Judging a book by its cover

This is perhaps how the front cover of the book will look, although, of course, I can't really envisage how the design will be as a physical object. Also still need to purge myself of over-ambitious expectations of both the book and the photographs it contains, thinking of it makes my stomach churn right now! Just had a hunt for, and can't currently find, a book that my grandfather made about a summer climbing trip to Skye. It is painstakingly handwritten with detailed pen and ink sketches of the routes on the mountains. A kind of Wainwright tribute, it is an intense and personal vanity project, presumably never intended for anything other than his own pride. Vanity publishing seems like a negative term but my grandfather's book is wonderful, despite or because of it its intended audience of one, or perhaps some of his climbing club friends. I've tried to bring this idea through in the way that I've presented my work in the book, and I suppose in the very notion of getting it hand-bound. The photographs are subjective experiences of light, and therefore I've presented them as a subjective book. I've also tried to bring in the relationship that printing had to the development of religion, and therefore the assimilation of ancient sun cults into Christian doctrine. Of course, most people will just think the cover is a nice colour and wonder why some of the pictures are blurry! And so they should...

Festival of Light

At the Oldham Interfaith Festival of Light on Friday photographing for my day (or should that be night?) job. The evening was a celebration of light festivals in different religions, (from the top) Hindi dancers celebrating Diwali, the Christian Nativity, and Islamic Nasheed. Think I missed the Buddhist section of the programme but the pagans definitely weren't representing, despite all of the above arguably being sublimations of the solstice. Two things that I am thinking of here- firstly the different ways I could have developed my project. I've not really blogged about the book design and getting it printed and off to the binder, because, unlike childbirth there is no massive rush of hormones that instantly makes you forget the means to the end; all I can see of it at the moment is mistakes and tortured misjudgements. I could have done something very straight forward like the above; and let sequence and design ascribe meaning. I feel like I have far too much meaning with my book, like how they say a first novel always tries to bring in every experience of the writer's life to date massacring clarity in the process. Secondly, how much is easier is it to shoot digital? It takes a one hundredth of the time to get it to a point where it can be sent out into the world. I'm amongst millions having this dialogue still in my head, and there are fundamental reasons why I chose to shoot my project on film. Yet I can't help but think that I am a pretentious Luddite with this, thinking that shooting film makes me and the photograph more serious and worthy when ultimately the medium is not the message, the subject is. And to give a subject the value it deserves requires it to be disseminated as widely as possible, and to recognise that you can't control people's response to it once it is gone.

Light is like water

I read this story years ago and often think about it in relation to photography, especially at the moment trying to find words for the book which enhance it:


Light Is Like Water
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
as published in the collection of short stories 'Strange Pilgrims'

At Christmas the boys asked again for a rowboat.

"Okay," said their papa, "we'll buy it when we get back to Cartagena."

Toto, who was nine years old, and Joel, who was seven, were more determined than their parents believed.

"No," they said in chorus. "We need it here and now."

"To begin with," said their mother, "the only navigable water here is what comes out of the shower."

She and her husband were both right. Their house in Cartagena de Indias had a yard with a dock on the bay, and a shed that could hold two large yachts. Here in Madrid, on the other hand, they were crowded into a fifth-floor apartment at 47 Paseo de la Castellana. But in the end neither of them could refuse, because they had promised the children a rowboat complete with sextant and compass if they won their class prizes in elementary school, and they had. And so their papa bought everything and said nothing to his wife, who was more reluctant than he to pay gambling debts. It was a beautiful aluminum boat with a gold stripe at the water line.

"The boat's in the garage," their papa announced at lunch. "The problem is, there's no way to bring it up in the elevator or by the stairs, and there's no more space available in the garage."

On the following Saturday afternoon, however, the boys invited their classmates to help bring the boat p the stairs and they managed to carry it as far as the maid's room.

"Congratulations," said their papa. "Now what?"

"Now nothing," said the boys. "All we wanted was to have the boat in the room, and now it's here."

On Wednesday night, as they did every Wednesday, the parents went to the movies. The boys, lords and masters of the house, closed the doors and windows and broke the glowing bulb in one of the living room lamps. A jet of golden light as cool as water began to pour out of the broken bulb, and they let it run to a depth of almost three feet. Then they turned off the electricity, took out the rowboat, and navigated at will among the islands in the house.

This fabulous adventure was the result of a frivolous remark I made while taking part in a seminar on the poetry of household objects. Toto asked me why the light went on with just a touch of a switch, and I did not have the courage to think about it twice.

"Light is like water," I answered. "You turn the tap and out it comes."

