{"id":2842,"date":"2012-11-23T21:07:40","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T02:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nvps.org\/home\/?p=2842"},"modified":"2018-02-04T15:25:56","modified_gmt":"2018-02-04T20:25:56","slug":"chapbooks-an-artist-made-book-alternative-for-photographers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nvps.org\/home\/chapbooks-an-artist-made-book-alternative-for-photographers\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapbooks: An Artist-made Book Alternative for Photographers"},"content":{"rendered":"

You are no doubt reading this because you are a photographer.\u00a0 So, let me repeat to you a question I was asked last year at a social gathering after I was introduced to another artist.\u00a0 My friend said, \u201cLet me introduce Brooks Jensen.\u00a0 He\u2019s a photographer.\u201d\u00a0 The other artist then asked the most curious question:\u00a0 What is your primary art form?<\/em>\u00a0 I was nonplussed for a moment.\u00a0 I\u2019m so used to being asked what camera<\/em> I use that I was totally unprepared for such a question.\u00a0 Not wanting to sound stupid, I paused to gather my thoughts before answering.\u00a0 Curiously enough, the first words that popped into my head were images and ideas<\/strong>.\u00a0 I must tell you, I was as surprised by my answer as I was by her question \u2013 surprised that I did not reflexively think prints<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For some 40 years, I\u2019ve thought of myself as a print-maker.\u00a0 This identity is so ingrained in me that I rarely give it a second thought.\u00a0 Her question, however, was so intriguing, it motivated me to think more deeply about these unconscious definitions I\u2019d been carrying around for decades.\u00a0 Are prints hung on the wall the best medium for images and ideas?<\/em>\u00a0 If images and ideas are the true form of my artwork, then what then is<\/em> the best medium for expressing them?\u00a0 What if I answer publications<\/em> rather than prints?\u00a0 A print on the wall is a terrific vehicle for an image, but as Ted Orland advised me in a workshop review of my work in the 1980s \u2013 after listening to me wax on about the concept behind a weak image I was showing him \u2013 photography is a poor medium for philosophy.\u00a0 He was right.\u00a0 Words express complex ideas far better than images do.\u00a0 Images express a more visceral emotion than words.\u00a0 Each has its strength.\u00a0 Together, they are magic.<\/p>\n

My head began to spin.\u00a0 Years of training protested \u2013 Art goes in the gallery or the museum!<\/em>\u00a0 Yes, I thought \u2013 except when it lives in the concert hall, or the theater, or the novel, or the stage, or in people\u2019s homes, or when recorded for television, movies, or recorded music.\u00a0 So, maybe only a very limited type of art lives in the gallery or the museum.\u00a0 I\u2019d toyed with this early in my photographic career, but had never let go of that sense of self-identity as a print maker.<\/p>\n

I blame Stieglitz.\u00a0 He was the driving force who removed photographs from the bureau and display case and placed them in a frame on the gallery wall.\u00a0 With very few exceptions, the history of artistic photography in the 20th<\/sup> century is linked to the frame and the wall.\u00a0 When I plunged into photography, this method of production and presentation had been so codified as to be sacrosanct.\u00a0 Only oddballs proposed fine art photography outside the frame, and if it did appear, say, on a coffee can, it was considered mere advertising and gimmickry. \u00a0Serious photographic art required mat board and glass as much as it required a signature and archival materials.<\/p>\n

It was 22 years ago now when I first got off that train and started producing folios \u2013 small collections of prints intended for handheld viewing, rich in paper textures and tactile materials.\u00a0 Folios are still one of my favorite ways to produce and view photographs.\u00a0 Folios do, however have a structure that tends to separate any text from the images.\u00a0 Folios \u2013 at least the ones that I\u2019ve produced \u2013 have a text component the typically precedes<\/em> the images, e.g., an artist statement, perhaps even a 4 or 8-page text signature on folded sheets.\u00a0 I have not found the folio format a comfortable match for images and long-form text on the same page.\u00a0 For that, I needed another format.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s when I was studying artists\u2019 books as a potential medium for photography, I was introduced to that wide world of beautiful handmade publications.\u00a0 Like the world of photography, there are hundreds of dedicated and creative artists whose primary medium is the handmade book \u2013 artist-made books of poetry, short stories, calligraphy, and even woodblock prints.\u00a0 Their world is one of beautiful paper and incredibly clever binding techniques, exquisite letterpress printing, exacting and meticulous production that creates the most wonderful artifacts in paper that you can imagine.\u00a0 It\u2019s always been in the back of my mind that photography and this world of handmade artist books were comfortable cousins, if not siblings.\u00a0 I can only imagine where we would be today if Stieglitz had been great friends with William Morris \u2013 an unlikely possibility because Morris died in 1896, but I can still fantasize about it.<\/p>\n

