Crags and a Crescent Moon, 2008

Gust of Wind, 2009

Rachel, 2010

Blackford Forest, 2009

Tea Pot and Red Currants, 2010

Laura Bell

Website: http://www.lbellphoto.com

Bio:
Laura Bell received a BFA in photography from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2008. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States and Internationally. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Agnes Gund Traveling Scholarship, which helped fund her most recent photographic project in Scotland.

Artist Statement:
The five photographs submitted here are from a series of 23 photographs titled The Alba Series. This body of work was created between the years 2008 and 2010, during a prolonged stay in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. In December 2008 I moved from the United States to Edinburgh, Scotland to accompany my husband while he worked towards his MFA. This was the first time I had ever left the USA. The work I produced during this two-year stay is a reflection of my experiences and psychological reactions to this new environment. Combining portraiture, still life and landscape works, this series is heavily influenced by the incredibly rich historical presence in Scotland. Taking cues from the traditions of old master paintings; I photographed the people, places and objects of daily life in a way that both reflected my personal day-to-day experience of living in Edinburgh, and my fascination with the differences I found in Scottish culture to my American culture.

Confections #65, 2009

Confections (adorned) #1, 2008

Confections (adorned) #8, 2009

Confections (adorned) #10, 2010

Confections #37, 2007

Amy Stevens

Website: http://www.amystevensart.com

Bio:
Amy Stevens grew up in the American Southwest. She earned a BFA in Photography and a certificate in Women's Studies from Arizona State University and a MFA in Photography from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Stevens has participated in group and solo shows in Seattle, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and Montreal. In 2007 she completed a two-year career development fellowship with The Center for Emerging Visual Artists and was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Independence Foundation. Stevens has notably shown in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Delaware Art Museum, Photo LA, Photographic Center Northwest, Philadelphia International Airport and Maryland Art Place. In 2009 Amy was announced a U.S. winner in Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward Emerging Photographer's competition which included a published book and a traveling group exhibition at Lennox Contemporary in Toronto, FotoWeek DC and the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA. She was recently awarded a Fleisher Wind Challenge exhibition and honorarium for a three- person show to be held in 2010/2011.

Artist Statement:
The Confections series began as a response to turning 30. It was a celebration of birthdays, color, pattern and obsessive absurdity. My original idea was to bake 30 birthday cakes for myself and photograph them. I didn't quite make it to 30 cakes in time for my thesis show, but I sure got a lot of ideas from those first cakes. I ordered a kit from Martha Stewart.com and watched an instructional video on decorating cakes. When I quickly discovered my cakes were never going to look like the ones in the video and the pamphlet, I decided they were better off in their exuberantly imperfect states. With over 70 cakes constructions to date, I'm often asked, "Why still with the cakes?" Cakes are the centerpieces of celebrations and symbolic trophies evoking nostalgia and awe. Historically, cake has played a significant role in womens' lives. Women have used cake as both an outlet of creativity and a symbol of female power politics. In my constructions of these photographs, I am commentating on not only cake itself as a rich cultural symbol, but of the domestic fantasy world of contemporary home decorating and cooking magazines and television shows. It's a fantasy world where entertaining, cooking and decorating unite. It's a place where one needs to have a beautiful home, decorated seasonally, in order to entertain friends with gourmet meals and elaborately concocted desserts.

I once knew a photographer from the Midwest that had a personal project whose images still haunt me. Driving into isolated and rural areas of western Kansas, he would intentionally drive until he was totally lost, and look for homes or farmhouses that were by all signs completely abandoned. He'd then make careful assessments as to the structural integrity of the place (sometimes the floors would give out, or you couldn't trust the stairs), and go in with his camera and make images of what he found there. What was most surprising about what he found is that most of these domiciles look like they had been left in a hurry: a coat might still be on a hanger in an open closet; the cupboards might still have cans or jars of food in them. Not knowing the stories of how these houses came to be left, or what caused its inhabitants to hasten their leaving was a compelling mystery inherent in these images. Even through scenes of destruction by weather or the encroachment of a returning organic order, it was still very much evident that these were places where people and families lived, gathered and shared experiences.

The New York Times Opinionator blog ran a story by Paul Keyes recently on the imagery of foreclosed homes, bringing back to my mind the body of work mentioned above. While invoking the imagery the Great Depression—the last national crises to so direly affect Americans' standard of living— Keyes writes that the current foreclosure disaster affecting millions of people is happening in a much more diffused and less obvious fashion. While the story can be a hard one to tell, Keyes zeroes in on one common thread that photographers have found to be rich narrative material: foreclosure photography.

Untitled from the series Foreclosed Homes by Todd Hido

Untitled from the series Real Estate by Marion Belanger

Providing a slideshow of sympatico photographers working in the same vein such as Todd Hido, Marion Belanger, David H. Wells, T.J. Proechel, John Francis Peters and Ellen Brownlee, Keyes makes note of the experience of viewing such images:

...in viewing foreclosure interiors, a curious thing happens: the voyeuristic awkwardness passes, and one begins to piece together the missing characters. We already know the circumstances, generally; but why was a wallet-sized snapshot of children left behind? What left the holes in the wall? Through these questions that flit behind the scanning eye, the portraits become a kind of forensic study.

...the more time you spend with these interiors, the more the human presence comes to the surface: in the divots left by table legs, in the stains of use along the edge of a door, or a door not quite shut. From empty rooms to rooms choking with junk, the discoveries speak to a dream shattered.

The various ways of telling such an intimate story of anonymous strangers is evident in the different methodologies employed by the photographers to essentially tell the same tale. Some photographers will embellish a composition with artifacts found in other rooms in the house; others try to show you everything that could encompass both your central and peripheral view. Hido's interiors are largely empty, ghostly rooms, but there are subtle, nearly-hidden details that gradually dawn on the viewer the longer they stay with each image. Hido says of his foreclosure series:

...the story is on the inside. It has a lot to do with memory and details. A lot of these places look like houses I lived in as a kid. Plain, made with cheap building materials. The viewer can't help but project something into this empty space, and a lot of that has to do with memory. In empty spaces, people project their own stories onto them.

While perhaps not as outwardly dramatic as a tornado or other, perhaps more intimate and human, disasters that characterize my assumptions of abandoned farmhouses in Kansas, these strange portraits of the recession in the form of the interiors of foreclosed homes tell no less of a devastating story, one whose reach and echo can probably be felt in most neighborhoods today.