And so they continued sailing every Wednesday night, learning how to use the sextant and the compass, until their parents came home from the movies and found them sleeping like angels on dry land. Months later, longing to go farther, they asked for complete skin-diving outfits: masks, fins, tanks, and compressed air rifles.

"It's bad enough you've put a rowboat you can't use in the maid's room," said their father. "To make it even worse, now you want diving equipment too."

"What if we win the Gold Gardenia Prize for the first semester?" said Joel.

"No," said their mother in alarm. "That's enough."

Their father reproached her for being intransigent.

"These kids don't win so much as a nail when it comes to doing what they're supposed to," she said, "but to get what they want they're capable of taking it all, even the teacher's chair."

In the end the parents did not say yes or no. But in July, Toto and Joel each won a Gold Gardenia and the public recognition of the headmaster. That same afternoon, without having to ask again, they found the diving outfits in their original packing in their bedroom. And so the following Wednesday, while their parents were at the movies seeing Last Tango in Paris, they filled the apartment to a depth of two fathoms, dove like tame sharks under furniture, including the beds and salvaged from the bottom of the light things that had been lost in darkness for years.

At the end-of-the-year awards ceremony, the brothers were acclaimed as examples for the entire school and received certificates of excellence. This time they did not have to ask for anything, because their parents asked them what they wanted. They were so reasonable that all they wanted was a party at home as a treat for their classmates.

Their papa, when he was alone with his wife, was radiant.

"It's a proof of their maturity, "he said.

"From your lips to God's ear," said their mother.

The following Wednesday, while their parents were watching The Battle of Algiers, people walking along the Paseo de la Castellana saw a cascade of light falling from an old building hidden among the trees. It spilled over the balconies, poured in torrents down the facade, and rushed along the great avenue in a golden flood that lit the city all the way to the Guadarrama.

In response to the emergency, firemen forced the door on the fifth floor and found the apartment brimming with light all the way to the ceiling. The sofa and easy chairs covered in leopard skin were floating at different levels in the living room, among the bottles from the bar and the grand piano with its Manila shawl that fluttered half submerged like a golden manta ray. Household objects, in the fullness of their poetry, flew with their own wings through the kitchen sky. The marching band instruments that the children used for dancing drifted among the bright-colored fish freed from their mother's aquarium, which were the only creatures alive and happy in the vast illuminated marsh. Everyone's toothbrush floated in the bathroom, along with Papa's condoms and Mama's jars of creams and her spare bridge, and the television set from the master bedroom floated on its side, still tuned to the final episode of the midnight movie for adults only.

At the end of the hall, moving with the current and clutching the oars, with his mask on and only enough air to reach port, Tonto sat in the stern of the boat searching for the lighthouse, and Joel, floating in the prow, still looked for the north star with the sextant, and floating through the entire house were their thirty-seven classmates, eternalized in the moment of peeing into the pot of geraniums, singing the schools song with the words changed to make fun of the headmaster, sneaking a glass of brandy from Papa's bottle. For they had turned on so many lights at the same time that the apartment had flooded, and two entire classes at the elementary school of Saint Julian the Hospitaler drowned on the fifth floor of 47 Paseo de la Castellana. In Madrid, Spain, a remote city of burning summers and icy winds, with no ocean or river, whose land-bound indigenous population had never mastered the science of navigating on light.

Book Planning

Its kind of like playing pairs with cards, only better....

Red Eye

My optician told me that I had too many red blood cells in my eyes yesterday. Its difficult to explain the desire to stare at magnified dust on a computer screen solidly for a week even to myself at this stage. I'm longing for straight forward sensor dust right now.

David Alan Harvey

© David Alan Harvey

Some of the posts on David Alan Harvey's Work In Progress detail his process when putting a book together, or rather the many different ways of putting a book together:

'well, the first thing is the idea or the concept...this is the hardest part (and where i am now on this one)....the second thing, is the actual shooting....this is the hardest part...and the third thing is editing your work down to something that works...this is the hardest part....and the fourth thing is the securing of a publisher and the control over the layout....this is the hardest part.....and the fifth thing is the distribution, the creating of exhibitions and the pr "selling" of the book...this is the hardest part (because by this time you are totally tired of these pictures and are moving on to something else)...'

Incline Press

I'm lucky to have guidance on putting a book together which matches the research potential of Chetham's Library in the Oldham based Incline Press. I went to meet Graham Moss, the founder of the press yesterday, another time warp. Seems I shall probably be having a round binding so that the book will open flat and double spreads can be put in as inserts to avoid the problems of having two halves on an image misregistered. Also can get a title page beautifully handset. Yet to decide quite how the cover will be, but I know that I'm getting great advice as you can see if you check out the output of the press: some examples above and more information, including how to buy the books, at absurdly low prices for their beauty on the website.

