New Photo Book Is the Graphic Novel Only You Can Write
I can’t recall what gave me the idea to make a book out of the Comedy of Darkness collection of images. If you’re familiar with my work, it probably wouldn’t come as a surprise. I don’t hide the fact that I like to bracket a set of images within a theme of some kind.
When I met with Kimi Kitada at Charlotte Street Foundation’s building, I was pitching a gallery exhibit, but I left with the prospect of a live performance (see the previous blog entry for details on this). As plans for the show began to take shape with my collaborators, Alexis Borth and Colin Blunt, I felt I had to find some way to get the images themselves into peoples’ hands. I guess that’s when it occurred to me.
I had a rough idea of what a book might cost from assisting Angie Jennings with a couple of photo exhibitions at KC Society for Creative Photography’s recently vacated storefront (they’re doing 4 shows this year without their own venue). For those shows, books were created on demand for a few dollars each, using printers found online. And Philipp Eirich at Cerbera Gallery had recommended a couple of really good printers in the area when I mentioned a book to him.
Then, a few months ago, I was chatting with the good-natured young couple that lives 2 houses north of mine, and I found out that he works at a printing business that his father owns: 2 Friends Printing in Lenexa. And they’d done work for KC Art Institute, which made them more than good enough to handle my modest edition. 2 Friends produced a 12”X9”, 20-page book that could be priced accessibly for any reader. The color is spectacular and the overall quality is terrific. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this printer. (For prints of images that are to be framed, I always go to John Hans at Dolphin Archival Printing in the West Bottoms. If you’ve purchased any of my prints, you know what I’m talking about - the guys is amazing.)
The book’s design took a little more time. From the moment I knew I had to make a book, and well before the printers appeared on the scene, design at first seemed easy, then hard, then very hard. I surrendered to the fact that I hadn’t actually laid out a book (I’m an intuitive, untrained user of Adobe Indesign), and I did what I always do first when I want to learn something: I search YouTube. Ted Forbes does several nice episodes on book design in his show, The Art of Photography. There are many other sources of this information, as well, and after watching a few hours of research, I accepted the clear challenge, which is how to include ALL the images you want without crowding or violating the theme you’ve selected.
The answer came in the form of a graphic novel-like layout that placed the images in a sequence suggesting (at least to me) a narrative. In the book, there are no image titles. There aren’t even any page numbers. The idea is to help readers access the story that might lurk in their minds. And the book, while nice enough to keep on your coffee table, is inexpensive enough that a person wouldn’t feel bad about disassembling it and placing the images in another sequence.
The live show is finally in rehearsal as I write this, and I can’t wait to see it later this week!