The Problem is Photobook World is not Incestuous Enough

picture by Eamonn Doyle

So the blog will take a short break for Photobook Bristol and Vienna Photobook Festival, both of which I'm looking forward to immensely

In Vienna I'll be talking about narrative and my German Family Album. And at Photobook Bristol I'll be on a panel with

Eamonn Doyle, Kate Nolan and Kazuma Obara

talking about their first photobooks, all of which are massively interesting, engaging and challenging in different ways and have featured on this blog. As well as talking about what went right and what went wrong with their books (and what they would do differently), I think the question of why publish a book in the first place will come up.



picture by Kate Nolan

It's a question that came up on the Photobooks Facebook page where questions were asked on the business model of photobook-land, its incestuousness and all the other usual questions that we repeatedly ask of photobookery.

Well of course Photobook World can be small and it can be an echo-chamber. But it's not really that incestuous. If something is incestuous then the group is closed. If anything, Photobook World is not incestuous enough. I think that is what people are really objecting to.

Sure, you do get the same voices popping up again and again, and you get cliques, but at the same time if you have something that is good and you want to be seen or heard, it's relatively easy. It's a very open world. And the more open you are and the more engaged and engaging you are, the easier it gets. The world of the Photobook is far more open than the equivalent photographic worlds in academia, art or commerce.



picture by Kazuma Obara

Look at the end of year best lists and you'll see names that  were completely unknown a few years earlier. On the 2014 list from Photo-Eye. you had people like Laia Abril, Nicolo Degiorgis, Max Pinckers, Andy Rochelli, Alejandro Cartagena, Momo Okabe, Awoiska van der Molen. 

Go back a year to 2013 and you can see Pierre Liebaert, Lorenzo Vitturi, Oscar Monzon, Carlos Spottorno, Mike Brodie, Carolyn Drake and Paul Gaffney. 

Go to 2015 and 2016 and you'll get people on there who are still students now. Guaranteed.

These are people who have popped up out of nowhere (or almost nowhere) simply because they made something interesting, int he same way that Doyle, Nolan and Obara made something interesting. So you can make it 'big' in photobook world, make an interesting book. It's that simple. 

Of course very few people have heard of these people outside photobook land, but that's because if you're going spend £20 on a book of pictures, you have to be really interested in photography and books. Not many people are. There are other things to spend one's money on. 

But the openness I do not doubt. And if you worry about the world being limited by a handful of tastemakers, the answer is also simple. Write a blog, start a magazine, have an opinion and get busy. 

So sometimes when people talk about photobook world being too closed, I sometimes get the feeling they mean the opposite; that it's too open.

Best Irish Photobooks of 2014

pictures by Eamonn Doyle (from Michael Hoppen Gallery)

There were loads of great photobooks from Ireland last year. Here are my top three Irish books. Eamonn Doyle's i isn't in my top 10 because it looked even better on a wall at Paris Photo. But it's a great book with great, simple pictures that work so well together. Maybe it should be on my list, maybe I made a mistake? I wrote a review of it here. 



picture by Ken Grant

I'm not sure why Ken Grant's book No Pain Whatsoever isn't on my list either and I know, he's not Irish, but he works in Ireland so that counts for the purposes of this post only. No Pain Whatsoever is defining portraiture of a city that hasn't been photographed as much as it should have. Grant's pictures are made from the heart, both his own and that of the communities where he made the pictures and that he lived in and it shows in pictures that have roots that go down into the Liverpool soil. Here's my review of it. 




And finally a rather neglected book from the year, Kevin Griffin's Omey: Last Man Standing, the story of a former stuntman who is the last remaining resident of Omey Island. I really should have had this on my list too but didn't. I'm not sure why. It's a gorgeous book which is warm and personal with a huge sense of place. Read more here.

Don't Believe the Hype. It's not really Hype

picture by Eamonn Doyle

The Amazon Turns Everything to Shit post got a lot of attention and a few misunderstandings. Some people thought I meant that photobook-making should be some hairshirt cut-and-paste budget operation. And it can be. Café Royal Books make really cheap saddle-stitched (stapled) photobooks on a budget. And they look great. Head over here and buy some.

