Presenting Photographs
- elle walker
- May 21, 2020
- 5 min read
Updated: May 22, 2020
The Art of the Photobook
Modern photography so often falls victim to a modern complaint: images often remain in digital format, to be viewed only on computer and phone screens and shared across social media. This is not just a concern of digital photography, but with analogue images as well. If the processing lab delivers a set of scanned negatives to their customers, they are almost in a condition ready to be digitally shared with others.
Whilst digital technology has its place in photography, particularly the ease with which the images can be shared, there is no substitute for creating physical prints, and by extension, creating a collection of the prints in the form of a photobook.
There are many services available to photographers to aid the creation of their photo book, but between concept and printing, the photographer needs to consider several factors: design, the cover, narrative and the quality of the images themselves.
Saul Leiter, Early Color, (2016)
Saul Leiter’s Early Color, (2016), is a collection of his colour photographs created between 1948 -1960 in cities throughout the world. Though the photographs were taken in New York, Rome and Paris, they are all undeniably the work of a single photographer. The images depict a snippet of activity which is familiar to everyone: sitting across from another passenger on a train or a fleeting glimpse into a café window. The majority of the photographs are in portrait orientation, which presents the scene as though from the viewer’s point of view.
Saul Leiter, Early Color, 2006
The collection was curated by renowned art and photography book publisher Steidl.
The dust-jacketed cover shows one of the images from inside the book, Through Boards (1957), which is reminiscent of Mark Rothko’s Light Red Over Black (1957): both pieces were created in the same year, though it is not known if Leiter took inspiration from Rothko’s work or vice versa. Underneath the dust jacket is a linen covered case-bound book with lettering on the spine but not on the front cover.
L-R: Coachman (1957), Kutztown (1948)
The typeface is a design classic, Helvetica. The simplicity of the typeface is echoed in the design of the unnumbered pages. They have a very simple format, consisting of the title and the year of the images’ creation on the verso side with the image on the recto side. There are two instances where there is a double page spread of two images with no text. This feels as though the book designer was lulling the viewer out of the rhythmic manner of turning each page after viewing a single image at a time. The book is 20 cm x 20 cm and lends itself very well to the 6 inch x 4 inch size of the images, a traditional format of film photographs; it feels compact but does not feel any less imposing because of it.
Leiter acknowledges another artist in Mondrian Worker (1954), with an homage to the work of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). The geometric shapes within the image are created by boards and a ladder leaning against a wall.
Leiter was innovative in his approach to photography. Many of his contemporaries were using black and white film, as it was deemed more artistic than colour, but Leiter was shooting in Kodachrome slides. The muted colours on matte paper gives the impression of muting the chaotic activity on the streets.
Early Color has been reprinted seven times, cementing its reputation as being a perfect example of what a photobook should be: beautiful photography beautifully printed, which compels the photography lover to return to it time and again.
Sean Tucker, Collection I, (2017)
Collection I and Early Color are both square format and in a very similar size: Collection I is 21 cm x 21 cm whilst Early Color is 20 cm x 20 cm. Beyond that, Collection I is very different.
The self-published book is printed on “heavy stock” [1] and has perfect binding but the book does not lay flat, which may prevent some book lovers from cracking the spine in order to see the images clearly. The paper, whilst more than adequate for the cover, is not necessarily the best for the images as they appear to have absorbed a lot of the ink, making the images seem flat and lifeless, with details lost in some of the shadows.
The ninety images are a variety of Tucker’s “favourite shots”[2] from 2017 and encompasses portraits, street photography and travel images taken all over the world. The sequencing is disjointed, with portraits mixed in with the street photography and the tribal village photographs sandwiched between dusty American landscapes and more street images, making it hard to identify a visible narrative, particularly as there are no chapters to form a break in the flow of each type of image. The images do not adhere to any rule about orientation, as landscape and portrait sit across each other from spread to spread. What is clear is how the first half of the book comprises black and white images, with the latter half comprising colour images.
Periodically, there is a page where in place of a photograph, there is text, a quote which is taken from one of his own YouTube videos. The quotes are bite-sized pieces of his personal philosophy about slowing down, how making mistakes is acceptable and how he embraces fear as opposed to running away from it. Where Tucker excels is capturing light and shade, particularly in colour. Waiting for the decisive moment when a person walks into the frame in a perfectly composed pool of light is a skill that he has mastered. This is represented best in his Roman street images – perhaps the quality of light is different to that seen on a busy London street.
Collection I is an interesting series of photographs not necessarily presented in the best manner, but despite this, it’s worth taking the time to have a repeat viewing.
My book
For my own book, I would create a small, square format book, much like Leiter’s Early Color, as a smaller book is unobtrusive and would sit easily on a bookshelf. The text would be minimal, as I prefer to allow the viewer to read the images for themselves and bring their own interpretation to them. A case-bound book would ensure that the pages lay flat, as opposed to perfect binding which can sometime require the spine to be broken in order for the book to lie flat. Like Tucker and Leiter’s books, the images would be positioned centrally on the page: no images would be full bleed or positioned along the gutter as this would ruin the overall aesthetic of a small, neatly packaged book. There may be circumstances where larger images would bleed across the page or into the gutter, but for my current project, smaller is better.
excellent work comparing these 2 wonderful books, I'm especially jealous for beautifully bounded Saul Leiter book and would love to have a good look through when we return to college