I have decided to make a small handmade book as an additional final outcome for this project. Ideally I’d like to make the book myself using the skills I have learnt from the book-binding workshops that I have attended but due to the limited amount of time I don’t think this will be a possibility. Alternatively I will buy a book to work with so that I can spend more time on presenting the images within it. The content of the book is going to focus on my portraiture and performance photographs. I chose to make a handmade book rather than a Blurb book because I wanted to have more freedom to explore different design techniques, for example I am planning on incorporating some small mirrors and reflective material to further explore the idea of reflections. This way the book will also be more personal and is partly inspired by my research into Duane Michals and the way he presents his series of images and combines them with handwritten notes to create a new layer of meaning. I am also planning to include some handwritten notes such as lines of poetry which will add interest and create questions for the viewer to think about. I have created a mood-board of ideas for the presentation of this book, taking inspiration from the style of photo-albums and simple scrap-books.

I have also looked briefly into the work of professional photographers who have created handmade photo-books which relate to the theme of ‘Environment’.  For example I looked at the photography of Jean Pagliuso who is an American photographer who explores places of ritual and endangered environments. She realised that she wanted to share more from the ancient religious landmarks that she was photographing other than conventional black-and-white prints. She began experimenting with the alternative printing processes, “I wanted to make my images look like ‘rubbings’ made from stone carvings,” she said. “Like the kits they sell to transfer rock etchings onto paper”. She developed a method of printing the images on rice paper, by coating it with silver gelatin and laying it on an aluminium plate to dry.  She first presented her images this way in an exhibition and then published them in book form using the same technique. She said “I went to a book designer,but traditional bookmaking didn’t seem to be the right approach. I wanted the book to reflect the amazing hands-on work required to make one of these prints. I also wanted to use the same paper for the book pages that I used in the darkroom”. She has also explained that it is difficult to set a price for a handmade book and “Any photographer considering a handmade book project should have a higher purpose in mind than just money”.

I also looked at Martin Parr’s limited edition version of ‘Life’s a beach’. This project explores the British tradition of photography by the seaside. Parr has been photographing this subject for many decades, documenting all aspects of the tradition often in a satirical way. It includes photographs of people from other places in the world on the beach to explore cultural differences and similarities. The book has a cardboard slipcase and the appearance of an old-fashioned photo album. Each image is placed under photo corner slits and hand-labelled with the location. Between each page is a tissue sheet protecting the images.

Lastly I was inspired by Irene Imfeld’s books inspired by Earth. She is a  graphic artist who studied photography in college. Her landscape and nature-based photographs draw on aesthetic traditions from realism to minimalism and her work is personal and spiritual. She says “I’ve always been inspired by landscapes—painting and photography”. Imfeld picked up bookmaking skills while working in the publishing industry and by attending workshops. “I make my books from scratch,” she says, “The covers of Landscape Fragments are wood, cut out of hardwood and finished by a furniture maker. I simply glued a thick piece of museum board on the inside to keep the wood away from the prints.” The 24 triptych images are printed on individual pieces of paper and they are not bound together, but stacked between the covers in the style of a Tibetan book.