Working The Line by David Taylor, published by Radius Books

We've waxed on and on about the gorgeous books produced by Santa Fe-based independent publisher Radius Books, where HHS! panelists Darius Himes in a founding editor. Their latest publication is Working The Line, by Guggenheim Fellow David Taylor, who traces a line of obelisks that dot the U.S. - Mexico borer between El Pason/Juarez to San Diego/Tijuana.

Radius writes of the book and of Taylor:

These monuments--striking objects situated in impossibly gorgeous and difficult terrain--were installed between the years 1892 and 1895. In the process of his work, Taylor earned remarkable access to U.S. Border Patrol facilities, agents and routine operations. Patrol agents often refer to their job in the field as "line work" which is an apt description of Taylor's own time as he documented the obelisks. Being on the "line" has given Taylor a unique view into overlapping issues of border security, human and drug smuggling, the continuing construction of the border fence and its impact on the land.

Hardbound in a slipcase, the book is a 148 page visual investigation of a border that's increasingly tenuous, also featuring essays by Hanna Frieser and Luis Alberto Urrea.

Lucky for New Yorkers, David Taylor, alongside editor Darius Himes and designer David Chickey, will be at NYU next week talking about the book.

The Details:
In Conjunction with Anna Deavere Smith Works, Inc. at New York University and the "Bodies on the Line" Symposium*
Presentation and Discussion with David Taylor and David Chickey & Darius Himes of Radius Books
Tuesday, November 2nd, 6-8 pm
NYU, 20 Cooper Square (5th and Bowery, 5th Floor)

You can also purchase three versions of Working The Line online—a trade edition for $50.00, a signed edition for $55.00 and a limited-edition (of 40) signed and numbered version 17"x22" version for $800.00. Learn more about Taylor, the essayists and the book at Radius.

The striking thing about the images from his series, Morphology, by HHS! semi-finalist Eric White, is that he shows us a new way of looking at landscape. That new way involves looking at photographs of landscapes that do not necessarily read to the eye as photographs. Stripped of any indication that we are viewing traditional color or black-and-white photographic images, we are instead left to read visual elements whose variables might be more easily found in the field of drawing and painting: line, weight and value.

Plate #56, from the series Morphology by Eric T. White

Through a reverse-printing method, White extracts from his large-format negatives nearly pure form, and the inversion of tonal values in the process cuts out what might normally be extraneous to the eye or total composition, leaving us with strong lines that make up the trunks or branches of trees and delicate, barely-there tones indicating grasses and brush. Foregrounds are a delicate wash of white-ish and light gray hues, while central elements contain the greatest variation of tonal value and dark lines. The horizon is a pure, unvarying nearly-white uninterrupted canvas. If this weren't a photo competition, you might think you were looking at an etching, an ink or a silverpoint drawing.

An emphasis on vulnerability is a principle element in this body of work: literally, the vulnerability of nature to the elements, as evidenced by the bending and yielding that trees have adapted in order to survive open and exposed conditions. But vulnerable, too, is the choice by White to render landscapes as something other than landscapes—to bring the viewer back to an ordered history of neatly rendered, but oddly intimate and formal views of the natural world, one that more closely resembles 19th century botanic drawings than a composition seen and made in the last year.

Plate #19 from the series Morphology by Eric T. White

Poetic and elegiac at once, I could not help but be reminded of the images that Harry Callahan made throughout his life of the natural world. Inspired by a workshop taken with Ansel Adams in 1941, Callahan enthusiastically set about making images that were the precise inverse of Adams' grandiose and dramatic landscapes. Training his camera on the unexceptional—but well-known to him—home landscape of Detroit, his close-in views of grasses and abstractions of open spaces became beautiful visual meditations on what and how to see something for what else it might be.

Weeds Against the Sky, Detroit, 1948 by Harry Callahan

Multiple Exposure Tree, Chicago, 1956 by Harry Callahan

Morphology, the name White gives to this series, has a couple of meanings that are relevant to viewing and considering his work. First, there is the scientific definition: morphology is the study dealing with the form and structure of organisms apart from their inherent functions. Linguistically, morphology is the study of the structures and implied content of words. To my reading of White's images, he both succeeds in isolating and redefining a commonly seen genre, i.e. "landscape," and also calls into question what constitutes the flavor and meaning of those forms in our visual habits, i.e. what do we see when we see a tree against sky? Is it just and only tree and sky? And if not, what else are we seeing, and what do we call that?

The whole Morphology series, which I highly encourage you to view, can be seen on Eric White's website.

Librarian, 2010 by Mickey Smith

We've just received word of a new solo show by Winter 2007 Hot Shot Mickey Smith, called Believe You Me opening this Friday, October 29th at NYC's Invisible-Exports.

Mickey's new show acts both as an exploration (and send-up) of the automatic intellectual status that the presence of books continues to imply—even in the waning days of words printed in actual ink, on actual paper—and as an elegy for the increasing obsolescence of the printed word in an overwhelmingly digital day and age. From the show's press release:

The second solo exhibition of work by Mickey Smith is a multi-media inquiry into the use of books as symbols of intellectual status in popular culture. In the found, restyled and original images that make up her critical series Believe You Me, shelves of indistinct books are used as backdrops -- in some cases simply painted curtains -- to perform a signaling function and confer a measure of erudition within a particular kind of aspirational portrait. But what signaling value can such images of books truly have, if they work the same way behind Martin Luther King as they do behind a porn star or a war criminal?...In Believe You Me, she examines the manner in which books and book imagery continue to deliver status even in a culture that has turned away from reading--indeed even more powerfully, and more pervasively, than in eras that had not yet given up on the book as a storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. In these contemporary images, books have become vacant props, drafted into private battles and culture wars out of a desperate nostalgia for the fading power of the written word.

For all you stubborn NYC bookworms—and children of the digital revolution alike— we feel pretty strongly that this is a show not to be missed. If you're in the neighborhood on Friday, make sure you swing by! It's just a short walk or cab ride away from the Blurb Pop-Up/NYC, where you can meet the five 2010 Hot Shots that very same evening.

