photojournalism.co.uk

Booked up

Dominick Tyler - Bookends

I just counted up all the portfolios I've made over the years and it comes out to roughly one for each of the twelve years I've been working. That's not including the odd one-off for a project or a holiday or just for fun. I've written before about the anxiety of showing books but I've always enjoyed the process of making them.

My first portfolios were pre-made books with clear vinyl sleeves, they all smell a bit funny now, a combination of the plastic sleeves and poorly fixed prints. At the time it felt like a big step, choosing images and putting them in the book. Suddenly what had been aimless was given a structure and a point, a beginning, middle and end.

My next books were bound pages of inkjets prints, at first in a folder that could be opened and re-edited and then in a permanent binding. Each of the books cost about £120 to produce, factoring in the cost of paper, inks and the services of a bookbinder, and they took a week of work to layout and print, so I only produced one or two a year.

Several times people viewing these books asked whether they were published editions or home-made and I always took that as a compliment. I suppose my aim was to replicate something of the "object of desire" feel of the photo-books I love, to make the experience of looking at my portfolio just a little bit like looking at a Steidl or Phaidon book.

I no longer have the time to make books like that and I need more copies than before so that some can be sent abroad or dropped off, so I've changed methods again and now I'm using Blurb.com. Blurb is an online printing service that's geared towards low print-runs but good image quality. The books are nicely printed and bound, repro is good, not great, but good. The only major drawback is that you have to use Blurb's own software, "Booksmart", to design the book and while it's very easy to use there are a limited number of page layouts available. It's very cost-effective compared to the fully bespoke books I was making, I've made two fifty page books each for around £25 plus P&P and you can order just one or hundreds depending on your needs. I've also made smaller, cheaper books as commercial portfolios that I can afford to give to prospective clients.

Blurb and services like it (Lulu, QOOP, Smile, Bob Books and more?) must be the result of the falling cost of digital printing, a few years ago producing a book like this would have been prohibitively expensive, or prohibitively disappointing. So now we can all be publishers of our own work, Blurb even offers a marketplace where you can sell your creations if you want.

The photo-book is, and always has been, a seductive, effective and desirable object. For many of us opening the pages of a book by Cartier-Bresson, Arbus, Salgado, Avedon or any other great photographer opened our eyes to other ways of seeing and other ways of telling. Now that we can all enshrine our work in those holy hardcovers will the photo-book loose it's power?

No Access

Dominick Tyler - Tangled

Access can make or break a story and negotiating access is always a nervous process for me. Last week a project that I've been thinking about for a while came to an abrupt halt before it even began because of access or rather lack of it and now I'm wondering where I went wrong. It's not the first time this has happened of course, I've had several stories fold because access either fell through or was impossible to arrange, but the signs were so good for this one it came as a shock when I heard the blunt "No".

My immediate reaction was that I'd failed to communicate my idea clearly and that I'd been misunderstood, so I followed up with a second crack at a first impression, an email that I hope will be interpreted as the persistence of dedication rather than arguing the toss. I don't expect the second email to work really, but I wanted to explain myself better at least, and it made me think about good and bad ways to go about getting access to stories. Each case is different of course but a few things seem to work:

Always phone. By all means email first but emails are too easy to ignore and an actual conversation is the gold standard for negotiation so follow up with a call.

Make it worth their while. There has to be something in it for the subject, or the boss of the institution or whoever is the gatekeeper to access.

Show your credentials. The most effective credentials are previous works that show you don't screw people over, and that you can deliver what you're offering.

Think of it as a collaboration. Which, to some extent, it always is. Long term projects especially need collaborative relationships to develop between photographer and subject and this can be seen as an attraction or a problem for those who allow you access.

With my recent failure I did at least try to follow the above but it still didn't work and the lesson for me is to not take anything for granted, least of all access, and to quickly start work on another project.

Still human, still here.

Abbie Trayler-Smith - Boni

Host Gallery in London is exhibiting a project by Abbie Trayler-Smith called "Still human, still here" that portrays the lives of rejected asylum seekers in the UK. I know Abbie really well, she's been a friend since we worked on a student newspaper together. She honed her considerable photographic skills at the Telegraph where she became one of their busiest photographers, regularly traveling to hot-spots and disaster areas and every time returning with powerful images.

