The guardian reports on the rise and rise of London based Bruno Ceschel's Self Publish, Be Happy, an online hub for those of us involved in making, collecting, investigating the home-made photobook.
Guardian critic and writer Sean O'Hagan has this to say,
SPBH is the brainchild of writer and academic Bruno Ceschel. It was founded with the aim of "celebrating, studying and promoting self-published photobooks" via events, publications and the web. Not strictly a publisher, SPBH runs workshops that show photographers how to make and distribute their own books, posting the results on their daily blog and acting as a repository of knowledge.
"People send us the physical object," says Ceschel. "It could be a book or a stapled 'zine. Then we choose what we like and put it up on the site with all the details of how it was made, where it was printed, how much it costs and how to order a copy. It's all about thinking and creating outside the mainstream model of publishing, which most young photographers can't afford or simply don't want to get involved with."
Now SPBH are actually publishing a book of their own; or, to be more precise, three books bearing their imprint over the next year. The first is entitled AB&OC and features polaroids by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, who gave Ceschel his first job back when they were creative directors of Benneton's controversial COLORS magazine. It's a rather beautiful little book: a random selection of polaroids, some of which were done as test shots for editorial shoots. There are portraits (Amy Winehouse, Paula Rego, Alsion Lapper, Adam by Oliver and Oliver by Adam) as well as still lifes (skulls, a leaf, a bird's nest) and a shot of Adam's right foot and Oliver's right hand. The print run is 250 and each comes with an original polaroid mounted on the cover: a picture of a hand, or hands, forming a word in sign language.
Read the full guardian story HERE and go to the Self Publish, Be Happy site HERE
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