The Details:
Believe You Me by Mickey Smith
On View: October 29th - December 5th, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, October 29th, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
at Invisible-Exports
14A Orchard St.
(between. Hester and Canal)
New York, NY 10002

Crags and a Crescent Moon, 2008 by Laura Bell

Contender—and semi-finalist—Laura Bell's bewitching HHS! submission represents a rapturous and reverent exploration of a rich and (to her) unfamiliar culture. Taken over a two-year period when Bell—a U.S. native—lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, the larger project from which her submitted photos were gleaned is fittingly titled The Alba Series, undoubtedly inspired by the ancient Scottish Gaelic name for the country. In her artist statement, Bell writes:

This body of work was created between the years 2008 and 2010, during a prolonged stay in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. In December 2008 I moved from the United States to Edinburgh, Scotland to accompany my husband while he worked towards his MFA. This was the first time I had ever left the USA. The work I produced during this two-year stay is a reflection of my experiences and psychological reactions to this new environment. Combining portraiture, still life and landscape works, this series is heavily influenced by the incredibly rich historical presence in Scotland. Taking cues from the traditions of old master paintings; I photographed the people, places and objects of daily life in a way that both reflected my personal day-to-day experience of living in Edinburgh, and my fascination with the differences I found in Scottish culture to my American culture.

Bell's absorption in her adopted country's rich history is palpable in her work; the series reads as a celebration and perhaps even romanticization of a country with a much older past than her own homeland, with its own distinct sense of mythology and magic—something that could be perceived as lacking within American culture.

Her attraction to the ancient roots of Scotland is at the forefront of her photographs, as is a simultaneous sense of remove—Bell seems to view (and subsequently present) the country as deeply mysterious, perhaps unknowable to outsiders, with stark, static and impenetrable photographs of a craggy moonlit hilltop, or a misty, rather ominous forest at dusk.

Blackford Forest, 2009 by Laura Bell

It warrants consideration that the two aforementioned (and above-pictured) photographs have both been cropped into an oval and a circle, respectively. This serves as a further nod to the Old Master painting that Bell cites as inspiration, in their formal mimicry of tondo pieces, which date back to ancient Greece, but are perhaps best known for their Renaissance revival.

Mood-wise, though, these two images for me recall the allegorical landscapes of 19th century German Romantic painters (such as Caspar David Friedrich). Here, too, Bell's landscapes take on a heightened meaning, a deep sense of symbolism and subsequently imply the dwarfing of petty human concerns.

Gust of Wind, 2009 by Laura Bell

Each of Bell's photographs is meticulously composed and highly formal, with a striking contrast between light and shadow. There is an overwhelming feeling of stillness in her work—each piece seems to exist outside of time, and conveys a sense of the ancient, the magical, the otherworldly. This is true too of her interiors—I never imagined that a photograph of a just-extinguished candle, (complete with dissipating smoke) could appear so static, so serene, so eerily devoid of any discernible human presence.

Bell's work continually exhibits a serious influence of and affinity to the medium of painting - at times it rather unexpectedly resembles painting more closely than it does photography. And just as Romantic artists, poets and composers often looked to Middle Ages for inspiration, and Renaissance artists looked to Antiquity, here too we see an artist looking backwards, mining cultural production from long ago in an attempt to say something new. More of Bell's work can be seen on her website.

Untitled, from the series Erasure by HHS! contender Ben Alper

Hey, Hot Shot! + Blurb invite you to celebrate our five newest 2010 Hot Shots on Friday, October 29th from 6 to 9 p.m. at the first-ever Blurb Pop Up/NYC at 60 Mercer Street (between Broome and Grand).

Jen Bekman, members of the Hey, Hot Shot! Panel and the Jen Bekman Projects' team are excited to meet and mingle with you—the New York City photography community. We'll have wine and snacks, you'll be able to browse a library of Blurb books, meet fellow artists, have the chance to win 20x200 prints and be able to learn about creating your own book. At 7:00 p.m., Jen Bekman will announce the five 2010 Hot Shots.

Space is limited, so make sure you RSVP here by Thursday, October 28th.

Who: Hey, Hot Shot! Panelists, contenders, Team JBP + the NYC Photography Community
What: Meet the 2010 Hot Shots
When: Friday, October 29th, from 6 to 9 p.m.
Where: 60 Mercer Street, New York, NY

Jen will also be giving a talk, Getting Your Work Out There, earlier that afternoon from 3:00 - 4:00 p.m.

You've collected the best of your work, checked and triple-checked that each image is the absolute best it can be. But who's going to see it? Jen Bekman, founder of Jen Bekman Gallery, 20x200, and Hey, Hot Shot!, will give you the scoop on presenting yourself to potential fans and collectors online, as well as how to land a spot on a gallery wall. Jen is an art dealer, curator, writer, and entrepreneur whose inventive approach to the art world has created new models for connecting artists and collectors.

RSVP for Jen's talk here and be sure to take a look at the full schedule of events, lectures and workshops happening at the Blurb Pop Up/NYC from October 21 - 30th. See you on the 29th!

An increasingly rare and inspiring mark of a strong art project is that it has the capacity to teach you something, widen the current view, expand or start a dialogue that wasn't there previous to you spending moments with the artwork. We've featured dozens of photographers whose work fits this bill recently: photographers that may come from the outside of something and then look in; or those who are instead working from deep within themselves offering enigmatic visions of what's inside, and still others that describe prevailing cultural and circumstantial conditions particular to a people and/or a social issue that the artist feels needs greater awareness and hopes to change through exposure of those issues.

Today's contender and semifinalist in this year's HHS! competition, Jill Peters, falls into this latter category. Originally working in the world of fashion photography and then switching to editorial, Peters found both sub-genres of photography an ill-suiting fit. She has since been working in a documentary vein, and the submitted images submitted fare part of a larger project that will ultimately become a full-length film, He/She/He.

A Sworn Virgin of Albania #1, from the project He/She/He by Jill Peters

A Sworn Virgin of Albania #3, from the project He/She/He by Jill Peters

Peters, long interested in issues related to gender and identity, is committed to showing Western audiences how choice in gender and identity is not exclusive to modern society, and is in fact something that has been integrated and appreciated by other non-Western cultures for decades or even centuries. On the Kickstarter site for her film, Peters writes: "Over the past decade, transsexuality and gender dysphoria have become hot topics, but what few Westerners realize is that in many parts of the world, a woman living as a man or a man living as a woman isn't boundary busting—it's tradition."

And a little more context on these particular images from her artist's statement:

These portraits are of the "sworn virgins" of northern Albania... so called because they are women who take a vow of celibacy and live as men in a strident patriarchal society, remnants of a social order rooted in the past. They are not sexual anomalies, but the product of this resolutely patriarchal society. A society that, through violent blood feuds, has frequently decimated all of a given family's male heirs. They are some of the last to remain of a dying tradition dating back hundreds of years. The virgins remain humble, resilient, self-sacrificing icons of a proud and curious social legacy.