To be honest, I was frustrated in my attempts to join photography and handmade books because the materials of photography were simply not manageable in the binding process.\u00a0 Gelatin silver paper simply refuses to fold gracefully.\u00a0 Two-sided printing is impossible in the darkroom.\u00a0 Even the challenge of creating a perfectly flat photograph from the darkroom was overwhelming without the use of dry mount tissue and some form of beefy and inflexible substructure like mat board.\u00a0 Fortunately, my frustrations in bookbinding nudged me in the direction of folios as a better alternative \u2013 a presentation method I have no doubt I would never have invented had I been successful in binding original gelatin silver prints.<\/p>\n

But of course, times have changed.\u00a0\u00a0 Today\u2019s printing techniques lend themselves beautifully to the handmade book.\u00a0 Two-sided inkjet papers are common and quite wonderful.\u00a0 Folding and binding are entirely possible and even easy.\u00a0 The practical age of the photographic handmade artist book has arrived.\u00a0 And, circling back to the beginning of this article, we now have an ideal format for the presentation of photography and text in a finely crafted art piece.\u00a0 What W. Eugene Smith and his generation could only accomplish in the crude quality of magazine printing, we can now accomplish in a finely crafted, original art-quality printed and bound artifact.<\/p>\n

Chapbooks<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In today\u2019s world of handmade artist books, the term \u201cchapbook\u201d is common and universally understood.\u00a0 In our world of photography, it requires a bit of explanation.\u00a0 The term chapbook<\/em> derives from the \u201cchapmen\u201d of early England.\u00a0 A c<\/em>\u0113apman<\/em> in Old English (\u201ccheap man\u201d) was a tradesman, often a street vendor, who sold small, inexpensive, pamphlet-like publications \u2013 religious tracts, political commentary, or even educational essays.<\/p>\n

In more modern times, the chapbook concept has been adopted by the art community as \u2013 typically \u2013 small, handmade books of poetry, calligraphy, or occasionally a short story.\u00a0 Artist chapbooks are as much about design and craftsmanship in bookmaking as they are about the intellectual content of the piece.\u00a0 Artist-made chapbooks are a celebration of paper and handcraft.\u00a0 Do a Google search and you will be amazed at the creativity of this amazing art form.<\/p>\n

Well, fine art photography is also as much about craftsmanship as it is about the content of the image.\u00a0 Photography and the world of chapbooks have been walking a parallel path for over a century, but have barely glimpsed each other through the trees.\u00a0 Chapbooks are the perfect<\/em> vehicle for images and text, combined in an artifact that preserves the beauty of an original photographic print with the design elements of layout and text.\u00a0 They can be a few pages in length to a dozen or more.\u00a0 They are part book, part layout and text, part handcraft.<\/p>\n

Sketches<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

To explore this idea more fully with my own photography, I\u2019ve started a new series I call Sketches<\/em>.\u00a0 This Sketches<\/em> series is part notebook, part sketchbook, part diary, part travel journal, part random thoughts, part photographic portfolio \u2013 a mixture of images and words.\u00a0 They are an eclectic series of observations that allow me to explore design and layout ideas with more freedom than wall art.\u00a0 They also allow me the freedom to look at the world in front of my lens and share what I see and think about this marvelous process of living.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the classic book, Sketches by Boz<\/em> (an early pen name of Charles Dickens, one of my favorite authors), I learned that every story need not be a tale with beginning, middle, and end \u2013 nor a morality play with a \u201cmessage.\u201d\u00a0 Just looking and seeing the world for the fascinating thing that it is can be enough.\u00a0 Photography was built for just such a purpose.\u00a0 Combined with words, a photograph can be a sketch of life just as Dickens did with his words and the accompanying drawings by Cruikshank.\u00a0 Why not adapt Dickens\u2019 great idea for our modern tools?<\/p>\n

