Cal, you have your Muse, a bicycle like Bill Cunningham and a beautiful light in your valley. Of course your cameras and your photographic eye, cool!
Perhaps next a "Monster Book" about the Hudson Valley ? What a super project it would be !
Robert,
Like you I enjoy making books, but I have to give credit to John (JSRocket) for his bookmaking discipline.
My monster books are kinda crazy and over the top. I give Salgado the credit for that. I saw his show Genesis at ICP and Salgado used the best lab in Paris to print huge. He shot both film and digital over a long period to create this body of work. It was told that tight airport security helped inform the switch to digital midstream.
I have to say that Salgado printed mucho big, and the IQ was of large format shooting. Kudos to a great lab in Paris. Separately in SoHo I stumbled upon a gallery that had some of the same images I saw at ICP framed but without any cover glass. The experience of seeing the print for real was very different than at ICP.
Also something I learned from a bookbinding workshop over two decades ago is how a book can be a fetish, an object, a tactile experience, a sculpture, and a great way to guide a viewer. I learned that books are overlooked. I don't think posting work online is the best presentation of my work, archival framing is mucho expensive, so creating books that are a limited edition of one I think provides actually the best presentation of my work, and I don't need no stinking gallery. The thought of a 50% commission and losing control of my work I just find so oppressive.
At the last NYC Meet-Up I wanted to show "Snarky Joe" this smaller book that was developed around 19x13 paper. Somewhere in my printing studio, I found a box of paper I didn't know I had, so I made a scaled-down folio of sorts. Still a big book, not a monster size which is my trademark, and the smaller book was and provided a more intimate experience. Meanwhile the big prints I think had more personality and were bolder with more expansive detail and a more open tonality where the mid-range becomes the voice of the print. Know that the Lightroom setting on both the large and small prints were identical. Interesting to note that shooting Leica with modern Leica glass compounds good technic where you actually get to large format IQ.
I am inspired by "Project Runway." In the Fin- AL-LEE they have 3-4 finalists. They get ample time to develop a body of work, but the best advice is "be very mindful and careful with the editing because it will either make or break a show." Good advice that for me is universal. Sometimes less is more, and sometimes additions dilute a body of work and are a "distraction."
The way I now see my books they are kinda like a museum retrospective because of their size. The folio is more like a gallery show.
For those that are not in the know realize that I use a folding hand truck to transport one of my books to a NYC Meet-Up. Also, the newest version that I call a "book of proofs" features archival tissue cover sheets in between pages, and are designed to fit into a stock size archival presentation box made by Archival Methods. My new binding system has a thinner spine for the pages to lay flatter. My first Monster Book I call a workbook and is less developed and less elegant than my Book of Proofs.
I had a gallery that specialized in photograp[hy look at my work. I hand trucked some of my large prints and the workbook. In the critique, I was told that one-off books that are the artist's personal property are "estate pieces" and can be UBER valuable. I was directed to think of how a curator or dealers would love to "discover" a great new talent, and it seems ideal that a book is the best presentation of my work. The Book of Proofs is on a scale where I could see a retrospective in a museum as large as the old ICP. The Workbook has my lightroom settings written on the back of the prints to help me organize the mess I have accumulated.
Also know I destroyed an Epson 3880. One day the capping station just exploded. It was beyond repair, I was printing extensively trying to deplete my Piezography ink supply so it would not shelf life. When I graduated to my Epson 7800 I gained the ability to printng using roll papers, so it was easy to scale things up to a bigger print size.
Currently I will have the kitchen remodeled this month. Covid delays made last year impossible, but after the kitchen I intend on building out the two car garage as a workspace studio that will be heated and well insulated. This involves replacing a hip roof with a gabled roof so I can have an attic as a digital workspace. Pretty much a darkroom for digital where I can optimize the advantage of owning an EIZO calibrated monitor.
Then in half the garage which is detached from a 1912 Baby-Victorian will be a "clean-room" for digital printing. The other half of the garage will be a workspace also, but be shared with a car. Then there will be an addition of a "Conservatory" that overlooks my lawn in the "back-backyard" (the back-backyard is a second building lot off a dead end), a marsh, and a forested hillside as a shooting studio with a wall of windows on three sides for a panoramic view.
The ground fogs in the fall and spring are particularly mysterious and wonderful that roll off a cliff-like edge over the marsh. I am reminded the Hudson Vally is really a rainforest...
Thanks for this thread. What is undergoing is my retirement dream.
Cal