Strong faces, strong body language, somewhat defiant and wholly poker-faced, Peters' portraits in this series make for tempting cultural voyeurism, but to leave it there would be to miss the point. If we take Peters at her word, then the desire to find and photograph the Albanian virgins, or the Samoan Fa'afafine, is not just an exercise in cultural anthropology, or an attempt to record a vanishing culture for posterity. Rather, by giving voice and face to traditions the world over that have and do exist for choosing gender and choosing a life less ordinary, Peters (and her co-documentarian Alix Lambert) is adding to the Western perspective and the ever-changing conversation about these same issues and their many-tiered attendant concerns over precedent, acceptance (or prejudices against), widening or shrinking populations, and what it means for children, adolescents or adults that may identify as something other than accepted conventions. Due to her efforts to broaden and enliven that dialogue, all of us benefit—even those of us who may or may not know that these choices and the conversations about those choices exist.

More of Peters' work on this project can be seen at both the website for the film-in-progress, as well as her Kickstarter site, which is still accepting donations for the realization of the film He/She/He.

from the Environmental Conservation series by Pete McBride

It would seem that fall is the time for photography festivals, and another great one is just around the corner. The third edition of FotoWeek DC, titled Everywhere You See, which runs from November 6th to 13th in Washington, DC will present visitors with exhibitions, lectures, parties, portfolio reviews and panels galore! This year they've partnered with The Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design, which will serve as the home base for all things FotoWeek DC. From the festival's website:

Founded in 2008, FotoWeek DC has evolved from a city-centric photography festival to a multi-season tribute -- with international appeal-- to photography in all its forms. FotoWeek DC celebrates the transformative power of photography through the exhibition of inspiring and provocative images, diverse programming, and collaboration with the local and international community. Whether through photojournalism, fine art photography, or the work of emerging artists, FotoWeek DC provides a dynamic, evocative, engaging experience for photographers, cultural institutions, galleries, curators, schools, area residents and tens of thousands of visitors to the Nation's Capital.

A current and complete run-down of the (amazing! and enormous!) roster of events can be found on the FotoWeek DC website. A few highlights include:

From the Thinner Air series by John Mann

Second Edition 2008 Hot Shot, John Mann has certainly been busy of late. He's recently completed a new project (and accompanying book): a photographic sequence titled Thinner Air, which engages with the themes of travel and escape that we know and love in his earlier work. From his website: "At once examining the distant and the close-at-hand, this photographic series follows the making of a small plane until it escapes into a space that is both abstract and tangible."

The book component of Thinner Air was printed in a limited edition of 150, and each is hand-numbered and signed. You can preview more images from it here.

John also has an image in the September issue of GQ Magazine, and his work is included in four (!) group shows this fall:

Pejantan Black Geyser. (Day 131, Western end, Madura Forest), 2009 by Renhui Zhao

London and Singapore-based photographer Renhui Zhao's HHS! submission consists of five stark, otherworldly and often gorgeous images of animals, plants and various other natural phenomena, all taken on Pulau Pejantan, a remote island in the South China Sea. In his statement, Zhao writes of the location:

An uninhabited island in the Indonesian archipelago first visited by scientists only in 2005, Pulau Pejantan (also known as Sand Forest island) has recently drawn increasing attention from researchers for its extremely unusual geological features and remarkable biodiversity. Two distinct environmental regions--a central semi-tropical forest, ringed by pale white sand dunes dotted with geothermal oddities like the extraordinary Black Geyser--harbor some six hundred species of fauna, roughly seventy percent of which exist only on the island.

Iriamondi Cat. (Day 60, 6km off Madura Forest), 2009 by Renhui Zhao

Each animal or phenomenon is photographed alone, a small figure against a large, barren, often featureless landscape. This is an effective (and I'm sure intentional) strategy: the form of Zhao's photographs parallels his subject - a distant, isolated location with rare and unfamiliar features and animals. Both the land and its inhabitants are presented as as unapproachable, perhaps unknowable.

Considering how it appears in Zhao's series, it also seems remarkable that this rather unfriendly-looking island could support such biodiversity, that such an enormous range of flora and fauna could survive (and flourish) on what often seems a wasteland of sand and dust.

Some of the photographs look as though they were taken after dark, and even in those clearly shot during daylight hours, color is drained, muted - animals for the most part are lightly-hued, and set against backgrounds that are nearly black-and-white. It would appear that this quality is again closely linked to the island's unique circumstances. Zhao continues:

Pulau Pejantan provides scientists with an extraordinary opportunity to study what is essentially a closed ecological system. Conditions are difficult for observation on the remote island. Its peculiar hydrological activity and location in the doldrums of the equatorial region along the Java trench combine to produce a thick blanket of fog that covers its landmass essentially from sunrise to late afternoon, 365 days a year; as a result, much of the work must be done in poor light.

Minute Owl. (Day 61, Camera Trap No.168, Madura Forest), 2009 by Renhui Zhao

Although Zhao describes himself as an "almost Zoologist", his extremely atmospheric work can in no way be classified as straightforward "Nature Photography"; his photographs are haunting, disorienting, at times almost frightening. Pulau Pejantan emerges in Zhao's work as a sort of alien landscape: a wild, remote and mysterious environment, and one as of yet virtually untouched by humans. His striking images make an excellent case for its preservation as such; they simultaneously both introduce viewers to a remarkable and fascinating place, while warning us to keep a safe distance - for its sake, but perhaps for ours as well.

You can see more of Renhui Zhao's work on his website.

Issues 1-10 of Unless You Will, an online photography magazine curated by Heidi Romano

Online publishing affords an audience and an accessibility that is the envy of their analog cousin, print publishing. And while I subscribe to and wish to subscribe to even more selected art journals of the paper variety, increasingly I am being made aware of high-quality, of-the-moment, closely curated online art magazine subscriptions. Unless You Will, founded by Australian-based photographer and designer Heidi Romano, is a brand-new-to-me publication that has just released its tenth issue. Released monthly, Romano's focus on selecting artists for each issue are guided by UYW's guiding principles:

Sometimes a photo can evoke high feelings of emotion or nostalgia and in a roundabout way it becomes a means of expressing ourselves as photographers. UYW strives to showcase photographers who add layers of meaning and capture these feelings. Their images are a happiness measurement, they give us pleasure, rekindle a memory, or trigger other emotions of their own. Our aim is to showcase these talented artists without too many frills, who work with the notions of play, honesty and craftsmanship.

