Posts Tagged ‘Blurb’
PUMPING-UP the VOLUME on PHOTOBOOKS
Screen dump on Volume site
.
I attended Volume: Another Art Book Fair in Sydney on the weekend of September 11+13, 2015. The event was a collaboration between Artspace, Perimeter Books and the American artists’ book not-for-profit book shop Printed Matter. Packed into the Artspace building in Woolloomooloo were around 100 ‘Art Book’ makers, publishers and sellers all vying for the attention of potential purchasers. The table holders had spread before them all things book – let’s not try and get into discussions around what an ‘art book’ is, but rather celebrate the range of published products from thin stapled zines and comics, to self-pub photobooks, artists’ books and gallery catalogues, and further to trade-styled ‘fine art’ books and livre d’artiste productions.
.
Some of the Volume Art Book Fair table participants included:
.
Shannon Michael Cane from Printed Matter
Cameron Cope
The Perimeter Books table
Bloom Publishing Lloyd Stubbers + Jay Dymock
Bloom Publishing: Lloyd Stubbers + Jay Dymock
Richard Tipping and Max Ernst (David Dellafiora)
Thorny Devil Press: Richard Tipping
George Voulgaropoulos
Pneuma Publishing: George Voulgaropoulos
Deanna Hitti
Libby Jefferies MomentoPro after a long day on Sunday
Anita Totha Remote Photobooks NZ
Kate Golding
John Ogden Cyclops Press
Helen Frajman – m.33
.
Selling books to interested collectors and lovers of books is one thing but as is the case with the emergent trend in self-pub everyone wants to have their own book. To cater to this growing group of keen makers the program included many free forums, workshops and lectures by a variety of key makers and commentators on various aspects of the disciplines of writing and self-publishing (self-pub).
Why Publish panel
As my interest is in topics related to photobooks I attended two sessions: Why Publish and Designing Photobooks. The why-pub panel consisted of Helen Frajman (m.33), Daniel Boetker-Smith (Asia-Pacific Photobook Library), Brad Haylock, Jack Harries and Geordie Cargill and Shannon Michael Cane from Printed Matter. Attendees, of which there were around 30, heard discussions relating to the usual issues of publishing, getting a designer, edition numbers, marketing, selling and getting your work into the right hands including the international market. Brad Haylock suggested the key themes for photobooks were:
- Technologies and organizational forms
- Social relations
- Institutional and administrative arrangements
- Production and labor processes
- Relations to nature
- The reproduction of daily life and the species
- Mental conceptions of the world
Ultimately the overall message seemed to be ‘Give it a go’!
The Designing for Photo Books panel
Associate Professor Christopher Stewart from University of Technology Sydney chaired the Designing for Photobook panel. Each speaker showed examples of their work and discussed design concerns associated with their books. Heidi Romano from Unlessyouwill spoke of her history in design, her passion for the photobook and her experience of the international world of book design. She cited her interest in advancing Australian photobook design as being a driver for her establishment of Photobook Melbourne. Esther Teichmann, and artist from the UK discussed her exhibition work and the challenge of bringing wall-work into the space of the book as well as her experiences, not always pleasant ones, with book designers. Tom Evangeledis, Black Eye Gallery described his interest in encouraging exhibitors at his gallery to consider a book to support the exhibition but also to enhance the opportunity for the artist’s work to be extended beyond the exhibition dates. Chloe Ferres, probably kept the most on track with the topic of book design by presenting a range of works that in some ways subvert the idea of the book being a vessel to hold photographs that express a narrative – she considers the book structure as also important to the narrative and uses a range of design interventions to disrupt the preciousness that many photographers seem to consider important when they make books.
Christopher Stewart posed questions to the panelists to draw out aspects of the topic but when asked if there were questions from the floor Daniel Boetker-Smith asked about how we can make photobooks that are more about the ‘fetish’ of the book – ‘some books all look the same – I’m interested in all kinds of books. A young photographer in Myanmar stapling a bunch of photographs together to make a book is just as important to me as some “coffee table tome”!’ An attendee agreed and responded that books often look the same as they as designed from a dummy where all decisions about the book are considered at the beginning and immutable – whereas another less formal method is the development of a book in a process where opportunities for review and discovery are made along the way allowing the book to be like a collaborator with the artist…
Bella Capezio making Insta Photobooks for APPA
Make your own Photobook with Garry Trinh
While some attendees attended these lecture sessions others were busy making books. The print-on-demand company BLURB offered bookmaking workshops over the weekend led by photobook self-publisher Garry Trinh. Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive presented a selection of their books at the event and founder Daniel Boetker-Smith and Bella Capezio led photobook-making sessions as well.
Victoria Cooper and Ruyin Yang
The biggest book-making venture over the weekend was a special project coordinated by Onestar Press who, with Artspace and other supporters including Surry Hills Print & Design Konica-Minolta, design students from University of New South Wales – Art &Design. The project, entitled ‘Book Machine’, brought together a designer with a ‘content provider’ (artist or photographer), and over the course of 3.5 hours the two work together to design a book. Overnight the book was printed and made available to its collaborative participants.
