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ON A RECENT ENTRY SEAN M. WROTE re: the an ADIRONDACK Guide book: “This will be for sale? I want it.” Answer: Yes. A published book for distribution / sale is in the works. Will most likely be available in 3 months.
Re; the book. Over time, as this body of work has been edited down to a 50 photograph collection for inclusion in a book, I have made 5 “proof” POD books, each with a slightly different selections of photographs, The purpose was to try to determine what combination might work best to convey / illustrate the look and feel of the total body of work (450 photographs). Frustratingly for me, to my eye and sensibilities, none of the different edits seemed to do the trick; which is not to state that they were” bad”. Rather, they just did not seem to light my fire. However …..
…. during this period of time I was showing the various “proof” books to a considerable number of people; not all of the variations but just whatever one was the latest variation, and, no viewer viewed a different variation of the book. ASIDE an overwhelming number (95%?) of the viewers were “locals”, i.e. residents of the Park who were not affiliated with the arts in any manner, aka: just “regular” people END ASIDE Much to my astonishment, the response from everyone was extremely and unabashedly positive to each variation.
What I came to realize was that, whatever my final edit is, it will not be “wrong”. In fact, it is reasonable to write that it might require some concertedly weird herculean effort to screw it up––not very probable but, never say never.
That issue settled, I turned to picture sequencing in the book. True be told, when I am making photo books, I have never been much concerned with sequencing inasmuch as rarely am I striving to tell a story. Rather, I am trying to create a feeling for any given body of my work. And, I do believe that my work is best viewed as a body of work; in many cases that is the only way some of my work makes any “sense”.
In the case of the an ADIRONDACK Guide book my only guiding principle, sequencing wise, was to be certain to give the work a very random sequence feeling. That is, to avoid having a person picture immediately follow another person picture, a landscape picture follow another landscape picture, and so on. Randomness was also important to experiencing the work cuz, in actual fact, that is exactly the manner in which the photographs were made––randomly, over an extended period of time.
That written, coincidentally, yesterday as I was researching material for a future blog entry, I came across this from Sally Eauclaire from her book, the new color photography:
“Eggleston’s work has supplanted the self-sufficient art work with organically welded groups of photographs intended to be experienced in a book format. The effects can be almost incantatory, with individual photographs providing interdependent statements that contribute to an aura of feeling. Flashes, fragments and snared moments ultimately cohere. By proceeding in such an indeterminate and dynamic manner, Eggleston appears to be tapping what William James called “invasive experiences”––upsurges of subliminal energies into the conscious mind.”
Yikes! Anyone else out there think it to be somewhat cosmically weird that I find this at the same time I as I am dealing with putting a book together?