Each issue is prefaced with either a notable quote or a meditation from Heidi that serves to frame the work that is available to view either on site or as a nice, luscious download. Henri Cartier-Bresson provides context for the current issue, with the observation that:

We photographers deal with things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory.

This month's issue features the work of two photographers whose work we've featured in HHS! (and who both have editions on 20x200), Juliane Eirich and Bryan Schutmaat.

Untitled, from the series Korea Diary by Juliane Eirich

Untitled, from the series Heartland by Bryan Schutmaat

The refreshing change in online publication formats is that because nothing is actually going to press, and there are no exorbitant price-per-page fees to print, the web-based display can allow for a lengthy rumination on a theme, and a generous amount of space for a photographer's project or portfolio. Both Schutmaat and Eirich's projects fit well within Cartier-Bresson's sentiment of vanishing moments and environments: In Heartland, Schutmaat's concentration lay in the quiet and expansive topographies of the American Midwest, and speak to a sense of loneliness that can be found both within barren landscapes and in the lives of those who live in them. Eirich's Korea Diary portfolio tackles similar themes but in a place where population and activity is dense and frenzied. Instead of training her eye on the easy blur of constant motion evident in a large city, Eirich instead is drawn to finding the calm and the intimate of everyday life, and her images reflect the sensibility of one who finds respite in disparate places.

Take a look at the current issue of Unless You Will—or all ten of the whole series—or subscribe to their feed to be notified when new issues are available. Are you a photographer who likes what they see in UYW? Currently photographers shown in the magazine are by invitation only, but you can submit your work to the UYW blog for consideration in future issues.

Untitled, from the series Erasure by Ben Alper

Things get lost in the shuffle towards progress, often a by-product of the embrace of new technologies that, while improving one function or manifestation of a given thing, can also herald unintended consequences to its peripheral aspects. Take, for example, the humble family photo album. Growing up in my household, there were not only multiple albums that carefully documented major rites of passage (my parents' wedding album, a baby book for both myself and my sister), but there were also boxes upon boxes of unsorted family photos, whose non-linear trajectory I loved picking through piecemeal. Color-shifted, with hand-written notations on the back (sometimes providing not-so-witty commentary, others providing necessary names and contexts for persons unknown to future generations), the photos pasted onto black crepe paper, or the various sized print formats found in disparate boxes really were the containers of a genealogy of memory, and a connection to the lived memories of some of those pictured, but not known to us who might later touch their images of that time.

Fast forward to the now. Is it at all unsettling to anyone who remembers growing up with albums and boxes of photos like I do that while we have a surplus, an avalanche, even, of visual documentation of our lives, that we very rarely have any actual objects that we can hold which express our documents the way our old photo albums did? Right now I worry about the external harddrive that I have certain images on failing before I can back my digital images up on a second external harddrive, and everything lives on screen and in little bits and bytes of data. Nothing on a shelf, nothing in a box.

Ben Alper's project Erasure is very interested in this phenomena. For the past two years he has been thinking about and visualizing what it means to have these tactile threads to our collective past disappear, or to find evidence of them literally discarded. What interests me in his work is not that his project focuses on old images of his or of strangers' lives, but instead of the pentimenti of that recorded—and then removed—vernacular photography.

Untitled, from the series Erasure by Ben Alper

Untitled, from the series Erasure by Ben Alper

Alper writes of his project:

Among the many transformations that have taken place at the hand of the digital revolution is the relatively sudden disappearance of the traditional family photo album. More and more often these days, photographic images are stored and organized on personal computers. This shift away from tactility toward a more ephemeral experience of the photograph marks a pronounced negation of tradition and signals the loss of both cultural and familial memory. This trend has only been further exacerbated by our access to, and consumption of, a nearly infinite flow of cultural imagery. With these ideas in mind, Erasure examines the physical impressions and deterioration left behind by photographs that have been removed from family albums.

Ben Alper is a co-founder of the collective The Exposure Project. He lives and works in Brooklyn. The entire Erasure series can be seen, among other bodies of work, on his website.

First visitors at National Stadium Beijing by Herzog & de Meuron architects, 2008 by Iwan Baan

October 10th, 2010 (10/10/10!) would have been the 100th birthday of Julius Shulman, the renowned architectural photographer (and recent documentary film subject), who passed away last summer, just shy of his 99th. In honor of this (awesome!) date, San Diego's Julius Shulman Institute in Woodbury College's School of Achitecture has organized an exhibition and symposium for the coming weekend, titled IMAGE.ARCHITECTURE.NOW, to celebrate Shulman's life and work.

The symposium part of the weekend consists of two panels on Saturday October 9th between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m., both of which will feature artists and architects in conversation. Panelists include photographers Iwan Baan, Livia Corona and Sze Tsung Leong, architects Frank Escher, Sharon Johnston and Linda Taalman, and curator and critic Sylvia Lavin.

The exhibition component will show ten photographers (including Shulman) whose work deals with explorations and representations of architecture and space - a concept very much in keeping with Shulman's own work. From the university's show description:

What does the building feel like? What kind of light and shadow does it embrace and cast? How are buildings etched into our memory in a visceral way? Through an individual's eye, nothing is ever quite objective. It is on some level an emotional response and reaction. All that is built or demolished shapes not only the physical landscape, but the human experience as well. Large and small, architecture seeps into a person's being in a profoundly intimate way. IMAGE.ARCHITECTURE.NOW showcases distinct artistic visions from the grand and glorious to the poignant and devastating.

If you find yourself in or around San Diego this weekend, this is an event not to be missed - for fans of photography, architecture - and Julius Shulman - alike!

The Details:
IMAGE.ARCHITECTURE.NOW
October 09, 2010, from 3:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
at Woodbury University
7500 Glenoaks Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91510

Symposium: 3:00-6:00 p.m.
Fletcher Jones Foundation Auditorium

Exhibition: 6:00-9:00 p.m.
Ahmanson Main Space

Thomas and Thomas Putnam Jr, Ponca City, OK by HHS! Semi-Finalist Christopher Churchill

Happy autumnal Thursday! For the last few weeks, we've been very busy behind the scenes, reviewing your submissions, continuing to feature contenders on our blog and planning a big HHS! event coming up on Friday, October 29th! A few weeks back, our distinguished panel came to JBP HQ for a day-long review, thoughtfully looking over every entry before composing this stellar list of semi-finalists. At the event on the 29th (details below), Jen Bekman will announce the five 2010 Hot Shots selected from these semi-finalists. Congratulations to the 2010 Hey, Hot Shot! Semi-Finalists!

