The absolutely essential Phaidon published Stephen Shore overview gives a great summary of his postcard project from the early 1970s. Shore had a series of 10 photographs of Amarillo, Texas made into postcards by America’s largest postcard manufacturer at the time. It turned out that the New York art scene didn’t get it as the kind of Conceptual project which he had hoped they would. Apparently none of the ones displayed on a rack in a bookstore were ever purchased. With his surplus of 56,000 postcards he then altered the course of his project by simply smuggling them into gift shops around the country.
Shore knew and knows what is up.
I am getting fed up with a dissatisfaction towards the limits and lameness of online reproduction. And the rarity and brevity of photographic exhibitions. And the apparent inaccessibility of actual book publishing. Each of those things have their own essence-centered charms but I want something with a visual and fuller tactile experience.
Let’s step back and clarify “apparent inaccessibility of actual book publishing”.
In Japan there are a few publishers that will like your pictures that you show them enough to make a book. Other than that, for the vast majority of photography books on the shelves in Japanese bookstores, it is the photographer who both provides the photos AND the funds to produce their book. There are some really killer small independent photo book publishers in Tokyo which make truly Beautiful Book Objects but unless you are in the Moriyama Daido league or have ten to fifteen grand $US to spend on your creation you are out of luck.
There isn’t a stigma about an artist cracking open their wallet get their work out in Tokyo and personally I’ve finally gotten over the fact that photographers pay to show what they make. Bands too must pay venues to perform.
This thing where a guy pays for a service that other guys in other countries can get for free might sound like a prostitutional arrangement but it is Supply and Demand. (Ok that is prostitution but also capitalism).
There is a Supply of photographers, and they Demand to be shown. Unfortunately there is a tragically far smaller Supply of galleries and even fewer publishers who know how to make money. And this means that the hip photographer every-dream; living a kick-ass awesomely meaningful life of getting paid to travel and shoot and have wild adventures with models and make pictures which they constantly exhibit and are loved by- – it just can’t happen for everyone. Maybe this is similar to the dream or conviction that photographers have where they wouldn’t dare misdate a negative file out of fears that it might trouble the MOMA retrospective staff putting together their (my) monumental and post-humous retrospective shows.
We’d all like to be artists and promise to buy each other’s work and you know, contribute but who would shoe the horses and pasteurize the milk? Who’s going to run the machine that puts magic silver dust onto strips of gelatin and then into little metal canisters? Who’s going to be left to provide the GRD4, 5, and 6 on up?
Clearly a balance must be made. We want to make Something, and we want to show Someone. Or Everyone. There are ways to do this which respects the photographer, the viewer, and the people who run the machines that put pictures onto paper.
Over the past year I’ve been collecting all sorts of cheap or free photographic books and publications that I come across in Tokyo. If you dig this idea of getting photos out in ways other than the internet or in galleries or in books, leave it to the Tokyo photo scene to show you the way.
Over the next few weeks I plan on showing you some of these things, starting with what I want to share with you today:
Yesterday I met Aya Takada at her exhibition at the fantastic 3rd District Gallery in Shinjuku.
You can check out all of her exhibitons online but she also has today’s topic of this particular published work for sale too.
At the gallery she was offering her “Mail a Paper, Area” series of collapsible poster collections for sale. This was the first time I had ever seen something like this. Each one is not quite a poster (they can be, and one was in the gallery) but they are also photo books in a very abstract sense. In English the word “book” probably implies a spine, but the Japanese common word for photo book “写真集” is open enough to contain all sorts of creations since the suffix “集” means “collection”. (Clarification and Digression: 写真 = Photograph but Photograph = 光絵 (light-drawing/picture))
Takada explained to me that in the late 1990s when she was having these made she’d mail them to various photographers, critics, and publishers. I like how clever and just cheeky enough that was. This aggressive stance on her part- the mailing of these actual objects to people that she wanted to have see- was an admirable thing to go about doing.
They’re like the least passive business card possible. Some guy gets an A4 envelope in the mail and upon taking the material out he naturally just has to open and see what it’s all about. BAM suddenly he’s got this huge double sided beautiful postmodern art thing spread out in front of him. The physical message transmitted is “Here is what I do. This is what I made, and now you need to deal with it.” And “Good luck folding it back into place.” They’re too nice to throw away, and the experience of getting one is too great to forget.
I’d imagine that dealing with one of these is a far cry from an easily misplaced business card with a clever font or logo.
The backs (insides? maybe the fronts?) are of one large photo, and the reverse is a collection of several other pictures.
It might be a little less impressive if she wasn’t such a great photographer. There are a lot of poor photographers with good ideas, but Takada is somewhat rare in that not only did she have a witty concept which she was able to physically realize, it’s also that the visual content of her creations is just as good.
So here’s to well done and affordable Photography in Print. I’ll be showing some more examples again soon.
