Studio E. R., copyright 2018 Mark Ruwedel
Last weekend I had an opportunity to participate as a panelist for a discussion about photo books during PhotoLA 2019. A subject dear to my heart. As a result, I completed the hour and half drive up to Santa Monic for three of the four days for this event, while usually I am only good for one day. You can see a lot in one afternoon at an art fair. All in all, PhotoLA was a great meeting place for a ton of LA photographers and be inspired by lots of photography; historical, modern and contemporary.
One of the reasons that I returned to PhotoLA so often this time is the work I am doing for two mentoring clients regarding their pending book designs I am working on. I wanted to dive deep at the four book publishers and one book store who were present, specifically looking for a couple of books that I had pre-visualized for my clients. While doing so, I also came across a very elegant and relatively simple hard-cove book that inspired me. Yes, I found myself dreaming about creating a new series of self-published photobooks, perhaps similar to Editions Bessard’s Zine Collection or Nazraeli Press’s One Photo Books. Both of these publishers include a small signed print with each book. hmmmm.
So I am doing a little book brainstorming and I have already created a blank book-dummy and some preliminary design notes; enough to be able to request a ball-park quote from a book printer for the printing and binding. With the printing quote, I will find out if I am in the ball-park for what I think these should sell for and if I want to proceed. Meanwhile, I already have a project selected that I will evaluate as to which photographs I might include in the book and an idea of which one will be printed and provided as a signed photograph to include with the book. So I should be able to finish the initial book-dummy shortly.
I think that this will provide some interesting possibilities. So stay tuned!
Cheers
Singular Images 