Recently in books Category

It seems I'm not the only person concerned about what will happen to photo-book publishing in the future? The good folks over at, Resolve, LIVE BOOKS BLOG, have started an online collaboration that looks at the future of the photobook.

Pop in add your 2¢

From where I sit, there will be online publications such as cod magazine, who most likely will exist as pure online entities. Publicationss like, RMIT's second nature, will offer both online and hardcopy, as I will with several of my own future projects, I already have two e-books available for download.

Revisiting a favourite bookshop, in Daylesford, I recently returned with several gems of books. Jo Spence's Autobiographical treatise on herself and her photography [Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography], and 1999 exhibition catalogue of William Wegman's work.

While I have yet to pick up the Jo Spence book, my last reading would have been whilst at University, I did have a read of the Wegman catalogue. I was very surprised to read that he began his creative career as a painter sculptor and conceptual/experimental artist. Wegman picked up photography out of convenience, to document his art work, while also experimenting with video. His art works, in the early days were fleeting and ephemeral, thus photography proved the work existed.

Slowly his attention shifted to the way images could be made that questioned the nature of the document created, till eventually all his work became photographic while still proudly displaying his surreal and conceptual roots. The work featured in the catalogue is at times funny, and others deadly serious. His dogs feature only briefly towards the end of the catalogue. The time this work was being made? In the 1970's.

It's fortuitous or perhaps, disastrous that the 2 books surfaced AFTER I submitted some work for publication in 2nd Nature, published by RMIT. As being able to refer back to these early pioneers of 'documentary photography' would have helped bolster my argument about the my use of photography, with my mobile phone, in this day and age of wireless networks and mobile computing.

Blurb now allows you to upload a pdf for publication. Using their own templates is part of the process, but I always found their software slow and clunky on my computer.

And it is rumoured that the colour quality is better from them compared to lulu.com, too.

So look out.

I am very pleased to announce that altfotonet.org now has an ISSN,[ International Standard Serial Number]. This means that the National Library of Australia recognises it as a serial publication, and may at some point in the future add it to it's archive, Pandora's box.

Here goes my credit card again! Frank's book still to this day has some impact on my approach and work, even more so in my digital work, on flickr, and on my mophone blog.

[From Review: Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans by Sarah Greenough et al. (Conscientious)]

And I haven't even read the review—yet.

For all you collectors of photography books, [I am one], here's 2 new polaroid books on the market.

• POLAROID - IMAGES OF AMERICA
  Very rare book, exclusive hand signed by author Alan R Earls for all PolaPremium customers. Filled with over 100 amazing pictures from the Polaroid Corporate Archives. A must-have collectors item!!
• HUGE MAGAZINE
  New edition of the Japanese HUGE magazine, completely dedicated to the magic of Polaroid. 150 colorful pages will conquer your senses and show the world the immortal power of Polaroid pictures and tools.

This, sentence, on a collector's blog surpises me.

"Collector's POV: Prior to this show, we knew nothing about the work of Ray Mortenson."

The reason being, the fist photographic monograph I bought, way back in, 1989, was by Ray Mortensen, entitled, Meadowland.

Books figure very highly in my creative output and inspiration, and while I had to 'think' about the name, I recognised it eventually, which I then confirmed by checking my library.

A Japanese Artist who uses a phonecam to create diaries

Rinko Kawauchi Diary

I plan on adding a 3rd book of phonecam photography to my slowly evolving series over the holidays, too.

Popped in to read some blogs via newsfire, my news reader, when I hit Jörg Colberg's weblog, he recently wrote an article about, W. Eugene Smith. What was interesting was that a lot of Mr. Smith's work is being hosted by Google allowing easy access to a large number of his images.

I recently purchased a book called Dialogue with Photography ,a series of interviews on some of the photographic movers and shakers from the 20th century. W. Eugene Smith's article was the 2nd I read after Henry Holmes Smith. Both passionate about their chosen paths, Henry Holmes Smith a passionate educator as well. While I find, W. Eugene Smith's most renowned work interesting and inspirational, I find Henry Holmes Smith's work more engaging. The two essays amplified this, and reading between the lines of the essay about W. Eugene Smith, there's an implied notion of modernist "truth" that no longer sits very well with me.

In unrelated news, I'm hoping to check the Gursky show next week, and thanks to Gary on Junk for code, I'm going to check it out with a renewed vigour.

Finally, this in from 3thousand a small street e-mag.

As much as we hate to use this word... CRISIS! Melbourne's artist-run galleries have been getting rather large rent hikes inserted into their rectums recently. And it's time for us all to adjust our perspectives, because if we don't start doing more than drinking free goon at launches of a Thursday night there'll be no more launches to drink goon at.

When does a photo album become a book?

[From Inside on Flickr - Photo Sharing!]

This image from flickr by a commercial photographer working in the states has me thinking about what differentiates a photo album from a book? More specifically, a 'Photo Album' from a 'Monograph'. Is it just me or does the phrase 'Photo album' have connotations of a highly personalised history, family or otherwise, whereas a 'Monograph' has slightly more serious undertones, with a whiff of Academia?

• Photo corners?
• Distribution?
• Content?
• Production Costs?
• Production Values?

Time to make another I guess?

My publishing empire continues to grow, I just this morning received my invite to publish, via Magcloud.

The question is WHAT to publish.

...by someone else...

Review of the recently republished Robert Classic, "The Americans"

Two Thousand Odd Words on Robert Frank’s “The Americans”

[From 2point8]

Thanks to my stats on flickr I rediscovered this site this morning. http://www.earthalbum.com. and of course the vain part of myself went looking for my own photos. Very nice tool indeed.

Maps and photography have long been an interest of mine, now with these techonolgies Web is added to the equation quite nicely. In fact this idea will form a large part content of my next e-book.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Currently reading a book titled, "Thinking With Type", by Ellen Upton, pub Princeton Architectural Press.

In the section where the writer talks about, text, this passage has struck a particular chord with me.

Another Model, which undermined the designer's new claim to power surfaced at the end of the 1990s, borrowed not from Literary criticism, but from human—computer interaction [HCI] studies and the fields of interface and usability design. The dominant subject of our age has become neither reader nor writer but user, a figure conceived as a bundle of needs and impairments-cognitive, physical emotional. Like a patient or child, the user is a figure to be protected and cared for but also scrutinised and controlled, submitted to research and testing.

How texts are used becomes more important than what they mean. Someone clicked here to get over there. Someone who bought this also bought that. The interactive environment not only provides users with a degree of control and self direction but also, more quietly and insidiously, it gathers data about its audiences. Barhtes's image of text as a game to be played still holds, as the user responds to signals from the system. We may play the text, but it is also playing us.∗

∗pg 73 Thinking With Type, by Ellen Upton, pub, Princeton Architectural Press 2004, ISBN 978-1-56898-4483

A whole unit of research there alone in this one quote.

My e-book has been archived by the National Library of Australia, in their PANDORA project.

Technorati Tags: book, e-book, NLA

For both my readers a free book to download and do as you please with, I recommend reading/viewing it on screen but if you can justify the cost for printing and binding them go ahead print it out and bind it, all I ask is that you send a postcard from where ever you are, or better still somewhere exotic.

l will acknowledge ALL postcards somewhere in cyberspace.

There WILL be others, how often I'm not sure.

Technorati Tags: art, book, dtp, e-book, photography, publishing

I buy a lot of books on photography, thanks to Jim Johnson, this new Duane Michals book looks like one worth getting.

Not only is Mr Michals a witty and intelligent photographer but the book seems to take the piss as well.

Technorati Tags: book, Duane Michals, photographer