Save The Date
Hey, Hot Shot! + Blurb invite you to celebrate our 2010 Hot Shots from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday, October 29th at the first-ever Blurb Pop Up/NYC at 60 Mercer Street.

Jen Bekman, members of the Hey, Hot Shot! Panel and the Jen Bekman Projects' team are excited to meet and mingle with you—the New York City photography community. In addition to the announcement of the five 2010 Hot Shots, you'll be able to browse a library of Blurb books, meet fellow artists, learn about creating your own book and have a drink on us!

Space is limited, so make sure you RSVP here by Thursday, October 28th.

Who: Hey, Hot Shot! Panelists, contenders, Team JBP + the NYC Photography Community
What: Meet the 2010 Hot Shots
When: Friday, October 29th, from 6 to 9 p.m.
Where: 60 Mercer Street, New York, NY

Learn more about the other events at the Blurb Pop Up/NYC from October 21 - 30 + see you on the 29th!

For all you Toronto-based (or Toronto-bound) photographers and photo-enthusiasts: one new and noteworthy event on our radar is the Flash Forward Festival, which highlights emerging photographers from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. It will run from today, October 6 through the 10th in the city's up-and-coming Liberty Village neighborhood. An extension of the Magenta Foundation's Flash Forward photography competition, 2010 marks the first edition of its biennial festival incarnation. From the Flash Forward website:

Flash Forward's mission is to showcase the future of photography, focusing on emerging talent identified by renowned jurors as having great potential. The biennial festival will provide an in-depth experience for emerging photographers through educational and networking opportunities including events with collectors/arts enthusiasts and industry professionals (academics, gallerists, media/art directors and photo editors). The festival will include five curated exhibitions -- representing the three host countries plus one guest country invited to showcase their best emerging photographers -- as well as workshops, a lecture series, nightly events, an art fair and a major closing event that will be filmed and transmitted globally.

There are a whole slew of terrific events to choose from over the next four days—almost all of which are free and open to the public! Some highlights include:

Circuit City, 2008 by Brian Ulrich

Attention photography lovers: The Aperture Foundation's Annual Benefit and Auction is fast approaching! This event will take place on November 1st, 2010 at The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, and will include both a silent and live auction of stellar photographs, not to mention cocktails, dinner, an award ceremony, and a post-dinner benefit party organized by SNAP! - Aperture's Young Patron's program. Honorees at this year's benefit include photographer Richard Misrach, New York gallerist Julie Saul and collector/philanthropist Steven Ames.

Although bidding on both auctions doesn't open until October 18th, previews for each are just recently available online, and can be browsed (and drooled over) at your leisure. The silent auction has photographs by Shen Wei, Mickey Smith, and Eirik Johnson and the live component has pieces by Diane Arbus, Kehinde Wiley, Curtis Mann and Brian Ulrich among others.

If you're looking to expand your photography collection, want to support the excellent Aperture Foundation, or are just always up for a fun arts event (the SNAP! party will have special guest DJs, and a raffle!), we strongly suggest checking this one out. (Team JBP went last year and had a blast!)

Complete details (including ticket-purchasing information) can be found here.

Untitled, 2010 by Kate Hutchinson

Kate Hutchinson's HHS! submission, a selection of photographs from a larger series, is one with a lofty literary history. Her project is an adaptation of an adaptation: her starting point is James Joyce's Ulysses, and Joyce's, in turn, was Homer's epic The Odyssey.

The series, and the two literary works upon which it is based, tell the tale of travels and adventures; thus it's very fitting that the title of Hutchinson's series is Ulysses, a personal journey. There is a strong sense in Hutchinson's photographs of the artist moving around, searching for her roots, her origins—both in the chosen geographic location of her series (the city where her parents were born), and in her attempt to connect with a work of literature that has specific personal meaning (her father's love of Joyce's iconic book, and Ulysses's actual link to her ancestry). She explains the back-story in her artist's statement:

This work, all shot in and around Dublin, Ireland, deals with my connection to the city of my parents' birth, as well as my father and our relationship. James Joyce's book Ulysses, which features two characters and their travels and encounters during a day in Dublin, has always felt very personal to me. My great-great grandfather Joseph Hutchinson was Lord Mayor of Dublin on the day in question and he is therefore mentioned more than once in Ulysses. As well, my father has always been fascinated with this masterwork and on any of our many family trips to Dublin we would often stop and do readings from the book at the appropriate places.

Untitled, 2010 by Kate Hutchinson

I find it fascinating that Hutchinson uses as the basis of her work a piece of literature that is an overt appropriation of an epic poem that was itself an adaptation, an amalgamation of tales passed down through the oral tradition in ancient times. (It is worth noting that it is widely believed that Homer is a literary and historic construct—not a single, incredibly prolific poet—but rather a name assigned to ground and solidify a huge collection of stories with disparate and unknowable origins). This idea of tales passed down, maintained and reinterpreted through generations and over centuries seems to mirror Hutchinson's description of the lore and legend passed down within her own family. As in The Odyssey, where readers follow King Odysseus on his tumultuous 10-year journey to return to his wife and son in Ithaca after the Trojan War, we sense in Hutchinson's photographs an attempt to connect with where she came from, a longing for her true home.

There is an antiquated look to these photographs; an uneven, mossy, seaside wall calls to mind an ancient construction. Even a telephone pole takes on the appearance of something abandoned and obsolete, nearly overwhelmed by vines like a column from some ruined temple. This visual quality serves as a further link to the series' roots in ancient Greece.

Untitled, 2010 by Kate Hutchinson

Hutchinson's photographs are all untitled; at first I found this a little frustrating and longed for locations, identifiers and ways to concretely link her story to its literary predecessors. However, this might ultimately serve as a way for the artist to make this journey, this mining of family history and mythology truly her own—an individual and private story.

A single figure appears in these photographs, her back turned towards the camera as she strides purposefully towards the ocean, and we can only guess at her identity and mission: Perhaps this is the artist, figuratively embarking on her own, personal odyssey? You can see more of Kate's work on her website.

