It seems photographers are desperate to learn about photobook editing and sequencing!

My blog has just clicked over 1 million pages views. My first post was in May 2007 and I've made 1,338 posts since then. 

The most read post, was published in March 2012. I wrote about my take on photobook editing and sequencing. With 18,232 page views, I thought it worthwhile to reprise...

Here goes:  Anybody who has ever made a photobook has started out with a system, a methodology of going about it. A way of (hopefully) making it brilliant. Much has been said about this subject and guidelines laid down by people who know more than most.  Think Gerry Badger and John Gossage. Yet still, why is it that so many photobooks I look at just don't cut it?

Right now I'm in the process of editing, sequencing and designing a new bookwork so this post is really written to myself, a reminder of things I must remember not to forget. I've written about this before but the fundamentals can bear repeating over and over again...

You can read the complete piece HERE. 

Martin Parr has launched his Foundation in Bristol

Martin Parr is the voice and eyes of British photography. He tends to polarise people, love his work, hate his work. And that's no bad thing. Whatever you think you can't ignore him. I like the fact that Martin calls himself a photographer and not an artist. This reflects his down to earth view of the photographic medium and his focussed support of documentary work. 

Martin and Harvey, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol

When in Bristol in November I visited The Martin Parr Foundation and Martin gave me a guided tour. We were lured into having a picture made together. You can see that above. It's proof of the fact that the camera does lie, at least the iphone. I appear to be a dwarf besides Martin and that's not the case. At Paris Photo I mentioned this disparity to him. Martin said that, yes he was bigger than me. But he wouldn't go into detail. That brought to mind what my old father used to say - it's not the size that counts it's what you do with it! :-)

The Tate have just made a 7 minute video of The Martin Parr Foundation. It's well worth a look, you can do so HERE. And visit the MPF website HERE.

Below are some stills from the video. 

Tim Carpenter - Local Objects

If I was making a list of my top photobooks for 2017 Tim Carpenter's new bookwork Local Objects would certainly be on the list. With 74 medium format back and white images there is more than a hint of Lewis Baltz's Tract Works and John Gossge's The Pond. What Local Objects has in common with the forementioned is a quiet understated certainty. Carpenter's images are a testament to less being more and intelligence killing cleverness. In many of the images there is something going on that is not quite right, these landscapes are not what the surface suggests. The pictures seem to present an alien world, yet it's achingly familiar too. What's more I'm left wondering what might have just happened and what is about to. Strangeness prevails. I wish I had made many of these pictures. 

Publisher The Ice Plant says this: Borrowing its title from the Wallace Stevens poem in which “little existed for him but the few things / for which a fresh name always occurred,” Tim Carpenter’s Local Objects is a solid yet remarkably unassuming body of work: a calm, steady rhythm of 74 medium format photographs made in the semi-rural American Midwest. While each picture meticulously frames the seemingly random non-activity of a typical ‘street view’ image, Carpenter’s contemplative sequencing allows a surprising harmony of natural and geometric motifs to modulate quietly throughout the book — an interplay of minor chords that draw the viewer into this specific physical place(mostly central Illinois, where he grew up) and the subjective, literary space of the work. Detached from the urgency of current affairs, stripped of all excess, Carpenter’s photographs reflect a poetic attempt to see “the thing in itself,” to make meaning with the barest tools possible.

144 pages / 7.5 x 8.5 in. / Clothbound hardcover / 74 duotone / Edition of 750 copies

You can see more on Tim Carpenter's website HERE and The Ice Plant HERE.

Sean O'Hagan reports in the guardian - the top 10 photography exhibitions of 2017

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1. Ed van der Elsken: Camera in Love - The Stedelijk, Amsterdam

2. Sohrab Hura: The Lost Head and the Bird - The Nines, Peckham 24, London

3. Thomas Ruff: Photographs 1979–2017 - Whitechapel Gallery, London

4. Richard Mosse: Incoming - Barbican Curve Gallery, London

5. Giles Duley: I Can Only Tell You What My Eyes See - Old Truman Brewery, London

6. A Handful of Dust - Whitechapel Gallery, London

7. Swaps: Photographs from the David Hurn Collection - National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

8. The Deutsche Börse photography prize shortlist - The Photographers’ Gallery, London

9. Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017 - Tate Modern, London

10. Natalia LL - Roman Road Gallery at Photo London

You can go to the guardian story HERE.

photo-eye, best books of 2017

photo-eye has just announced their best book list for 2017. Each of the contributors were asked to select three photobooks that were  significant to them. 
You can check out the list HERE.

Linn Phyllis Seeger - Life On Mars

Linn Seeger travels almost as much as I do - we meet at Photo London and again at Paris Photo. Linn has been chasing photographs in Ireland, Iceland and most recently in Marfa Texas. Below are some images from her series Life on Mars. I like this work! There is a photobook here waiting to get out. Can't wait to see it...

You can see more of Linn's work on her tumblr account HERE. And more on Linn's website HERE. Check these out, well worth a look.