And some people thought I meant that you should only make really expensive books, bound in  unicorn hide and presented in a box carved out of a single piece of the inner-most rings of the tree of life. And  that’s fine (except for the tree of life and unicorn parts - find something less destructive for your books please. Don't be destructive and vulgar) if you have the cash. Amc have the cash and they make beautiful books.

But that’s projection I think, and most of the piece was on the business of photobooks and the hype of it all and the central idea that the hype is really hyped. The photobook world  is not that big, most of the numbers and prices and deal-making that you see does not really exist – it’s all smoke and mirrors.

So with that in mind, I thought it would be good to present a couple of hyped books (that will probably sell out in the next couple of months and be listed for a few hundred pounds on ebay).

The first is Eamonn Doyle’s i. I heard about this book from a student (thank you Paul Fox) who saw it on the Hardcore Street Photography flickr page where Martin Parr, in a post titled, 'The best new street photo book I have seen in a decade', said: 

Hello hard core street people!
Take a look at this book, very small edition ( 750) self published by an
Irish photographer, beautiful printing, and great images.
I am sure it will sell out pretty quickly.
On top of this the simplicity and directness of the images is brilliant.
You heard about it here first.
Martin Parr

I don't know if  it is the the best new street photo book, but it is a lovely book with a very simple design that highlights Doyle's main subjects; old people on the streets of Dublin. There's a focus on backs, on coats, on the weight of the world on their shoulders, and he hits the street photo sweet spot of getting both a sense of the democratic into the book and doing something that is really simple; because most of the time, Doyle photographs pictures of backs. 

Maybe that's one of the reasons it's such a powerful book. We have all photographed pictures of backs, we've all thought about them, but Doyle is the person who has got in there first-ish and invested the time and the money in making it something that looks fantastic. 

And he spent money on it; on the design, the paper, the binding, the whole process. He's gone down the route of putting in £20,000 give or take five grand into publishing his own book. And he's sent them out to people like Parr and got a big bite. He's lucky in that respect but a lot of background hard work has also gone into the book. 

Parr's comment instantly rippled the book out to other people (and he recommended it as a book of the week for Photo Eye, and I have reviewed it for them) and that is helping very much in selling the book. So it's a hyped book and it will almost sell itself. That, very simply, is how hype, in photobook terms, works. I don't really see it as hype though, or as a bad thing. If that's what hype amounts to, it's pretty lame. Get over being affected by it. And if you can't get over it, tThe only way to prevent it is to stop people giving opinions about books. But opinions about books and the expression of those opinions are what makes it all so interesting.

Eamonn Doyle's i is a book where the photographer had money to spend. Another book that is getting a lot of attention (and I saw it on Josef Chladek's excellent photobook showcase) is Euromaidan by Vladislav Krasnoshek and Sergiy Lebedynskyy.

This is a book that memorialises the protests in Kiev. But it's a book that is made on a limited budget - it's handmade with a sewing-machine binding on 21cm x 15cm paper - which I'm guessing was printed off digitally somehow. 

It's a protest book then, which brings Japanese aesthetics to a 21st century conflict - which is also kind of obvious but Krasnoshek and Lebedynskyy got in there and made it happen. I guess their book will sell out too and, like Eammon Doyle's book, be listed for outlandish prices on ebay. 

But that's not happening yet. They're worth the £30 that you pay for them now. They're worth that now and even in the future, in monetary terms that's still what they're worth as far as I'm concerned. Because when you buy a photobook, the value is in the feel, in the touch, in the feel of the paper upon your naked flesh.... no that's nonsense! I'm going to get 10 of each. 2 x 10 x £200 = £4,000. Whoo - I'm in the money! Over £3,000 profit, etcetera, etcetera... continued in Delusional Hut, Daydream Beach, Fantasy Island, Parallel Universe in a galaxy far, far, four hundred volts please-------------------------------------------------------

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Buy Eamonn Doyle's i here. 

Buy Euromaidan here.

See more work on the Ukraine on Friday 2nd May at the Third Floor Gallery.

And read Oliver Burkeman on why  blame relatively harmless people much more than completely evil bastards for there misdeeds.