Following the advice of Colberg, in the end, I decided to remove the computer as much as possible from the process of creating my photobook. Once the images were printed the computers relationship with my book was complete. I knew already that I hadn't been happy with digitally printed books that I had in the past from online publishers such as blurb, and I also knew that I wanted to knew that I wanted this book to be a personal experience. This project is about sex, fetish, fear and exploration. It is intimate, and close. The book should portray this, even just holding the book there should be a link to the work. This is why I knew the book should be bound by hand, and bound in leather.
With the decision made to make my book by hand, I brought in a friend of mine who runs workshops on book binding and we worked together using leather from an old handbag, and pieces of older books to bring together my own hand bound leather book. This took several session to complete across three weeks. This mean reproducing this publication would be difficult and time consuming, that doesnt mean it wouldnt be reproduced at all, but given the means of preduction, every one would be a bit different, but they all would be tactile and an experience of their own. This one for example had rings, buckles and a zip all left over from the handback it used to be, and while I could have removed them, they fit a little too well with the fetish theme running in my work.
After completing the making of my book, I then needed to print and adhere my images into it. At this point, time and budget constraints hit once more, so the printing quality is not what I would have wanted all, and due to the size limitation of my studio photo printer, the two largest images in the series had to printed on a lazer printer on standard paper. This would not be how I would let the book go out, but this is after all just a dummy, a proof of concept. Ideally the work would be printed using a metallic process that I have used in the past, what I love most about metallic prints is how the deep blacks seem matt and only the colours shine, it work well for my style of photography and would have been perfect for this book.
The layout is very similar to my second draft, with a few extra images, particularly from the studio and from the phone photos taken from the third point of view. The book is raw, tactile and rough, and to some degree I feel the low quality prints help to add to the character of the book.
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