I think of this Sketches<\/em> series as the photographic equivalent of short stories, or perhaps micro-essays.\u00a0 They are short projects, often just a handful of images and short text that are intended as quick observations.\u00a0 Less than a book, more than a print, these Sketches<\/em> are, well, sketches of life.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to say they are profound, but I really hope they are simply fun and a way for us to share a few thoughts, experiences, and travels.<\/p>\n

In reviewing my photographic archives, I realized that I have thousands<\/em> of small observations, moments, encounters, and experiences that are scattered throughout my photographic archive, just waiting for an ideal medium.\u00a0 Some are moments of wonderful light, some are portraits of interesting people, some breathtaking landscapes that inspired thought, and some are simple small encounters that I hope are worth sharing.\u00a0 Eclectic in nature, varied in style and content, long and short, a few images or a dozen, lengthy text or just a sentence or two, I have been working toward this format for decades, unaware until recently that I was.<\/p>\n

Physical chapbooks do have one serious limitation that all printed materials have \u2013 the audience will be limited to whatever I can create and distribute.\u00a0 Because I\u2019d like this series to be seen by an even wider audience, I\u2019m creating Sketches<\/em> in two parallel media: virtual and physical.\u00a0 This way, if a viewer wants to see and enjoy (but not own) a chapbook, they can just download a free PDF.\u00a0 They look great on an iPad or other tablet device.\u00a0 For those who want the experience of the physical presentation<\/em> I do offer the printed artist-made chapbook through our LensWork online store.\u00a0 I love the way the physical chapbooks and the downloadable PDFs complement each other and create a more complete environment that fuels my creativity.<\/p>\n

Another Set of Skills<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the last thing we photographers need is another set of new skills to learn.\u00a0 We thought that mastering the Zone System would prepare our way for smooth sailing for the rest of our photography careers.\u00a0 On the shoals of digital photography, however, we all realized we needed to learn another set of skills involving computers and pixels, memory cards and complex software.\u00a0 I suppose it should not surprise us that there is a series of skills and tools that are required in order to succeed in making our own chapbooks, too.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, chapbooks can be as simple or as complex as your imagination.\u00a0 A simple, one sided, French fold design can be created with an office printer.\u00a0 At the other end of the spectrum, you could create a book with multiple signatures, tipped-in platinum palladium prints, bound in calfskin with gold thread headbands.\u00a0 And in between are an infinite number of variations and possibilities.\u00a0 If you are fortunate enough to find a class or workshop being offered in handmade book arts, you could not go wrong by signing up.\u00a0 There are also a few terrific books I\u2019ll recommend: Creative Bookbinding<\/em> by Pauline Johnson is the one I learned with: Bookcraft: Techniques for Binding, Folding, and Decorating to Create Books and More<\/em> by Heather Weston is a great place to start; Making Books by Hand: A Step-by-Step Guide<\/em> by Mary McCarthy is liberally illustrated with photographs on how to make some simple accordion designs.\u00a0 There are more, I\u2019m sure, but none will fully replace the hands-on experience you can receive with a good workshop teach or classroom guidance.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What particularly excites me about this idea is its incredible richness.\u00a0 Design possibilities are only limited by our imagination.\u00a0 Paper options are unbelievably varied, sensual, and gorgeous.\u00a0 More than a few photographers have observed that the cost of framing a single print today is outrageous compared to the cost to produce the photograph \u2013 and in the world of chapbooks we finally have an alternative to present our images out of the frame that we can complete with relatively simple and inexpensive tools.\u00a0 As I began to design and produce handmade chapbooks with my photographs, I became recharged about the possibilities for presenting photography in a new way that could bring viewers closer to my work with an intimate and tactile experience not possible behind glass in a frame.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Signed Brooks Jensen<\/p>\n

Reprinted with permission from LensWork <\/em>#102, LensWork Publishing , www.lenswork.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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