FinePhoto News will be your source of news relating to what is happening with Fine Photography Books & Prints web site and news from the photography book world. Our plan is to help you stay abreast with the latest news about photography books, artist's books, and photography related issues.

In this issue:
New on the Web site
This months featured book
New releases
Soon to be released
Book Thoughts
About FinePhoto News

New on the Web site
We added a new section in our catalogue that focuses on the genre of Photojournalism. This section began last month with the introduction of our theme books of the Photography Books on the Iraq War. Were continuing by expanding the photojournalism section with books from Magnum photographers, Wegee, and many others. Click here to see this group of books.

Featured Book

"BLINK" - from the editors of Phaidon Press
" ... BLINK provides an up-to-the-minute, global overview of contemporary photography. BLINK contains the enormous breadth of ideas, forms and approaches influencing photography today. It covers all types of work, from art to photojournalism, fashion to digital photography. "
To read more about this book, click here.

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New Releases
Here are a couple of newly released books:

Calais Lace Michael Kenna

Passage to Angkor Kenro Izu

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Soon to be released

The Last Sideshow Hanspeter Schneider Available: May 2004

Phaidon 55: Larry Fink Larry Fink Available: April 2004

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Book Thoughts
PHOTOBOOKWORKS

Last month I introduced the concept of the photography book as literature. This month I will continue with this theme and take the concept to the next level. The idea of the photography book as “photobookworks.” This term has been introduced by photography historian Alex Sweetman in his article for the book Artist’s Books: A Critical Anthology and Source Book edited by Joan Lyons (1985). In this article Sweetman states:

“Photobookworks are a function of the inter-relation between two factors: the power of the single photograph and the effect of serial arrangements in book form. Such arrangements may be viewed as worlds which the individual photographs inhabit and, therefore, as their context. Individual pictures may act as expressive images and/or as information; combinations of these can produce series sequences, juxtapositions, rhythms, and recurring themes.”

To consider the context of the photographs in the photobook is to acknowledge that the photographer/editor has a story to tell and a message to convey. For us, the readers, we look for this “story” not just in the individual photograph, but also in the relationship of the one that precedes and follows each photograph. Transcending the individual photographs into sequences becomes a richer experience and provides an alternative means to view the photographer’s work. Thus, we have the photobookworks as a structure to build a photographic aesthetic.

The experiences that we gain from identifying the sequence of images enables the photobookworks to become something greater than the individual photographs themselves. Recognizing this is the responsibility first of the photographer/editor to see beyond the individual photograph when creating the photobookworks. And second, the reader to seek out and decode the message that is within the photobookworks. Sweetman states:

“In a photobookworks, the relations between images may be either systematic or suggestive of system. They may be literal, poetic, public, personal, concrete, abstract, idiosyncratic, obscure, or transparent. I have no doubt that the types of relations formed by linking disparate photographs into singular and complex array in book form, or as any other time-based art, is one of the most distinctive functions and features of the photographic medium. Spatially, the relationship of image to image on a page is important because the positioning of elements within a display is potentially a linguistic operation in which position becomes a signifier. The complementary aspect of temporality is of even greater importance in relation to the phenomenon of the photobookworks and the historical development of vision.”

Has the photobookworks taken hold today as a methodology for presenting a photographer’s work? In the plethora of publications in the photographic market, have we seen this vision of visual art? Has the rush to publish lost sight of this aesthetic for presenting photographic work? Are the photography books appearing in the bookstalls giving us the opportunity to expand the photographer’s message or challenging us to find the deeper meaning of their work? Are the photobooks themselves becoming more than just a container for holding individual photographs? We must look beyond the images to the context. We should ask ourselves if the photographs have increased in meaning because of this presentation in the photobookworks. The photobook, in my view, must be more than the some of its parts.

To be continued …

Your comments and feedback are appreciated.

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About FinePhoto News
Founder, editor, and proprietor: Philip Malkin
contact: info@finephotobooks.com
in the US: 425.831.1870

To suggest a book to be included on our Web site, send an email with the pertinent information.

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© 2004 Fine Photography Books & Prints