Photography and the Photo Book
Publishing your photo book
The Photography and the Photo Book showcase for thinkingaboutphotography.com is live and runs from July 1st through September 22nd.
This showcase starts with three independent small presses that have made the discovery of new talent an essential part of their missions - even helping to grow regional publishing. Then we have a hybrid - a partnership between a photographer and a designer, connected by their love of Polaroid and bold graphics. Next, a photographer shares their journey from project inception through running a successful Kickstarter campaign. Finally, we peek behind the curtain at PhotoBook Journal to highlight their editors and team of contributors, sharing their approach to reviewing, with links to their own work and a recent review.
Use this link if you’d like to go directly to the Photography and the Photo Book showcase - otherwise, keep reading for more information and resources on publishing your own photo book.
In May, I attended the Los Angeles Art Book Fair, held at Art Center’s South Campus in Pasadena, CA. It was wonderful to see how alive printed matter still is … and Printed Matter is the name of the organization that sponsored it - a great resource. The experience was the genesis for this showcase and many of the publishers featured were folks I met at the fair. Another terrific resource is Archetype Press, California’s largest letterpress printing facility. While they’re not usually open to non-students, they do have a hands-on speaker series. Follow them on Instagram @archetype_press_artcenter to get notified of public events.
Donna Bassin: Portraits of the Precarious Earth
Shortly after my last showcase, Photography and Our Environment, was published I received this beautiful gift from one of the featured artists, Donna Bassin. I absolutely loved the book and wanted to know more about the design process. Here’s a condensed version of our conversation:
She had entered a zine contest sponsored by The Docks, an Italian book and zine company. While she didn’t win, they loved her work enough to offer her a deal…and that’s how the process started. They worked over Zoom, making choices about paper and design remotely. Because using recycled paper was important to her, she chose images that weren’t dependent on high saturation. One of my favorite elements came about as a solution to a design problem. The book has several fold-outs, leaving the center of the book empty - so she decided “I’m going to use it as a piece of activism” and had a postcard printed (Moo printers), attached it, and used a gold marker to encourage the reader to “send the postcard, start a conversation.”
A Smith Gallery
Amanda Smith and Kevin Tully are the Gallery Directors for A Smith Gallery and very supportive of the photography community. They produce several types of photo books from their exhibitions. My favorite is The 27 Fine Art Books series, a limited edition photo book comprised of the 27 photographers juried into the exhibition. I was the judge for the Interiors Exhibition - they shipped me the book plates to sign and then a few weeks later I received this beautiful piece in the mail. I asked about their printing process and Amanda was generous with her information (has been edited).
“The books were designed by Jace Graf at Clover Leaf Studio in Austin. He produced the first version of the book (1-10). Jace is very much in demand... eventually, I took that over, converting the design into a smaller Blurb version. This let us dramatically reduce the price of the books.
We add the image glued to the front cover of the book and the book number on the spine of the book. Jace still does the foil stamping on the image and spine tag. We also tip in the signature book plate. (The original version of the book was signed on the page by the juror and directors). Then we make the book wrapper with the seal. Then wrap them up in tissue paper. It's a production.”
MagCloud & Blurb for Books & Catalogs
These are “print on demand” (POD) companies that allow you to print a single book at a time. Photographers often use POD to create a limited edition photo book that they sign and sell - often including a print. Magcloud is a resource that I combine with Lightroom, making it extremely easy to create soft-cover books and magazines. For me, a part of each new body of work has been to make a catalog for it. This helps me see the imagery in a different setting and get a sense of how the images work as a group. PDFs created in LR can be easily adapted to work with MagCloud’s magazine format.
Thanks so much for reading! Use this link for the Photography and the Photo Book showcase!