My shelfie from home is rather lack lustre. Unfortunatly most of my photography books reside in my studio. Only two of these books are even my own, "Twilight" by gregory Crewdson and "On Planet Earth" by Jan Staller. "The Dualism" is a book borrowed from a friend of mine on a recommendation. Though I have come to this task late, it work well as this was also a chance for me to take another look at the design and layout choices made by the artists.
"Twilight" - Gregory Crewdson
Crewdson uses a style that Colberg (2016) refers to as the Walker Evans style "gallery show on paper" where by every left side is left blank save for maybe a title, and the image is placed perfectly centred on the right hand side. Colberg says himself that there is technicaly nothing wrong with this, and infact this is how I had imagined many photobooks were, we will see that Jan Stallar has a similar approach, though with some variations, and indeed this is the exact design my first draft has followed.But colberg also goes on to describe this design ethic as boring, refering to deutch designers whose opinion are that this does not fully explore the potential of what a photobook can be. I don't beleive that on my own I could fully realise the potential of good layout and design, but I will take Colbergs advise and try to a little more than a simple repeating pattern.
Although not necessary for myself, I do appreciate the behind the scenes included at the back of "Twilight", with photographs taken on set giving an idea of the scale of the project.
"On Planet Earth" - Jan Staller
Staller seems to have taken the concept of the American photobook and played with the design far more than Crewdson. Starting with blank pages on the left, as the book continues the pages begin to fill with other images, counter images, in some cases bright vs dark but on other spreads sister images in terms of their subject and content. As you delve deeper in Staller makes use of the wider spread allowing select images to flow in large format across on the gutter onto the next page. Sometimes aligned to the left or right leaving a blank gap, I suspect this may be a consideration of where the gutter fall on the image, something to remember for myself.
"The Dualism" - Dualism
The Dualism certainly does not follow the same design ethic as the previous two books. It's an interesting note that the two preceding books were both american, this however is an English photobook. I find the Dualism to be very confrontational, every single page is used to its full capacity, and where the photos do not fit on the full spread prints, they have filled the top and bottom margins with gritty texture matching the gritty nature of the images. Even the sleve, despite being new, is printed to look old, ripped and tarnished. This book should not be considered clean in anyway. The colours of the prints are saturated and grainy, though interspersed here and there with unexpectedly delicate monotone portraits. Its as if the book gives you time to breath before throwing you back in to the confrontation. The passages of text have been given a harsh drop shadow and layerd over gritty texture, again to match the style of the images displayed in this book.
Crewdson, G. and Moody, R. (2003). Twilight. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
The Dualism. (2010). Gardners Books.
Jörg Colberg. 2016, Understanding Photobooks, Focal Press.
Staller, J. (1997). On planet Earth. New York: Aperture.
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