF THE MEMORY COLLECTION
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An exhibition of the collaborative artwork as a singlarity
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Memory Collective image from the exhibition @ Toowoomba Regional
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A painting and a performance
The Memory Collective painting by Damien Kamholtz
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The Memory Collective is a multi-disciplinary collaboration orchestrated by artist Damien Kamholtz. Kamholtz states: The Memory Collective Project is a creative collaboration between 12 artists across eight artistic disciplines exploring concepts and themes relating to the human condition such as change, constants, history, refection and memory. The artworks created during the project will make up an exhibition to be held at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery in September 2013.
There are different stages to the project. First Kamholtz created a large 2.2 metre square painting, while sculptor, Jessie Wright constructed the large vessel to hold the water. Kamholtz’s painting is embedded with personal meaning in the form of fragments of his past art, the ashes of diaries. In the presence of this artwork we are drawn into a poetic landscape where faces emerge; symbols and totems slip from passive dark spaces and come into conscious awareness.
The second stage of the work was the performance in the form of 9 responses to the painting by Kristy Lee. The painting and the pool created the reflective and reflexive performative space and the transformative process of the original painting then began. Integral to the space were David Usher’s delicate pots; these vessels contained the pallet of shades that then shrouded and clouded the memory of the work. Over the course of the day the painting’s physical form was transformed into something different loosing its current visual form as only a memory.
Our part of the collaboration was to witness, respond and record the transformation of the work over the day. The next stage of the Memory Collective’s work will continue over the next month our component will be to create 9 large collaged photograph memory states of the work for the show in September. Works by others include; a video art piece, a documentary video, a soundscape, interviews, prose and poems. It is a significant project and is being funded by the RADF and supported through the exhibition at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.
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A fragment of photographic memories made by us for the MEMORY COLLECTIVE…
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Damien Kamholtz in the performance space with the painting and pool
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A performance
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Kirsty Lee and painting – in the early state…
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Kirsty Lee performs before the painting
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State 3 Kirsty applies paint to the paining…
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Hand paint
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Kirsty Lee and her interaction with the painting … around Stage 6
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Blue hand…
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Kirsty Lee in a frenetic stage…
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Kirsty Lee and brushes before the pool
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Paint fluid in the pool…
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Towards the final state…
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The final state …
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Additional material
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Damien discussing movement with Kirsty
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Kirsty Lee towards the end of the performance
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Another creative work from the performance by Jason Nash…
Jason Nash – Time lapse video
CLICK HERE to see Jason Nash’s ‘Memory Collective’ time-lapse video
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The Team: Front Ashleigh Campbell, Julio Dunlop, Kirsty Lee, Victoria Cooper, Doug Spowart
Back: David Usher, Jason Nash, Jesse Wright, Damien Kamholtz, Zac Rowling ( weakling).
Not present: Craig Allen & Jake Hickey
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Toowoomba Chronicle 17 June, 2013 by Kate Dodd PHOTO: Dave Noonan
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© 2013+2014 Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart for The Memory Collective
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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DOUG is 2014 Siganto Foundation Artists’ Book Research Fellow
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Doug Spowart @ the State Library of Queensland
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About the 2014 Siganto Foundation Artists’ Book Research Fellowship from the application details:
The Siganto Foundation Artists’ Books Research Fellowship, proudly supported by the Siganto Foundation, is to be used by an individual to undertake original research on one aspect of artists’ book practice, theory or history, making use of the resources contained within the collections of the State Library of Queensland’s Australian Library of Art. Subject to this general consideration, State Library allows the Fellow to determine expenditure of the funds and may require the Fellow to account for the funds awarded.
About the research that I intend to undertake:
Today photographic expression is evolving to pervade all kinds of books by artists, artists–photographers, photographers and photographer-artists. Collections such as the Australian Library of Art at the State Library of Queensland become repositories for selected or exemplar works. In the Research Fellowship I intend to review the field of creative book production that utilises the photograph and consider what has been created to date and in the SLQ collection, as well as identify emergent trends.
As a significant repository of artists’ books, the State Library of Queensland’s Australian Library of Art is a pre-eminent location to carry out the proposed research. Additionally access to books contained in the State Library of Queensland’s general library collection and Zine collections will considerably add to the research.
Importantly the collection contains artists’ books created over a great number of years by a range of practitioners representing a broad range of practice. These books may encompass the full gamut of photograph usage in the book including approaches to the narrative carried by the book, the physical form of the book and the integration of the photograph into design, typographic and textural components.
This proposed research will define a process by which the uses of photography in the creative productions of artists’ books and photobooks can be defined and compared. In my recently completed PhD research on the topic of the artists’ book and the photobook, I identified the need for scholarly research on this evolving phenomenon.
My aims in this research are to create an approach to the development of a flexible and dynamic nomenclature for the photo and the book. This preliminary strategy will provide a way in which books from a variety of makers, media, structures and motivations can be compared. Ultimately this research will produce outcomes that approach a broader and topical view of artists’ books and photobooks to stimulate dialogue and debate.
The Fellowship will include blog posts on the SLQ site and an illustrated presentation at the 2015 Siganto Artists’ Books Seminar.
I am looking forward to the opportunity to research my favourite topic – books!
The Siganto Foundation Artists’ Books Creative Fellowship has been awarded to Jan Davis. Her project One thing becoming another: labour-infused artist’s books which investigate lives of toil in nineteenth and early twentieth century rural Queensland.
For more details see http://blogs.slq.qld.gov.au/ala/2014/07/18/2014-siganto-foundation-fellowships/
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The State Library of Queensland Photo: ©2011 Doug Spowart
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