The Hybrid Photobook
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SELF-PUBLISHING IN THE DIGITAL AGE: THE HYBRID PHOTOBOOK Exegesis submitted by DOUGLAS RONALD SPOWART Graduate Diploma Arts (Visual Art), Monash University (2003) Master of Photography, Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the Australian Institute of Professional Photography in October 2011 with creative work in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the School of Creative Arts JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My deepest gratitude goes to fellow PhD candidate and partner Victoria Cooper for her encouragement, challenge and support throughout the candidature. I would also wish to acknowledge Professor Diana Davis for the opportunity to engage with this research project and to Professor Dr Stephen Naylor for his supervision and mentorship through the process to its conclusion. For their generosity, support and willing participation during the process of the work, I wish to express my thanks to the following: SUPERVISORS • Professor Diana Davis – Principal Supervisor 2004-2006 • Professor Dr Stephen Naylor – Principal Supervisor 2006-2011 • Ronald McBurnie – Associate Supervisor MY MENTORS: FORMAL AND INFORMAL I have some heroes and heroines who historically have fuelled my interest in making photographs and books. These photographers, artists and bookmakers have rewarded my life and research activities through their book works, commentaries about books and occasionally, through personal conversation. Most importantly these mentors have shaped my work in the book as a personal communiqué. Thank you to: Victoria Cooper is my life partner and also a photographer and artists’ bookmaker. Whilst we work as independent practitioners, our fieldwork, conceptual refinement of work, and production work are often linked by the kinds of discussion that can take place over the breakfast table, driving in the car or walking. Although we conceptualise and resolve our own individual works, at times, our themes and site-specific working methods demand that we collaborate on projects that often conclude in major exhibitions of these individual and collaborative books. Douglas Holleley, originally an Australian photographer is currently a permanent resident of the United States living in New York State. He has a significant history in Australian Art photography beginning with his trade published photobook Visions of Australia (1980). Since the 1980s he has engaged in the production of numerous photobook, artists’ book projects, trade and print on demand books. His book on Digital Book: Design and Publishing (2001) is a seminal text of the topic. As an early adopter of technology his work and commentaries have influenced my personal conceptual and technical hybrid photobook workflows. Holleley was awarded a PhD for his thesis Luna Park, the Image of a Funfair in 1997 by the University of Sydney. The thesis was presented as a CD-ROM presentation of images and texts. ii Plate 1. Doug Spowart (1953- ) Peter Lyssiotis in his atelier, 2008. Peter Lyssiotis’ political bookwork has been known to me since the 1980s. His work is published in national and international photography and artists’ book journals and texts. His use of the photomontage, constructed from images snipped and cut from contemporary magazines, to comment on the society that created them has resonance with aspects of my research. Lyssiotis’ use of the photo-narrative combining images and texts greatly informs that part of my practice. During my research we have exchanged communiqués, I have documented and interviewed him in his atelier. Martin Parr, as a member of the Magnum photo agency, has commanded an international audience in photography and photobook media. His use of the banal, of whimsy and dark humour particularly connects with my own photographic works from the 1980s. Parr is one of the more influential photobook commentators and collectors contributing to seminal texts, interviews and discussions on the subject. Parr is arguably an enigma as he stridently ‘protects’ the photobook genre as a space for photographers and yet still dabbles in the ‘artists’ book’ as a sideline to his broader photobook publishing ventures. Ed Ruscha’s seminal work in the artists’ book/photobook field and his approach to the photograph as ‘facts’ not to be fetishised as a thing of aesthetic beauty has influenced an approach to my imaging workflow during this project. His bland factual image work and his use of the photodocument in books like the Royal Road Test (1969) with other collaborators inspired and informed some of my books. I first encountered Ed Ruscha’s work in an exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art in Market Street, Brisbane in the early 1980s. Seeing Every building on Sunset