What's YOUR Monograph About?

Still shooting and printing for it, but the structure is there for it - "Sinister Idyll: Historical Slavery in the Modern Landscape". A volume of palladium prints from 2 1/4 x 4 1/4 film negatives of the modern landscape of places and events that reflect upon our relationship with slavery, and how the erasive function of time makes it easy to forget the nature of things we look at daily. The beginning of the series was inspired by a Civil War battlefield tour - we went to visit the Monocacy Battlefield National Park, and the guide was talking about the history of slavery on that property, and a particularly dark twist to it - the landowners, seeking to fill a market need after the importation of new slaves into the United Slates was made illegal in 1805, set up a breeding service on their property, holding 90 persons in bondage not only to provide labor to work their fields but to supply new human livestock for other owners in need. I was hearing this while standing on gently rolling hills blanketed in head-high ripe corn, puffy white clouds dotting a cerulean sky. That horrific disconnect inspired the title.

Generally people related.

mine's about "photography"
i've the materials on hand to make a handful of japanese bound books of prints using hand made negatives and photograms
on hand coated hand made emulsion paper ( both silver and iron based )
tipped onto rag paper and with hand written and contact printed freeform verse
probably a small edition none the same and the best one probably blurped.
i've made maybe 20-25 closed or open spine books, its really not too hard to make book or folio oneself
if only a few are made ...

TheFlyingCamera said:

"Sinister Idyll: Historical Slavery in the Modern Landscape".

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Great project. Very intense subject matter.

jnanian said:

mine's about "photography"
i've the materials on hand to make a handful of japanese bound books of prints using hand made negatives and photograms
on hand coated hand made emulsion paper ( both silver and iron based )
tipped onto rag paper and with hand written and contact printed freeform verse
probably a small edition none the same and the best one probably blurped.
i've made maybe 20-25 closed or open spine books, its really not too hard to make book or folio oneself
if only a few are made ...

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That combines a lot of great arts in there. Just handmade books alone is a major art adventure. I own a few handmade books from others - mostly poets - and they are real treasures.

ReginaldSMith said:

Great project. Very intense subject matter.

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I've been fortunate enough to see some of Scott's project in person. They're little jewels, beautifully printed. They'd make a great book.

Mine is "E6: A Large-Format Love Story".

I learned photography mostly on Ektachrome, so Kodak announced the discontinuation of that line, I got and froze 100 exposures in 8x10, just in case I would need them one day. Now that I'm (reasonably) comfortable with large format, I'm saying goodbye to the film, one click at a time.

Mentally I keep it divided into three loose categories, by primary motivation (there's quite a bit of overlap, obviously):

1 - People, places, and things that are important to me, personally, memories I want to keep in the kind of vibrant clarity that Ektachrome does so well.
2 - Photos that let me express myself, as an artist.
3 - Photos that let me express the things I'll miss about Ektachrome particularly - its sense of color and tone, and its ability to handle very fine details. I can shoot 1 and 2 on Portra or Provia if I have to, but once I'm done here #3 is likely lost forever. Kodak may bring back Ektachrome in 35mm or maybe even one day 120, but I don't have any illusions about how unlikely the deep end of 8x10 will be.

At some point I managed to get hold of 4 spare frames, which buys me a little bit of breathing room, but I admit I take a deep breath every time just before I fire the shutter; my margin of error is very, very small.

How long do you expect to take doing this very interesting project?

I'm telling myself I'll make myself finish by the end of 2025. It's all too easy to keep things forever for a tomorrow that never comes, and meanwhile life slips by. So far I'm not too far off schedule. I started in May last year and so far I have 10, with plans for at least five more, maybe six, by the end of the year.

As an example, this is a very good friend of mine, sketching in a hotel room. There are no strobes and no tricks involved, just a desk lamp and the curtains cracked open a little just off-frame.

jtk said:

https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/users/rorye.3586/ perhaps a visual hint about rorye's monograph?

rorye....have you photographed San Francisco's current iteration of downtown? Shocking ghastly architecture. Your Media photos are wonderful.

I photographed much of South Of Market in the 70s, while it was still full of machine shops, printers, photo and graphic studios. Kodachrome and (sadly) Verichrome. Was shooting owners of SOM businesses that still existed and had existed before 1906.

The Verichrome printed beautifully but the negs self destructed within a couple of years. VPS, the original C41, was terrible that way, compared to the old CPS. Clear sign that Kodak was on the way out.

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What happened? I have used Verichrome and Verichrome Pan films and they have always lasted as well as any films that I have used. I wish (as do others) that Kodak still made Verichrome Pan. We are talking about black & white films aren't we? I have really never had any film "self destruct".....Regards!

