The Power of the Photo Book

Like all of us, days are up and down, and while elements of the past weeks have been challenging, this week I received two separate gifts that raised my spirits enormously.

I received two photographic books from dear friends this week arriving a day apart.

Long time friend Becki sent me a copy of her newest book Candid.Color. Most of you will know Becki from her sharing of incredible street photography, most often rendered in black and white. For this book, Becki leapt from her comfort zone to revisit street photography shot in and finalized in colour. Even today, colour is not the common medium for street, yet Becki stepped into colour street with full intent. The images have been made around the world but all are what one could put in the “street” box. Perhaps even more relevant is the clear diligence that Becki put into the flow of the book moving through a variety of thematic concepts and still binding them together regardless of photographic location. Every photo has a “look”, a look I attribute to how Becki “sees”. She does an exemplary job of really seeing what is there, and capturing not just a primary subject but ensures that there is exactly the right level of context to support the story that lies within the image to inspire the viewer to engage. It’s a superb act of work.

My dear friend, Greg sent me a copy of his most recent book, which basically tells the story of what he does as a photographer. Greg photographs anything that strikes his pleasure, regardless of where he is, and always imparts his seeing onto his images. He creates distinct images of things that could otherwise be commonplace, making them stand out and separate from thousands of other images of what could be the same subject made by others. Like Becki, this is a profound application of what and how Greg sees that is captured and displayed by his artwork. Greg’s work has a look as well, sometimes highly emotional, sometimes with almost childlike wonder and is definitely outside the “norm”.

Decades ago, RUSH wrote a song called The Camera Eye. I always identified very closely with Neil Peart’s lyrics but in the case of that song, I think he got it wrong. It’s not the camera eye that matters, it’s the photographer’s eye that counts and the work of both these great artists is what makes their photography books stand out.

Neil also wrote in Vital Signs, that “everybody got to deviate from the norm. Everybody got to elevate from the norm.” If the norm, by definition, is the average, I cannot agree more. True artists, who are true to themselves, not to some group think, corporate overlord or some other kind of authority by being true deviate from the norm and their work stands out accordingly. Not everyone will like it and whether someone else likes it or hates it is in the context of true art completely irrelevant as far as I am concerned.

I have often said that a photograph is not finished until it is printed. I’d take that a step further by saying a collection of prints are incomplete until they are laid out and flowed in a photographic book. Fortunately, tools like the Blurb tool in Lightroom Classic has the foundation for books already done and it is thus easier than in the past to produce a photo book. Perhaps you should consider doing your own.