Boy playing in his grandfathers WWII tunic, Artemare, France, 2010 from The French by Nick Turpin

Second only to sunsets, The Eiffel Tower comes in near the top of the list of Cliché Things to Photograph. Paris in general has such a specific photographic image to it, that it seems to set up a rift in those capturing the city: you are either for or against these predefined romantic notions.

"These are not travel pictures," writes contender Nick Turpin, who describes his photographic relationship with the country as "love/hate,"

...it's not the geographic but the social and cultural landscape that interests me. France is straddling tradition and modernity whilst under siege from the Anglo Amercian world, the Croque Monsieur is slowly being replaced by the Big Mac.

Nick's series The French exists between the old and the new Paris and documents the shift between them.

Country and Western Fair, Contrevoz, France, 2010 from The French by Nick Turpin

Nick also intends to use the images to make a stand against French privacy laws. As it turns out, the country's laws regarding street photography are extremely conservative:

In 1995, the right to privacy was declared a constitutional right by the French Constitutional Court.

Under article 9 of the Civil Code, the right to privacy includes not only the disclosure of a person's private life but also the unauthorized taking of photographs and their publication.

That means that, legally speaking, to take a photograph of a stranger in a public place (and then publish it) is unconstitutional. Nick hopes to publish The French as a book and make it available everywhere except France, to highlight this photographic prohibition.

You can view more of Nick's work, including the whole series The French, at his website.

Untitled from The French by Nick Turpin

Great ideas often find their genesis in something that its creator has already been doing for a long while. Writer, curator and collector Larissa Leclair has been embodying this notion in her new project the indie Photobook Library. Founded in 2010, the iPL is an archive of self-published photobooks, zines, catalogs and other printed matter whose intent is to be seen in person through traveling exhibitions and as a non-circulating public library. In addition to Leclair's efforts, the iPL has an advisory board of several people who are likely well known to readers of this blog: Andy Adams, editor and founder of Flak Photo; Darius Himes, co-founder of Radius Books; Shane Lavalette, photographer and founder of Lay Flat; and Gabrielle Reed, of the Massachusetts College of Art's Godine Library. Accepting photobooks from all over the world, the iPL has been enjoying a period of exponential growth. We recently sent some questions to Larissa about the iPL and where she thinks things are headed next.

What is the genesis of the iPL? Did it begin with your personal collection? If so, how long have you been building/collecting it, and what was the impetus to turn it outward and make it a public collection?

LL: My interest in archives began in graduate school, when I spent most of my time researching and working in Manuscripts & Archives at Yale University Library with photographs, postcards, ephemera and books. Now each year I try and return to Yale for the Master Class at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library co-organized with the Photo Memory Workshops, which I had been a part of during school. The class is an amazing opportunity to spend time with an entire collection along with the photographer of the collection or expert scholar on the collection. The most recent Master Class this past April 2010 focused on the Peter Palmquist Archive. Peter Palmquist's life mission after retiring was very inspiring and his collection has and will have a big impact on the history of photography specifically relating to women in photography since the late 1800's. The passion and vision encapsulated in his collection was the final piece of encouragement I needed.

The idea of creating a public non-circulating library has been in my head for many years. It was an idea I wanted to bring to the table for a non-profit organization and at that time my focus was a broad range of international titles and making them available to a US audience. That initiative never materialized, but the idea stayed and evolved. In the last year or two, I have been personally frustrated with not being able to view most of the self-published books out there in person. So the idea of wishing for a central place to look at these kinds of books was in my head on the day I saw Peter Palmquist's collection. I was blown away that a single individual could follow his passion, create a collection, and in the process have an impact on the history of photography. I was not only interested in promoting indie published books, but I was very interested in creating an archive. So two weeks after the Master Class, I plunged into the reality of overseeing a public collection. It was the right time and I knew I would regret the decision if I did not start the Indie Photobook Library.

The iPL was started for many reasons—the two main ones being—preservation and showcasing of these independent, self-published books to be SEEN (not just on the web) and for the future—a collection of books that decades from now people will still be able to see in person. Having a specific collection dedicated to these kinds of books allows for the development of future discourse on trends in self-publishing, the ability to reflect on and compare books in the collection, and for scholarly research to be conducted in years, decades and centuries to come.

Sometimes you wonder where your path is leading you, but once you get there it all makes sense. The iPL is my destination and I will be working on it for the rest of my life.

screenshot of the iPL online

Does the iPL accept everything it receives? What is the curatorial process like? If there is a single criteria for inclusion, what would it be?

LL:For now the iPL accepts everything it receives. But with that in mind the iPL only accepts photobooks that are self-published, independently published and distributed, exhibition catalogs, print-on-demand photobooks, artist books, zines, photobooks printed on newsprint, limited edition photobooks, etc.

Are there plans to make the iPL more accessible online? Perhaps a flip-preview like with Blurb books, or PhotoEye's sneak peak?

Photobooks that are in the permanent collection of the iPL are available online as a catalog record with a photograph of the cover of the book. The site, and thus the collection, can be browsed by image, title or photographer. I have been thinking about video "flip-throughs" or interviews along with a book flip-through similar to what Self Publish, Be Happy has been doing. I like the video idea for two reasons. It gives a better sense of the book and at the same time, from an archivist point of view, for the more delicate books enables someone to experience the book without impacting it physically. There are future ideas along these lines already germinating...

How does the iPL fit into the same milieu as things like Self Publish, Be Happy; The Independent Photobook blog—are you all a part of the same dialogue? Where do you intersect, where do you clash?

LL: I think we are all celebrating the photobook, and specifically the self-published and indie published photobook, but we are promoting them in our own way. The iPL is the only physical archive.

What is your deepest hope for the iPL? What is its ultimate reach?

LL: I have very ambitious goals for the iPL. I hope it will be seen as the "Library of Congress" for self-published books and that photographers will continue to add to the collection as they create new books. Once the iPL has a space of its own, I hope to have the collection listed on worldcat.org. And in thirty years or so, the entire archive will be donated as its own collection to a much larger university or museum archive to be preserved and be accessible for future photo-bibliophiles long after my lifetime.

What challenges do you face in getting the iPL out into the world? What other challenges are there that someone who is not so intimately involved would not think to consider?

LL: Time. The iPL has already turned into a full-time project and I am happy about that, but we will need a full-time staff person to oversee the day-to-day maintenance of the collection so I can also focus on further development. How to do that without financial support is a good question but one that will be answered in the future. Another challenge is the language barrier. I want the iPL to have books from every corner of the globe. We have gotten the word out in Iran through Dide Magazine and I am reaching out to photo communities in the Middle East and Africa. News is spreading of the iPL and already we have books in the collection from Serbia, Iceland, China, Taiwan, Peru, Argentina, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, England, Singapore, New Zealand, the United States and Canada, to give you an example of some of the countries.

