I have not provided very many updates recently about my book-dummy for The Flow of Light Brushes the Shadow, that investigates (my) separation anxiety as it relates to travel. A bit unusual for me. Let’s just say that this book-dummy has been bouncing around a lot during its development this year. So this is the unveiling of what has resulted; a book-dummy that combines a number of my travel related projects (e.g. Instant Nomad) due to the realization during the pandemic about my underlying anxiety and how this became an increasingly larger issue during my extensive domestic and international traveling. Except at the time I was traveling, I was not really aware of my on-going issues, just that I had these vague feelings of things like isolation and alienation, which I was attempting to capture, such as the photograph above that I made in England.
Last spring while I was working on another book-dummy version of the Instant Nomad project is when I began to understand more about my personal travel issues and that this specific project could be much broader in scope. I also realized that there were other travel related bodies of work that could be unified under an anxiety/travel concept, including those I made in China that were loosely held together in a project title Flow of Light Brush the Shadow. That truncated title is more of a direct translation from the Chinese Mandarin ‘Liu Guan Lue Yin’, while realizing that another Americanized version of it, The Flow of Light Brushes the Shadow, could provide an ambiguous and more poetic version related to my re-visualized body of work. Cool!
Thus began the journey of synthesizing all of the related travel images under this refined concept. Now the resulting book-dummy is completed and it is time to start thinking about next steps towards publication. The book is meant to provide an insiders viewpoint of this mental health condition. The resulting 43 photographs are a mash-up of staged self-portraits, the photo above as one example, abstracted metaphoric ‘travel portraits’ and some broader environmental urban landscapes to create some context.
I expanded my artist statement into an Afterword as a placeholder in the book-dummy. I would prefer to have someone else’s perspective included in the eventual book, while this does double-duty, a placeholder for an Afterword as well as explaining my underlying concept for the body of work.
After a very long delay, I just created a project folder for this project on my website with an interesting sampling of the photographs that are included in the final book-dummy. Sort of a visual tease to create some interest in the potential photobook. At this point, these sample photographs are not in the same sequence as the book-dummy in order to provide another sequencing alternative since I envision this is a non-linear narrative.
I have also created two pdfs to use for publisher submissions, one specific version for reading in Acrobat and the other when using Preview in addition to my physical book-dummy, (what I call my walk-about version). Regretfully an Acrobat pdf will not read properly using Preview, and the reverse is true as well. Details, details, details.
So now to start the publishing queries, while concurrently obtaining printing and bindery quotes if I decide to self-publish instead. As you might imagine, more updates to come. Wish me luck!
Cheers,
Doug
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Workshops, as well as a portfolio review opportunities by dates are:
Southeast Center for Photography (SEC4P): Creative PhotoBook workshop (Sold Out), a virtual event on Zoom; January 22 & 23 and 29 & 30, 2022, 10am – 1pm, EST (3 hour session each day, with a week between the weekend sessions to work your book-dummy).
Los Angeles Center of Photography (LACP): Exposure Weekend, virtual portfolio reviews, which I am one of the many portfolio reviewers available, January 27 – 30th, 2022, details here.
Medium Photo: Developing a Creative Photo Book, a virtual (Zoom) workshop I will be leading again in conjunction with Medium Photo on: March 5th & 6th and then March 12th & 13th, 2022, from 9am to noon, PST. More details and sign-up available now at Medium Photo.
Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC): Developing a Creative Photo Book, a virtual (Zoom) workshop I will be leading on Saturday & Sunday, May 14th & 15th and then Saturday & Sunday 21st and 22nd, 2022, from 1pm to 4pm Mountain Time (MT). Registration is open with discounts for members.
Singular Images 