Strip (1962) pinned to the gallery wall was a spark of inspiration that was referenced in my support of my mother, Ruby Spowart’s pseudo-panorama Streetscape and Wallscape works of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1962), challenged me to extend the image beyond the one or two-page spread in books, and make books that extended into three-dimensional space for many metres. iii Plate 2. Victoria Cooper (1957- ) The author with Keith A. Smith (right) and Scott McCarney (centre). Keith A. Smith is another influential artists’ bookmaker with a practice that goes back to the beginnings of the genre in the 1960s. Smith’s exploration of the artists’ book discipline has created one of the most diverse bodies of work. Apart from making his own books he has always taught the discipline as well as published an impressive ‘how-to-do-it’ series of books that inform and inspire bookmakers in the conceptual and technical aspects of the medium. Smith has informed my understanding of the use of text in books, book structures, their design and assembly and the opportunities provided by introduction of computers into the self-publishing discipline. Most importantly for me was his commentary on the ‘reader’s experience’, of narrative, page-turning, pause and flow influences. In 2006 I attended a workshop with Keith Smith and his partner Scott McCarney (also a significant artists’ bookmaker), at Studio West End, Brisbane. Alec Soth represents the emerging breed of photobook creators that connect a practice in traditional photobook forms with new and emerging artists’ book informed publishing strategies. With his recently established Wordpress Blog, entitled Little Brown Mushroom (LBM), he has created a meeting place and a clearing-house for discussion around all kinds of contemporary photoimaging. Through LBM he publishes small format, limited edition, zine-like and Ruscha-esque democratic multiple booklets by major photographers including his own work. iv ARTISTS & PHOTOGRAPHERS • Julie Barratt • Dr Michael Coyne • Wim de Vos • John Elliott • Dr Felicity Rea • Robert Hirsh • Dr Douglas Holleley • Alan Loney (writer, publisher and poet) • Peter Lyssiotis • Scott McCarney • Tim Mosely • Monica Oppen • Adele Outteridge • Ian Poole • Maris Rusis • Keith A. Smith • John Williams (artisan bookbinder) LIBRARIES, LIBRARIANS, GALLERIES, CURATORS & GALLERISTS • Julie Barratt – Barratt Galleries, Alstonville • Julian Bowron – formerly, Director Arts and Heritage, Mildura Art Centre • Helen Cole – Librarian, Australian Library of Art, State Library of Queensland • Des Cowley – Manager, Rare Books and Manuscripts, State Library of Victoria • Noreen Grahame – Grahame Galleries and Editions • Jeff Moorfoot – Ballarat International Foto Bennalé • Gael Newton – Curator of Photography, National Gallery of Australia • Post Office Gallery – Ballarat University • The Queensland Centre for Photography • The Royal Society, London • Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery • Michael Wardell – formerly, Director, Artspace Mackay v JOURNAL EDITORS & PUBLISHERS • Sarah Bodman – Editor of the Blue Notebook, Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England • Peter De Verheyen – Publisher and Editor/Reviewer, Bonefolder Journal, Book Arts Web • Linda Douglas – Publisher and Editor, Australian Artists’ Book Journal • Peter Eastway – Publisher and Editor, Better Photography magazine • Sue Forster – Editor of Imprint Journal • Karen vanMeenen – Editor, Afterimage Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York, USA. SUPPORTERS • Dr Deborah Beaumont • Bundanon Trust • Professor Emeritus Des Crawley • Jackie Dean – Former Chairman of the Board, Australian Institute of Professional Photography • Dr Tamsin Kerr • Myall Park Botanic Garden and board member Carol McCormack • John Reid – Environmental Study Centre, Australian National University Douglas Ronald Spowart 18 March 2012 vi ABSTRACT Self-publishing in the digital age: The hybrid photobook The inventor of the positive/negative process for photography, 19th century polymath Henry Fox Talbot, was so enthusiastic about the potential for his discovery that he made a prediction for a future where, ‘Every man [would be] his own printer and publisher’ (Talbot 1839:HS/17/289). Now, 170 years on, Fox Talbot’s prediction is being realised. From the beginning of the process the value of the photographic image as a form of communication was instantly recognised, and photographs became a necessary and popular addition to books. The design and production of these books was usually overseen by the entrepreneurial and editorial control of a publisher. Book publishing required a raft of specialist tasks to be carried out under the control of production teams. This complicated structure usually alienated photographers