What is a typical day like working as the curator/promoter/voice of iPL?

We receive submissions every day, so a typical day always includes looking at books that have come in and sending out a confirmation email, cataloging them for the iPL website and our records and then announcing the new books that have been added to the collection through social media, our RSS feed and by email to those following the iPL. Currently we are getting ready for the Flash Forward Festival in Toronto and FotoWeek DC, writing grants, preparing our information for Kickstarter.com and looking for space.

Tell us about a couple of your favorite most recent submissions/finds.

LL:I don't want to label any of the books in the iPL as favorite of mines. But I can highlight some recent submissions that people should check out. NY low and high by Marco Onofri, Clinic, Depressive Landscapes, Waterfall, anything by Matt Austin or Andrea Stultiens, Kitintale by Yann Gross, Pause to Begin... There are just too many great photobooks ... See You Soon by Maxwell Anderson, Eastward Bound, How Terry Likes His Coffee.... In July I met with George Slade at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston and brought with me two boxes of books that I had selected from the iPL. In many ways it was a personal guided tour of the iPL where I presented and compared and discussed, and three hours later, we barely felt we had begun. So I could go on and on about which books you should look at. And I am pleased to say that George will get to spend more time with some of these books, because he and the PRC will be hosting a curated exhibition from the iPL collection next Fall 2011!

Aside from traveling festivals, are there plans for a more permanent home for the iPL?

Yes, the iPL is actively looking for a space. The traveling exhibitions are an initial way to showcase the books in the collection, but ultimately I hope to have a public space that operates like a non-circulating library where people can come in and browse the shelves. I would also like to have a small gallery area in the space for rotating exhibitions from the collection. And I am interested in the idea of letting larger institutions borrow a book if needed for an exhibition they are mounting.

If and when the iPL has the happy problem of outgrowing itself, how do you see yourself adapting to the duties and demands of its growth, and what steps to grow it even further would you like to take?

LL: I am smiling. The iPL has already outgrown my office and I am looking for that space you asked about in the previous question much sooner than I originally anticipated. The iPL will be continually adapting to the duties and demands of its growth—and I like that. That makes it exciting and limitless. As far as the logistics of an ever-growing collection, that is where it will get challenging. The iPL has applied for a grant and will soon be joining the other fundraising projects on Kickstarter.com and we have welcomed Stephanie Obernesser as our first intern this fall.

Has your role as the curator/caretaker of this collection influenced your own buying, viewing and book-appreciating habits? Would you, for example, still want to put your hands on a popularly or more widely produced title by one of the more well known art presses, or is there a kind of conversion that takes place, where your independent values must be lived and choices made by them?

LL: In the end they are all photobooks. I am still just as interested in traditional trade editions as I was before. I have been collecting photobooks for over ten years and most of them fall into the category of what you described as "produced by the more well known art presses." And I have a section in my personal collection of titles relating to contemporary African photography. What has changed recently about my buying habits is that I am now buying more "indie" publications. Through the iPL I have the opportunity to see more non-traditional publications and because of this am buying more books. And I hope that same impulse will affect other people looking at the books in our library.

Is there room for everybody in the art press publishing world? Room for every kind of approach? In your view, are the more tried and true traditional ways of doing things (i.e. big, expensive, prestigious presses) dying out?

LL: I wouldn't say dying out, but with the surge of self-publishers and indie labels, I assume it is probably a lot harder for the traditional presses then it used to be. The photobook market is only so big and there is so much out there to buy and collect.

What is some of the feedback that you've received about the iPL that has most surprised you?

LL: The feedback and support of this project has been amazing and overwhelmingly positive. I am hearing that photographers are selling books after someone has seen it in the Indie Photobook Library. That is some of the best kind of feedback.

Why is it important to collect photobooks at this particular place and time? In an age of fleeting ephemerality, is there something counterintuitive to trying to hold onto the material?

LL: It is inherent in my own behavior to collect. I understand the nature of collections and archives. I don't like the fleeting ephemerality of information, images, time and really enjoy looking at history through an accessible archive. I started the Indie Photobook Library just days before I read the article that appeared in the Boston Globe on May 24, 2010, titled "Harvard's Paper Cuts." I read it in a nervous sweat. The article made me second-guess my decision as I thought about what I had just started. If one of the largest libraries and archives was collecting less physical material, what was I doing? Archives shouldn't follow trends but collect the things that shape them. On a consumer level, digital material may be more practical, but I am still interested in the physical object and I think the role of the archive should be too. What is shifting within archives is how the collection and material is used and shared. And for that I think the more that is digitized and available online the better.

What do you see in the independent, self-published book market that is different and/or of a particular and rare value from the mass market?

LL: Individuality and creativity. It may be an idealist's view but the physical expression of the book as object and idea is not as influenced by commercialism. The production of the indie book may be approached from a different perspective than a mass market book. The photographer is in control of the decisions and thus the end result is just as much an expression of the artist as is any of the photographs. It goes beyond just a book of photographs.

Tell us a little bit about the inaugural iPL event, the Toronto Flash Forward festival. How will people be encouraged or inclined to use the library? What will distinguish it from an art press book sale stand?

LL: Stephanie and I are busy getting ready for the Flash Forward Festival and we are very excited to be part of the "Self Published Book Expo." The iPL will be showcasing its entire cataloged archive and people are invited to spend hours looking through all the books. It is such a diverse collection, from exquisite hardcover books to softcover zines, newsprint books to limited-edition artist books, print-on-demand books from Blurb and MagCloud, and everything in between. Check out our website to see the books that will be on view. Self Publish Be Happy will also be there showing a curated selection and I look forward to seeing the books selected by Bruno. None of the books in the iPL are for sale, nor is the iPL set up to sell books at the Flash Forward Festival, however on Saturday October 9 from 4-6pm, if you have a book in the iPL and will be in Toronto you are invited to bring copies of your book to sign and sell during that time to festival visitors.

Many, many thanks to Larissa for taking the time to so thoughtfully answer our questions about collecting and the world's first Indie Photobook Library! Keep up to date with news and chances to view the iPL over on their website. The iPL also has a twitter feed and a Facebook page. If you have a book that you are interested in submitting to the collection, check out the submission page.