I did the letterpress printing for “This Is Not My Sky” at the San Francisco Center for the Book. SFCB offers printing and bookbinding classes and also rents press time on their Vandercook presses for working on personal projects. SFCB is where I learned letterpress printing.
After I finished my first book, I met Norman McKnight who runs Philoxenia Press in Berkeley, California. He is also a talented photographer; check out his flickr photostream. I’ve enjoyed getting to know Norman and he has been very generous with his time and advice about printing. I will be printing the text for my new book on Norman’s presses.
Last weekend I visited Norman to talk about bookbinding and to look at typefaces for the book.
Norman showing some of his typefaces. Each drawer generally contains one size of one typeface.
Each letter or number is a separate piece of lead.
These are full pages of set type. It’s hard to comprehend the effort that goes into setting this amount of text.
Norman with his Vandercook press.
Norman showed me some beautiful samples of his work.
Now that I have a semi-firm concept for the book, it’s time to make some decisions about the physical qualities of the book: dimensions, binding style and number of pages, and paper.
Size
I wanted the pages to be slightly larger than the half 8.5×11″ pages in my previous book. I went through some photobooks in my collection and decided on a 8×10″ portrait (vertical) format. It feels right and the images can be printed at a decent size. It will also work perfectly with 11×17″ photo paper that is folded in half and trimmed.
When thinking about the size I considered that a bigger size means more money for materials, image pages take longer to print, bigger paper is more difficult to handle, and shipping costs will increase.
Binding
It’s critical that the images in the book be easy to access. I don’t like books with spines that feel like they will crack in half when they are opened. Or worse, books that are difficult to open to see the images. My first book used a pamphlet binding which is great for readability but it is limited in the number of pages it can handle. For the new book I want something thicker that has more presence on the bookshelf.
I looked at a few different binding styles. Japanese bindings are beautiful but the ones I’ve seen are too much of a compromise in terms of being able to open the book. I decided on a multi-signature pamphlet binding with a slip cover (I’ll talk more about the technical details of the binding in a future post).
Number of Pages and Signatures
I won’t know the exact number of pages in the book until I’m done designing the layout, but I wanted to start out with a rough idea. Signatures are the groups of folded papers that make up the book (in certain types of bindings). My friend Norman McKnight suggested having a signature at the beginning of the book for the letterpress text. I will probably have 3 signatures each with 3 sheets of paper. This will provide 36 pages in total with a max of 24 pages of images.
Paper
For my last book I used Epson Premium Presentation Matte Double-Sided paper for the photo pages. I like the paper but it’s only available in 8.5×11″ so it isn’t an option for this book. Norman McKnight kindly provided me with a list of double-sided photo papers that he had compiled. From his list I chose Moab Entrada Natural 190gsm mostly because I wanted a natural paper (which isn’t as bright white as the “bright” version) that was slightly thinner. I will probably use the same inkjet photo paper for the text and image pages where in the previous book I used Crane’s paper for the text. I haven’t decided on the cover or dust jacket paper yet.
It starts with photographs.
I went through a conceptual period a couple of years ago but I am not a conceptual artist. I’m now shooting instinctively without preconceived ideas for projects.
So over a period of months of taking photographs I noticed connections developing between the images and started thinking about how they might come together in a book.
Naturally, the new book has a relationship with my previous photography, and especially with my first book “This Is Not My Sky” (pictured above).
The first book was an experiment in many ways. I wanted to know:
- if I could complete a large project like making a book by hand
- if I could combine the labor intensive processes of hand-set letterpress printing, inkjet photograph printing, and hand binding to make a high-quality book in a limited edition without an artificial constraint on the number of copies
- if anyone would be interested a book of my photography
I managed to finish the book and it sold out quickly. I was happy with it as a first attempt. It was a learning experience, and after it was all over there were a number of things I wanted to change in my next book:
- include images that are more representative of my photographic vision
- develop a more sophisticated layout that varies from page to page
- increase the number of images
- make the book thicker necessitating the use of a different binding
Over the last few months I’ve been shooting mostly with hand-held small cameras while walking around in San Francisco and Oakland. These are the images I will use for my new book.
In the last three months lots has changed in my life in both personal and photographic realms.
I am moving from Oakland to San Francisco. It’s been 10 years since I lived in San Francisco and damn I’m excited to move back. As vital as the art scene is in Oakland, it doesn’t have much of a photographic component. And I’m ready to take advantage of the visual possibilities present in the city.
In September I am traveling to Paris for the Publish It Yourself DIY photobook exhibition put together by Laurence Vecten of LOZ. In preparation for PIY I am making a new photobook that I will show at the event.
As I put together the new book over the next month I will document my bookmaking process here on my blog. I’m hoping that by explaining how I work I might inspire other photographers to publish their own photobooks. Stay tuned.
My Process for Making Handmade Photobooks
I will add more article to this list describing how I make my photobooks over the next month.
- Concept
- Format and Materials
- Letterpress Options
SFMOMA recently invited high-profile members of the fine art photography community to come together for a symposium to discuss the state of the medium of photography. Before the event began, participants wrote introductory essays to address the question posed in the event title — “Is Photography Over?”
The essays were difficult to read. Not only because the writing was dense with unnecessarily esoteric words, but also because the writers largely missed an opportunity to be inspirational and heartfelt.
Instead, the texts addressed tired topics like:
- What is the definition of photography?
- Digital photography has brought about the end of an era.
- Photographs can no longer be trusted because of digital manipulation.
Only three of the thirteen essays were written by photographers. The other ten essayists are curators and academics who can decide what art to study and what works to acquire for museums. But they don’t make photographs and they can’t control the photographs we make.
We can reinvigorate and reinvent photography if we make a break from hollow conceptual work that ignores centuries of development of principles that govern visual arts. We need to stop making work that is created to satisfy a thirst for novelty or that strives for financial success and adulation from the art community. We need to study the history of art and the history of photography and embrace the qualities intrinsic to the medium of photography. We should forget indexicality and institutionalization and instead focus on light and shadow and color. When we do this, our photographs will be brought to life.
One of the essayists, Joel Snyder, believes that we are losing a sensibility forged through the history of photography. His was the only text that resonated with me, and I agree that there is a lack attention being paid to “the peculiar possibilities and limitations of photography.” But it doesn’t have to be this way. For photography to remain lively, we just need photographers to commit to making authentic photographs. Photography is ready for a change, but it has to start with the photographers. Who else is ready to make a change?
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