the perfect photobook

 film by Robert Beavers

the dutch touch

Official Website: Judith van IJken

inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow

Anne Geene’s Perceel nr. 235 – Encyclopedie van een Volkstuin (Parcel nr. 235 - Encyclopaedia of an allotment) is one of the most interesting and charming photobooks published last year, and one of my favourite photobooks of 2010. The book contains an extensive photographic forensic study of a 245 square meter garden in the Eigen Hof garden allotment in Rotterdam, one of the most urbanized areas in the Netherlands. Garden allotments, which exist mostly in urban areas, are plots of land made available for individual amateur gardening. Geene rented such a space and used the garden’s small shed to create a photographic laboratory where she developed the photographic material, including salt prints and microphotography, that allowed her to construct the visual record included in this poetic taxonomic study.

Perceel nr. 235 is divided into three sections. In the first part, Geographic Demarcation, using Google maps aerial images and a series of photo-collages, Geene delineates the physical contours of the garden and presents the small shed-laboratory from several vantage points. The Observations part is the largest of the three sections, and undoubtedly the fulcrum of this extensive study. In this section Perceel nr. 235 is carefully dissected and indexed. Images of leaves, insects, snails, rain drops, bacteria, dew and visiting dogs, are part of a quasi-scientific approach that attempts to catalogue the life contained in this small patch of nature. In the final part of this same chapter the study takes on an artistic tone when Geene starts to group the species according to shapes, colours, patterns, tracks, and behaviour. The third and final section deals humorously with several types of Measurements. Geene measured the sun light through the making of salt prints of several types of leaves, calculated the speed of a swimming duck, tried to sort various types of frog camouflages, and indexed the numerous silhouettes of doves she photographed in the sky above Perceel nr. 235.

Already in its second printing, this work has obviously been quite successful in the Dutch photobook market. Despite the linguistic barrier of the book – the texts are in Dutch – the visual narrative assembled by Anne Geene is sufficient to draw the non-Dutch observer into this playful and lyrical study of nature in the urban environment. One of 2010 must have photobooks.

Official Website: Anne Geene

broadway by light

Title: Broadway by Light | Dir: William Klein | 12 min | Color | USA | 1958

by the numbers

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s two-volume history of the photobook, published in 2004 and 2006, is indelibly associated with the current prominence of this form of photographic dissemination. Most importantly, the contemporary perception of the photobook is deeply rooted in the list of books selected for inclusion in this particular survey.

The two charts below, dealing with the geographical spaces depicted in the photographic books included in the The Photobook: A History Vol. I and II and their respective places of publication, are a somewhat superficial breakdown of the profusion of information contained in that same study. It would be necessary to spend a great deal of time researching each of the 477 photobooks included in the survey to accomplish an exhaustive analysis of the geographical particularities represented in this historiography. However, a superficial examination of the data can be quite revealing.

Chart I

When looking at Chart I, concerning the publication place of the photobooks included in The Photobook: a History Vol. I and II, it becomes obvious that the majority of the canonical works were published in 5 countries, to be exact, USA, UK, Germany, France and Japan, hereinafter called P5. The total sum of the photobooks published in these 5 countries corresponds to over 60% of the historical canon constructed by Parr and Badger.

This hegemony is undoubtedly related with the recognition, support and development of photography in these nations. The P5 group comprises the two countries were the medium originated from plus two nations were photography has been fervently researched and developed since the 19th century. Japan is the odd one out, since all the Japanese photobooks included in the survey were published after the 1950s, an outpour explained by the massive production of photobooks after the Second World War, when Japan became “the world leader in camera technology and sales, snuffing out most German and US makers.” [1] Since the publication of Parr and Badger’s list of Japanese photobooks Aperture has published Ryuichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian’s micro-history Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s, a study that expands the [necessarily] narrower list included in The Photobook: A History Vol. I.

The publication place chart contains a second group of countries that have more than 10 photobooks in the list – Netherlands, USSR, Switzerland, Italy, Mexico and Czech Republic. The top spot belongs to the Netherlands with 24 photobooks. Such a large number of works might be surprising to some, however, if one is familiar with the history of photobook production and photographic practice in the country for the past 70 years it comes to no surprise that the Dutch are so heavily represented in the historical canon of the photobook.

Chart II

Chart II presents the geographies depicted in the photographic books selected for inclusion in The Photobook: A History Vol. I and II. This time the list of countries is larger, and it includes an extra category – Other – that accommodates the books depicting more than one country and non-geographical themes, the latter usually associated with conceptual or abstract photography.

