_valerian

Maybe it starts with buying the film. (yesterday was payday and yodobashi is where I ended up)

And maybe it finishes with putting prints in an album. What do people call it now– “Multi-Media Storage” ?
I don’t know though.
But part of the nature of it all is that you physically can’t experience a photograph all the time. After all is said and done, after taking prints down from drying, after the photos get taken down from the gallery and delivered back to your apartment- - for most of their existence, photographs are not right in front of you, most of the time they are out of sight.

For a long while I had my wall covered in photo copies of prints, and being physically and consistently surrounded by pictures opened me up to what was in them based on how I might have felt at any particular time. The feel of the same picture could shift with a glance. In the end I took them all down for some collage work and also because it made my small apartment feel larger with white walls.

Anyways, I cleared out my Yodobashi Card points and got a new 11×14 portfolio book last night.

For the most part I keep my prints stacked away in black or white boxes.
A hefty album of hand printed fiber prints is a different experience than scrolling through page after page of 400-pixel-wide filckr “photostreams”, and it is also different than seeing work on the wall of a gallery.
When I applied for a Guardian Garden show, I figured it might be a good idea to submit the work in a portfolio book, and bought one that fit my standard 10×12 inch print size. When I later picked the rejected pictures it was suggested that next time the work be submitted in a B4 clearfile. The Nikon Salon on the other hand, will NOT accept work in book-form, as they prefer a stack of prints in a box.

Showing prints from a box is a kinetic kind of picture viewing experience. Prints get handled, they have individual weight and a sheen that you can only sense by hand. In the course of sharing them the order might get reversed or pictures get switched around in a fluid manner along with Real Time conversation. A book setup doesn’t work quite this way.

Instead it depends on the relationship between the order of the pictures. People are going to assume that any order they are in is intentional, and complete. Unlike a stack of prints, the viewer doesn’t get a hand in arranging your message.
What’s been interesting about filling these portfolios is how they’ve forced me to deal with the work differently. Instead of leaving things up to whoever is looking through prints, I really had to buckle down and struggle.

For me the trouble with sequencing (editing) is knowing how to put what picture after (or next to) the previous one. This is similar to my trouble when photographing- knowing where to point the camera, and when to release the shutter.

This is from the 10×12 sized book.
The pictures above click well- - There is a repetitive sort of thing going on when the two are side by side. It suggests to me that maybe I am interested in these kinds of cropped shadows in photographs. Maybe next time I am out I’ll see something that makes me want to shoot more like this, or maybe I’ll see this picture again and be less interested in making it again.

That’s what it is about—> your pictures need to tell you what you are interested in, what you are dealing with photographically. How you deal physically with the work will shift how you feel about it, different contextual experiences with the photographs (prints) will encourage you to keep learning about what it is you are doing.
Have a guiding hand, but not a heavy one when putting work in order. This is also a way of working when out photographing.

All this introspection is great, I just wish it wasn’t so expensive. Those portfolio books will set you back a good 6000 yen, and 10 clear pages are another 1800.

NOTE: I wouldn’t put more than 15 to 20 pages in them, at least not with double weight fiber prints.