Concerts and gigs in my home state from around 2000-2014. Mostly scans of black and white negs taken in available light, all as a regular ticket-buying punter. (It's fantastic, you can even buy a copy for yourself!)
http://www.blurb.com/b/8808974-as-long-as-there-s-music

I have made a few other monographs and many travel books for personal consumption. My other book on Blurb is a recent record of a 5 day kayaking trip down the Snowy River, in a remote part of Australia's highest mountain ranges. It was mostly my colour digital photos but I also asked the another participants to send me their photos too in case I had missed something essential. I then made it available for my fellow paddlers and the tour organisers to buy a copy for themselves in a high and medium paper quality versions.
http://www.blurb.com/b/8723958-snowy-river-kayaking

Tony Egan said:

Concerts and gigs in my home state from around 2000-2014.

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Really nice job Tony. Looked at the whole preview - sweet!

How do you think Blurb compares to other POD services?

Arklatexian said:

What happened? I have used Verichrome and Verichrome Pan films and they have always lasted as well as any films that I have used. I wish (as do others) that Kodak still made Verichrome Pan. We are talking about black & white films aren't we? I have really never had any film "self destruct".....Regards!

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I think jtk meant Vericolor, not Verichrome. (VPS = Vericolor, CPS = Ektacolor) As you mentioned Verichrome was a series of black-and-white films (with excellent longevity).

I'll disagree that this was a "clear sign that Kodak was on the way out," but the stability of the Vericolor series could be definitely... less than fantastic, let's say.

ReginaldSMith said:

Really nice job Tony. Looked at the whole preview - sweet!

How do you think Blurb compares to other POD services?

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Thanks for having a look and the feedback. In the past few years I have ordered about 16 copies of this book and have been satisfied with the tonal range, contrast and colour caste - until recently. I re-ordered two copies recently and was not happy with the heavy magenta colour caste and contrast (heavy-handed shadows lacking detail). They agreed and re-printed but next time there was an uneven, patchy colour caste and the same heavy contrast. I complained again and they gave me a credit to reprint with some additional instructions about using their CMYK ICC profiles. So, I recreated the book from scratch strictly following their instructions and sent it off about 2 weeks ago. They have since been shipped so keen to see if the problem has been addressed when they arrive!

It's a shame I have had this recent poor experience as their interface is the best and most flexible I've used. I suspect it is a lack of care or expertise by the human being setting up the job as they got it right the first few times? However, their support process is responsive and they genuinely seem to want to be sure I get what I expect in terms of print quality. They claim to have had much success with monochrome "fine art" books like mine despite printing only in colour with HP Indigo output. I am kicking the tyres at the moment with Momento which is an Australian company with a good reputation but their interface and submission process is very clunky as are some others I have researched. I would be interested if anyone else has had success with a monochrome book publisher as I can't give you a comparison having relied on Blurb for all my books to date.

FYI I used In-Design to create the book and then export final high quality PDF to upload for printing.

Cheers,
Tony

Seperate from several projects going on, one topic I am interested in for my “street” photography (mostly taken indoors) is one of the seven deadly sins: gluttony. Mostly use Leica screw mount, Olympus xa, or subminiature camera’s.

ReginaldSMith said:

That combines a lot of great arts in there. Just handmade books alone is a major art adventure. I own a few handmade books from others - mostly poets - and they are real treasures.

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thanks
been making books since i was about ... 14 or 15, i'm a lot older than that now.
studied with a master bookbinder who was doing book conservation for things that 7 or 800 years old.
i don't have the exotic equipment he had ( you think cameras are expensive buy a giant nipping press )
so i opted to teach myself open spine work. once you get the basics down ... as frankie would say, the world is your oyster.
have fun!

Arklatexian said:

What happened? I have used Verichrome and Verichrome Pan films and they have always lasted as well as any films that I have used. I wish (as do others) that Kodak still made Verichrome Pan. We are talking about black & white films aren't we? I have really never had any film "self destruct".....Regards!

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I goofed............. I meant to say Vericolor, not Vericrome, which was a greaf film. Vericolor was the first iteration of that C41 film. I shot E4 and E6 while Vericolor was introduced...it created huge hassles for labs that processed it. C22 was far superior, until the second iteration of Vericolor (Vericolor II). Vericolor was a disaster for wedding and portrait photographers because after a year or two it couldn't be printed without crossover. I did commercial work so hardly any of my clients wanted prints...when they did I simply made 4X5 internegs, which are still good today, 20 years later, as are the chromes I shot back then..