Once again, the P5 group takes the lead. Nonetheless the hegemony is broken by the category Other, which ranks second place on the list, only to be surpassed by the photobooks dealing with the USA territory. There is one significant anomaly, for lack of a better term. Iceland is represented by ten photobooks resulting from Roni Horn’s intense artistic work in the region published in her on-going series of photobooks To place. Interestingly, none of the volumes was released by an Icelandic publisher.

Roni Horn: Ísland: To Place 1 to 9

Several regions are only depicted via the documentation, usually carried out by an outsider, of political and social conflicts. Afghanistan, Macedonia, Iraq, Kuwait, Nicaragua and Vietnam are among those countries. Some territories no longer exist. The USSR was divided into a myriad of countries and Ceylon became Sri Lanka. To counteract this fact Parr and Badger’s canon includes one book about the youngest country in the world, East Timor, portrayed tangentially in Matthew Sleeth’s Tour of Duty.

There is one country that stands out by and large in these two lists. The USA is the nation with the most photobooks dealing with its own geography and people, as well as the country with the largest amount of photographic books released by national publishers. The second country to achieve such a feat is Japan, which despite having a smaller number of photobooks in the survey when compared to the UK, Germany or France, presents an almost symmetrical amount of photobooks published nationally that deal with the geographical and social universe of the Japanese islands.

These are just a few of the many considerations one could arrive at when analyzing the data in these two charts. The predominance of the P5 countries must not be understood as a castrating force that stopped others from producing equally worthy work. My intent is merely to show that the construction of this particular photobook canon reveals the dominance of the countries where photography under its various forms has been nurtured and developed extensively.

The future of the photobook will certainly continue to be associated with the P5 countries, where the promotion and discussion surrounding the photographic book is stronger than ever. Nonetheless, the recent developments in photography and photobook publishing, mostly related with the dominance of digital photography and the Internet as a place of commerce and production of this form of photographic dissemination, might produce some interesting changes in the geographical map of the 21st century photobook historiography.

Only the future will tell…that, or Parr and Badger’s third volume of The Photobook: A History.

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[1] http://www.photojpn.org/HIST/hist1.html

navel and a-bomb

Title: Navel and A-Bomb (Heso to genbaku)  | Dir: Eikoh Hosoe | 14:20 min | B&W | Japan | 1960

empty land, promised land, forbidden land

My copy of Empty Land, Promised Land, Forbidden Land, Rob Hornstra and Arnold Van Bruggen’s most recent photobook, arrived to my house in the same week that Dimitri Medvedev, the current President of the Russia Federation, attended the Lisbon NATO summit. The political agreement that resulted from this encounter involves the partaking of Russia in a common missile defense system, and foremost it bridges the chasm between these two parties caused by the 2008 South Ossetia war. This agreement may also be interpreted, somewhat naively, as a step towards a greater stability in the Caucasus. However, Russia’s role in the region is still preponderant, as Hornstra and Bruggen demonstrate throughout this photobook, a fact closely linked to part of the ethnic, political, religious and migratory tension that still exists in the region. It is precisely the complexity of all these elements that Hornstra and Bruggen attempt to unravel through their work.

Empty Land, Promised Land, Forbidden Land is part of a long-term documentary project (2009/2014) dealing with the region surrounding the Russian city of Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. At first glance, there seems to be no plausible reason to take such a long time documenting a place that will host an Olympic event, however Sochi is located in a particularly problematic area, it is surrounded by six autonomous Republics of the Northern Caucasus, each dealing with cyclical bouts of internal political and social instability.

The aim of The Sochi Project is to release a photobook, together with other ephemera and photographic literature, every year. In 2009, Sanatorium, a visual essay about the Sanatoriums in Sochi’s coastline, became the first publication associated with the project, winning the Best Photobook award at the New York Photo Festival 2010. This year’s photobook explores Abkhazia, a de facto country formerly part of Georgia.

Empty Land, Promised Land, Forbidden Land comprises several journalistic essays and photographic sequences that cover the recent history of Abkhazia and its inhabitants, dealing with the migratory flux of ethnic Georgians that fled Abkhazia during the war with Georgia in the early 1990s, the population that remained in the country, and the Abkhazian Diaspora in Turkey.

The wealth of material in Empty Land, Promised Land, Forbidden Land is impressive, and it would be impossible to describe in detail all the stories and images included in this beautiful photobook designed by Kummer and Herrman. After reading Bruggen’s texts and looking at Hornstra’s beautiful images one can grasp part of the dimension of their adventures and encounters and the current mind-set of the people living in this part of the Caucausus.