A Shepherd's Calendar

Visited Chetham’s Library last week to look at some of their collection for two reasons. Firstly to look at sun symbols, but also to get design inspiration. I’d like to have a (subtle) reference to the early Renaissance going on in the design to echo the concepts going on in the photographs. As I write this I realise that it is the first time I’ve articulated this particular understanding of the project- early renaissance being the point where superstition hit reason…. Anyway I don’t want to produce a school history project to recreate the Magna Carta, all burnt page edges and staining with coffee: rather to take some influences like binding, type and proportion in to a modern design. I’m lucky that I’ve some great resources nearby for researching this sort of thing in Chetham’s Library and the John Ryland’s Library, both of which have superb collections. Visiting Chetham’s library is an adventure in itself; you go through a small door (Alice in Wonderland, Being John Malkovich) and go back in time. It is a place where the act of consulting a book is made beautiful. The images here are details from a ‘Shepherd’s Calendar’ (late 15^th C) - a misleading name for a stunningly complicated book charting solar and lunar cycles and eclipses. This astronomy is then linked to astrology, in a manner abhorrent to our modern scientific understanding. It is a beautiful object but the funny thing is it seems like a really really good school history project, the sort that the kid who was amazing at drawing would do!

On Demand publishing

In a quandary about the best way to go about producing this book. There are so may things that can go wrong between scanning a negative and holding the book in your hands. My issue with on-line publishing is the lack of control and the lack of physicality to the process. But with self-publishing I'm not sure of the best way to actually get the photos on the paper- I worry about precise registration. Conscientious has a good collection of experiences about these issues to learn from.

Smaller?

Thinking about layout, the above being rather influenced by the layout of Tony Evan's photos in English Sunrise as designed by David Hillman. The book is curiously modern in concept and presented with the attention to detail that makes viewing the book a great experience. Little things like how the pages open and the size of it in your hand. Simultaneously the book is really dated by the circular corners of the pictures, and the colour of the prints- I don't know whether the nostalgia trip was attended but it is a great lesson in design. In particular I like how the photographs are presented small, demanding an intimate viewing experience. I am working with a small format and creating book photographs as Alec Soth would have it. I want my photographs to be like icons, small and richly coloured prayers.

'Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae'

Oh God and these, so bizarre and beautiful: "Angels form an arc under the central light, which is YHWH, the Hebrew letters for God. Daylight is the source of direct light, refracted light, and light reflected by night (on right). Divine authority, a hand writing a book that absorbs light directly from the source of all light, oversees the daylight, and it is a little higher than Reason, the hand writing a book above the night, which receives a more modest eye's light. Below daylight is Profane Authority, which receives only a lantern's light; below Reason is Sense, which points to an image produced by a telescope. Emperor Ferdinand enters the picture as one of Kircher's patrons."

Kircher's Magnetism

Images from Kircher's Magnetism via the amazing Bibliodyssey, the last being a remarkable machine, a sunflower clock: '"To illustrate his belief in the magnetic relationship between the sun and the vegetable kingdom, Kircher designed this heliotropic sunflower clock by attaching a sunflower to a cork and floating it in a reservoir of water. As the blossom rotated to face the sun, a pointer through its center indicated the time on the inner side of a suspended ring. Kircher claimed that it didn't work well because enclosing it in a glass case would block the sun's attractive force, and that it was 'therefore susceptible to inaccuracies due to the wind'."

I especially like the ideas, and the esotericism of the imagery: I love the pattern of the magnetic fields, and the hint of magic.... But I still can't get my head round how to bring these things into my book without distracting from the photography.

The English Sunrise

Very potentially excited about this book, hopefully winging its way to me. 'The English Sunrise' won a Gold D&AD Award for graphic design in 1973. Photos by Tony Evans, written by Brian Rice, design David Hillman. The book seems to be a document of the sunrise motif in English vernacular design, and from what I can gather is quite minimal in its layout. It is still such a modern idea- I've mulled around on some variations of it myself-and I think that the execution of both the design and photography might reflect that.... the second image is taken from some one's site who has cut the book up and is selling it with some nice quote about sunrises stuck on the back of it, apparently you're meant to string these cards up 'like gems' as a form of home decoration- travesty!!! Well I suppose it's enjoying a book in a way...

Plan A or Plan B?