Alexie Glass-Kantor – introduces the Book Machine commentators
Late on Sunday afternoon the Artspace coordinators drew together a distinguished panel of erudite book critics and commentators including Brianna Munting – NAVA, Simon Barney Artist, Alexie Glass-Kantor – Executive Director Artspace, Maddalena Quarta – One Star Press, Bella Capezio – Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive, Philip Keir – publisher and artists’ book collector and Nicholas Tsoutas – Curator and Art management executive. A crowd gathered to hear this discussion and celebrate this unusual project.
Book Machine
Towards the end of the day on Sunday I rushed around to catch up with people that I still hadn’t spoken with and books not yet seen. I felt something of the heightened energy levels with which these table holders had been operating in the preceding days. Did they sell enough books…? Did they make contacts with people who will do future business with them or provide content for future books…? Did they get a chance to check out what everyone else was doing…? Did they get to do a Book Machine project…? Buy a pie at Harry’s Cafe de Wheels or take-in the harbor, the Finger Wharf and the view of naval ships at Garden Island.
Harry’s Cafe de Wheels
Volume: Another Art Book Fair was a major undertaking for the visionaries who conceived it and then brought it into fruition. There were so many activities, add-on events, presentations and booksellers and books available for artbookophiles in which to luxuriate. There was a real sense of community created in this art book fair that can only advance the disciplines associated with it. One thing is for certain, at least for me, is that I know I have just attended one of the most significant art book fairs to be held in this country to date. When, and where the next one will be is something we’ll await with much anticipation…
Doug Spowart
14 September 2015
DOUG’S PHOTOBOOK @ Phoenix Art Museum Self-Published Show
In Focus – banner
.
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/
.
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)
.
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.
.
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
.
..
Doug’s Book
.
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.
.
CLICK the link below for a list of the accepted entries and links to the books
INFOCUS Photobook Exhibition list
..
.
.
ONE FOR THE BOOK – THE 2013 BLURB BIFB BOOK AWARD
.
BIFB visitors checking out the book award entries
.
Doug’s book – front right
ONE FOR THE BOOKS
A display of some of the best self-published photobooks in the country are being exhibited at the 2013 Ballarat International Foto Biennale.
A PRIZE FOR SELF PUBLISHED PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS proudly sponsored by Blurb
The Ballarat International Foto Biennale with major sponsor Blurb, present ‘One for the Books’ an exciting new prize celebrating the book as an innovative and contemporary format for presenting photography in a creative and narrative form. This prize is specifically for self publish, print on demand books. Books previously published by a traditional publishing house are not eligible for entry.
WHO COULD ENTER
The 2013 ‘One for the Books’ Prize will accept submissions for two categories; Professional and Amateur. Winners will be announced at on Monday 19th August 2013 at the Post Office Gallery, Ballarat. Entrants must be Australian residents. Around 100 books were submitted for the judging and 20 finalists were selected.
THE FINALISTS WERE …
The finalists [professional category]
Rhiannon HOPLEY NSW
Charles KLEIN SA
Darren MARTIN NSW
Garry MOORE VIC
Gary SHEPPARD NSW
Doug SPOWART QLD
Andrew STY AN NSW
Peter WHYTE TAS
The finalists [amateur category]
John Paul AZIZ & Shaun DUNCAN VIC
Michael DAVISON VIC
Lidia D’OPERA WA
Grant HUNT QLD
Paul JURAK ACT
Erin STONESTREET ACT
Scott VINEY QLD
.
AND THE WINNERS WERE …
At a special event on Monday August 19th the announcement of the winners of the inauguaral One for the books prize was announced.
.
Charles Klein’s Awarded Book – Professional Category
Dadslides is a book dealing with a personal sense of nostalgia in the discovery of one’s own family photographs after the passing of a loved one. Klein’s book consisted of his father’s slides made between 1950 and 1981. The photos were scanned and sequenced within the book to create a document of a family growing up, going on holidays, messing around in the back yard and the other things that symbolise Australian life in this era. Strangely, whilst the book is about Charles Klein’s family, it strikes a resonance with us all and therein lies the beauty and the power of its narrative.
SEE THE BLURB REVIEW HERE: Charles Klein’s Awarded book
.
Erin Stonestreet’s Awarded Book – Amateur Category
Air & Earth: The view from 30,000 ft is a book that deals with the aerial view of the earth. The rich colours and image juxtaposition create for the viewer an abstract view – all scale is abandoned and the images take on a sense of the magical, and perhaps even for some, a spiritual meaning.
SEE THE BLURB REVIEW HERE: Erin Stonestreet’s book
.
I was excited to be a finalist in the award – Here is my book…
..
Doug’s Finalists Book
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.
.
PLEASE ENJOY – And do get to Ballarat to see these amazing books in person …
And join in on the photobook print-on-demand revolution.
.
.
wotwedid 