The Sochi Project is a splendid example of slow journalism, a genre virtually extinct in contemporary written press. The diminished presence of this type of work has been extensively discussed in the past years, especially the financial difficulties associated with long-term documentary projects. The Sochi Project, an independent journalistic endeavour, is no different, and it needs your contribution. All the details about the project and how to contribute can be found here.

how to make a book with steidl

how to make a book with steidl

the infatuated book

Een liefdes geschiedenis in Saint Germain des Prés
- Ed van der Elsken (1956)

Despite the growing importance of the photographic book, a sign that the historical effort carried out in the past ten years has been fruitful, there is still plenty of historical material within the photobook canon that merits further investigation.

Markus Schaden presented recently at Photokina, a photography and imaging fair in Germany, an exhibition that did precisely that. The project consisted in deconstructing Ed van der Elsken’s photobook Een Liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint Germain des Prés unraveling many of the biographical aspects surrounding this classic of photographic literature. The project was developed by a group of students that attended the photobook workshop taught by Schaden at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne.

Photokina posted a video on Youtube where Mr. Photobook (a.k.a. Markus Schaden) talks about the project, but unfortunately it’s only available in German.

I consider this type of work as part of a natural evolution of photobook studies, which after a very solid construction of a general history that began with Andrew Roth in 2001 and reached its peak with Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s two volumes about the history of the photobook published in 2004 and 2006, is since then progressing into a more specific historical analysis, be it through studies of particular photobooks or via surveys dedicated to micro-subjects. Next year Errata Editions is going to publish another set of their fantastic Books on Books project, and historical surveys about Paris and the Photobook, German Photobooks, Latin American Photobooks, and Chinese Photobooks are also on their way.

The successful exhibition about Robert Frank’s The Americans that took place in 2009, or the current Smithsonian American Art Museum show about John Gossage’s photobook The Pond, demonstrates that major art institutions are willing to explore, even if slowly, this presentational form to its full extent.

This type of research is expanding the general studies carried out since 2001, restoring the individuality attached to some of the photobooks that were included in the canon, and exploring the full extent of the collaborative network necessary to construct photobooks, something that the general history of this presentational form was only able to do marginally, mostly due to the constrictions generally associated with the construction of a general historical overview.

The Photokina exhibition layout is very interesting. Elsken’s photonovel was dismantled* and placed in a wall according to the sequence established in the book. The students were then able to insert their notes, extra images depicting the people involved directly or indirectly with the book, sections of the dummy, and other photographic material van der Elsken made during that same period. This method seems to be a fantastic way to teach  students about the making process of a photobook and certainly provides an accurate idea of the time and effort that is invested in creating a masterpiece.

Learning from the past does certainly create a better future.

*Photobook lovers must not worry. According to Markus Schaden no original copies of this photobook were harmed during the making of the project.

photobook bibliophilism

I wish to have one copy of every book in the world.
- Sir Thomas Phillips
(1792-1872)

Are you a photobook addict?

Are you struggling with a photobook bibliophilism problem that has spiraled out of control? Or perhaps you are worried about a friend or family member’s photobook bibliophilism. In either case, you are not alone. Currently, this is a problem that many people face and things will not get better. There is no hope — no matter how hard you try to stop. Learning about the nature of the addiction — how it develops, what it looks like, and why it has such a powerful hold—will not help you to stop, in reality it will only make things worst.

You may have a photobook bibliophilism problem if you:

• Feel the need to be secretive about the amount of photobooks you buy on a monthly basis.

• Have trouble controlling your photobook buying. Once you start buying, can you walk away? Or are you compelled to buy until you have exhausted your credit card?

• Have subscribed to more than ten photobook or photobook related RSS feeds.

• Count the days until the postman/carrier is going to bring that photobook you just bought online. Delays in the delivery may cause moodiness, agitation, poor judgement and short temper.

• Visit bookstores over and over again, even when you know they don’t have new stock.

• Refuse to buy a particular photobook you really want to have just because it’s a second printing and you missed the opportunity to buy the first one. This is full-blown photobook bibliophilism. There’s no turning back after you reached this point.

How addiction develops

The path to photobook bibliophilism starts with experimentation. You or your loved one may have tried photobooks out of curiosity, because friends were doing it in a library or bookstore, or in an effort to erase another problem, perhaps the lack of money to buy actual photographic prints! At first, photobooks seem to solve the problem or make life better, so you buy them more and more. But as the addiction progresses, buying and enjoying the artifact becomes more and more important and your ability to stop this behavior is compromised. What begins as a voluntary choice turns into a physical and psychological need. Unfortunately photobook bibliophilism is not treatable. You may think you can stop, but this ailment is not treatable. You must be ready to admit you have a problem and accept it.

Solutions

None. Just embrace your love for the photobook.