Photobooks

 

Last weekend I had some time to utilize the skills I learned in bookmaking and combine my photography together.  The result?  A hand bound artist's book.

Actually three of them.

It's amazing how imagery changes from a digital to a physical space.  In my opinion, I love them more so in the physical form.  Binding them together in book form just adds that certain charm and clean professionalism that I have always wanted to represent my images in.  And because of this, I will cherish them all the more.

I ran into a few issues when developing my books, specifically with binding.  In one of my series, I had printed all the images as 7.5x11 prints on a thick weighted paper.  My hopes for the prints where to frame and hang a few of them but I never got around to doing so.  And I probably didn't because the paper has always been so nice to touch and feel and I thought it was a shame to stick it behind some glass.

So I thought it brilliant to try and bind the prints together in book form.  This way I would enjoy the intimacy of viewing all the imagery while experiencing the beautiful qualities of the paper.

The problem was that they were separate prints and each were cut flush to the image.  This basically means, I had to physical spine to bind a book with.

So I ended up making one.  I created a slight version of a perfect bind with PVA and mulberry paper as my spine and cased in the book block.

And after I created that first book, I followed the other two out pretty much the same.  Each book contains a title page and colophon.  Two of the books have an introduction and all three books have velvet end pages.  All cases are covered in Japanese book cloth.

Yes I know... fancy.