This group of articles, Robert Frank and the history of Japanese photography and photobooks, all address the topic of order and sequence. The photobook is a process. Robert Frank spent a year arranging and editing his photos down to a select number. Since the photobook is a whole object, a sequence of photographs that the artist has to consider the overall thought-process behind. Reading Robert Frank's take on the process he went through to create The Americans. Frank described his experiences has what drove his process, rather than his ideas or intentions.
Robert Frank, a well-known photobook author, did not know the complexity behind creating a photobook at the beginning of The Americans. He wanted the photographs to be seen as something more than just images, and to be more poetic and beautiful in nature. The symbols and places he listed provided a framework for what was to be photographed, but his observations of America and his experiences expanded the content of his photographs. As an outsider looking in, Frank was able to observe what Americans overlooked, such as what defines their behavior and impacts the way they interact.
As Robert Frank learned more about Americans, his style of photographing evolved. He let the subject matter and symbols define the photograph. He could not take too much time thinking about taking the picture. Allen Ginsberg describes this style as "First thought, best thought". Basically meaning that gut decisions are the best.
The first time looking through the images in The Americans they seemed random, but after looking more in depth at how Frank saw it, and after the powerpoint in class, each sequence of photographs builds off of the last. The subject matter of one image is mirrored or found in subsequent images. Knowing that Frank spent a year simply narrowing down the images and sequencing them tells me that these quick turnover projects we have been doing is just the beginning. The semester long photobook seems to me to be more similar to what Robert Frank was going for. The continual process and reconfiguration of the same images overtime is what I will be able to do with the semester long project, but only if I start it sooner rather than later. I have already visualized what I want to include, like Ginsberg said, "First thought, Best thought". Now I must capture what I see in my mind's eye, get it on film, and then put it on paper.
Japanese photobooks were also apart of this reading group. As a genre, they employ very innovative and interesting ways of using the photobook form. Unlike western photobooks like Robert Franks, Japanese photographers take the objectiveness of photographs to a whole new level. They reinforce the blurry and grainy aesthetic elements of the photographs, completely stripping them of their documenting capabilities. Without the context clues in the details of the photograph, the viewer is unable to view the photograph as the object within it's frames, and instead forces the viewer to understand the photograph itself as an object. This understanding of the objective photograph is reinforced by the japanese bookmaking process, which is simply design, sequence and printing. The type of printing process can either add or detract from the overall feel of the photobook as well as help or deter the photographs and the book form from effectively interacting with each other.
Not only do Japanese photographs interact with the book and the paper, but they also implore the viewer to interact differently with it. Without margins, the viewer is physically touching and interacting with the photograph as they turn each and every page. It is a foreign concept to many who read and view books with margins. The lack of which is offsetting and creates a different experience. By not including margins, the photobook can be seperated in the minds of the viewer form textual books and can instead be compared to other visual books,like magazines.
For my SLP, I want to incorporate more full page spreads that go from edge to edge as well as make use of the center fold in the book. I want there to be no frame around the image so that the viewer sees the photograph as a continuous scene rather than a captured moment. These readings raise many new ideas of how to approa
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