A couple of weeks ago, I started a new project: creating photobooks using my own photographs.
As someone who loves the world of books, I began getting organized. First, I thought about the book as a physical object. So, I told myself, I needed to learn how to stitch signatures together to make books “the old-fashioned way.” I was just getting ready to run some tests when I stumbled upon the sketchbooks made by various artist-paper manufacturers. They seemed perfect for the job. So, I bought a new one (I already had one) and started experimenting with a few prints. I struggled to find removable adhesive tape—needed to lay out the test sequence—as it seemed to have vanished from shops in my city. So, I ordered it on Amazon. I got out my paper cutter and ran some trials. I was truly happy and satisfied, even with the prints coming out of my humble inkjet printer. I was also streamlining the whole process and had identified three themes with potential titles: the seaside in my city, “saints on the wall” (votive shrines), and shop windows—vehicles of desire.
In short, I was planning everything out properly.
Then, yesterday, I hit a wall.
For a couple of days, I had been visualizing the final result. Three books filled with dozens of photographs—beautiful, simple, and moving; true works of art, even for an amateur photographer like me. Exciting, pure, innovative, fantastic.
And I had also started visualizing where they would end up: sitting motionless on my bookshelf, right next to the other two I had produced—almost by chance—years ago. So much hard work, enthusiasm, and love—only to end up gathering dust alongside all the unique books produced over the years. And there have been so many of both—years and books.
So, I reflected on the why. What is the point of creating such beauty, only to place it on a shelf to gather dust? After all, that is the very question posed on the Unsplash website to encourage creators to publish their photographs—a call I answered with enthusiasm.
I thought back to the project that gave rise to Compassion—the keynote presentation I created in May and June using photos downloaded from Unsplash.
What stopped me from thinking of that sooner? What drove me to plan on making “physical” books?
The conviction that scrolling through pages on a screen kills the photograph. That a general audience can only truly grasp an image’s message in a museum setting—in silence, while observing a paper print or leafing through a book, that marvelous object. Not to mention the issues arising from the existence of screens—small, tiny, large, huge—none of which are ever optimized for viewing color photography.
Yet, I reasoned, my role as an amateur photographer is not to seek out exhibition space or—worse—force people to look where they don’t want to; rather, it is to create photographic works that are accessible to everyone. And these works display perfectly on screens—any screen. If viewers scroll through the pages anxiously, the fault isn’t mine—nor will it ever be. If anything, the blame lies with the dismissive attitude toward art these days: it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t sell, so it’s worthless (or so almost everyone thinks).
Art? Well, it’s up to you; I’m just trying to do my job: loving photographs and images, seasoning them with words so they become etched in marble, and—if I can pull it off—taking people’s breath away with graphic design, abstraction, and beauty. And none of this is ‘guaranteed’ by the physical nature of the object conveying the images. One might feel nostalgic about books (I certainly have), but ultimately, even they disappear. It takes two hundred years or so, and the first person to leaf through them crumbles them to dust. Will digital files disappear too? Undoubtedly—it will happen.
In the meantime—scrolling or not—a well-made, well-conceived, and well-designed photobook can still convey an idea, provided the viewer is genuinely interested. But if it isn’t appreciated? Well, who am I to stop creating?
I Googled the phrase ‘keynote art.’ Aside from an agency for artists and countless paid templates, there’s nothing. Apparently, Keynote is NOT art. Ah, just like photography!
Perfect!
