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
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
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.
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.
...by someone else...
Review of the recently republished Robert Classic, "The Americans"
Two Thousand Odd Words on Robert Frank’s “The Americans”
[From 2point8]
My publishing empire continues to grow, I just this morning received my invite to publish, via Magcloud.
The question is WHAT to publish.
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?
Which of these values, defines one over the other, can one be both?Time to make another I guess?
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.
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.
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.
For all you collectors of photography books, [I am one], here's 2 new polaroid books on the market.
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.
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.
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.
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