THE PHOTOBOOK ITSELF

“The Middle of Somewhere”, a photobook by Sam Harris contains documentary images of his wife and two daughters travelling India and Australia, focusing on capturing memories of his daughters growing up, with a large reference to growing up living off the land in rural communities. The photobook is not organised in chronological order: purely intending to capture memories, the photobook displays themes of family, fatherhood and growing up.

WHO IS THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Sam Harris created this personal photo project in order to capture memories of his young family’s travel through India and Australia, this project grew into an independently published book that won multiple awards including a Lucie Award 2015, and most recently the People’s Choice for the Australian Photobook of the Year Awards 2015.

WHAT IS THE NARRATIVE, CONCEPT AND DESIGN OF THE BOOK

The book is quite like a scrapbook in a way, deep within the pages lie an amalgamation of scribbled memories, with alternative narratives, diary entries, post-its, hastily scrawled love notes and tea stained prints: with the almost poetic title supplying intrigue to readers as it looks almost like a notebook- with the title being whimsical and vague.

The book is portrait and has a soft card, textured cover, with the look of being hand-drawn and painted with a simple small wraparound containing the name “The Middle of Somewhere” and “Sam Harris” handwritten, presumably by the photographer himself.

Inside the book, pictures are only in colour. Depth and context is added throughout the book in the form of inserts, foldouts and even an almost separate book inside called “Travelogue” containing images from travelling to India and Australia.

There are running motifs throughout the book, with images often only being warm toned and vibrant- obviously since the book is about Harris’ family, images are concentrated on his family and are in (somewhat) chronological order: with text sharing context and background of the images.

As stated before, there is an influx of fold outs and inserts in this photobook, mainly being of text; including recipes, diary entries, context for the images, post it notes written by Harris’ children and even a whole almost other separate book titled “Travelodge” containing images of the young family travelling and living in Australia and India.

The images themselves are not massively edited, it is potential they have been made more vivid or saturated however as they were taken to capture memories- it is unlikely they have been edited. There is one image in black and white featuring a particularly stormy day however all the other images are stylistically vivid in colour, mainly warm tones however rich greens and blues are presented.