After eight years at the Telegraph she courageously decided to move on and has recently found a new home at Panos Pictures. Like all great photographers, she is her own worst critic so she will hate me pouring on the compliments but having seen this latest project develop, almost from the start, I'm struck again by her ability to make wonderful images, communicating complex stories with simple honesty.

I've asked Abbie to blog about her experiences working on the project and putting the show together so hopefully she will.

The Graduates

Dominick Tyer - Banana Camera

Simon Bainbridge of the British Journal of Photography has kicked up a little storm by asking "Are photography courses useful?". Thousands of new photography graduates join the workforce every year and it's not as if there's that much work for established photographers; so common sense might suggest that the chances of success for the newcomers are slim and getting slimmer. Bainbridge also asks why those running and teaching the courses don't make their students more aware of the odds.

I'm often asked where I studied photography (I didn't) and where I'd recommend studying, so this question is one I've often considered. There have even been times when I've felt my work could do with a more rigorous academic foundation (usually after a long work drought) and I've thought about enrolling for an M.A. or something. Then I was asked to do a guest talk for some students at the London College of Communications and it seemed ridiculous to accept and then to apply to be a student.

I've done a few talks at LCC now and aside from the fact that I've learned a lot about my own work from the experience I'm always surprised by the expectations of the students. While they often seem naive about the business of being a photographer, I don't get the sense that they expect it to be an easy life. I often find myself explaining simple, boring, fundamental procedures like getting proposals out and invoicing effectively and it seems to me that not teaching this stuff is a far greater omission than not teaching that photography is an oversubscribed occupation.

Showing off

Dominick Tyler - Skinny-dip

I had a portfolio appointment yesterday, the first in a long time, and in the end it went really well and I even enjoyed it, but it did bring back memories of previous bad experiences. Some of these experiences are part of the reason I've left it so long to look for new clients. I'm not alone in dreading portfolio viewings, someone recently described it as being like a blind date, and it has the same potential for rejection, but at least with a blind date you have a kind of equal relationship, you're starting from the same place. A portfolio viewing is more like a blind date where you know that you are one of hundreds of hopefuls, and you have to strip naked, and name as many foods that begin with the letter J as you can in a minute. I've had a couple that felt like that, mostly towards the beginning of my career I suppose but even now I feel very erm.. exposed when I show my books.

The dread of showing can easily become a classic photographers procrastination: you don't go and see people with your book because you're conscious that it needs updating. You spend months updating it then you don't go and see people because you're nervous about showing the new work. Any negative feedback convinces you that you should re-do it, which takes months and eventually the new work becomes old work and then you feel like it needs updating...

If you manage to actualy get more than a couple of people to see the work in-between stressing about it you're doing well.

Photo District News ran a feature last summer about Review Santa Fe, a big portfolio review organized by Centre in Santa Fe. It's particularly interesting because it uses the diaries of a photographer, Doug Menuez and a reviewer, Debra Klomp Ching of Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn, so you get a feel of the experience from both sides. It's long-ish, linked in full above, but has some good insights including this advice from Debra:

"A word to the wise, photographers need to be articulate about their work, believe in it and be prepared. The most shocking comments I had from photographers were: ‘I’m so disorganized for all this bollocks! (said in jest)”, “So ... what do you do?”, “I shouldn’t be showing you this” and “I’m not going to say anything about my folio and leave it up to you”. I’m astounded that people can go to such lengths to attend these events and not make the most of their time with me. These reviews are my first impression and the conversation is as important as the work I’m looking at."

So no pressure then...

We Are One

0134, originally uploaded by Cia de Foto.

There was an interesting talk/discussion at The Photographers Gallery last night on the topic of collectives. Documentography, of which I am a member, participated along with ANRA, Unseen, Latitude Photographers and Cia de Foto. There was a lot of interest in the way that Cia de Foto, who are based in Brazil, organize themselves. Whereas it might be fair to say that the other four collectives have come together to promote and enrich the work of the individual members, Cia de Foto is a single unit with no individual authorship taken by the three photographers. For a lot of us the idea of relinquishing or sharing authorship of our work is a hard thing to come to terms with, it's something that we are programmed to struggle against but for Cia de Foto it has produced some beautiful results and listening to Pio Figueiroa describe their "hedonistic" marriage of work and lifestyle evoked a photographic utopia where we all could photograph each other and everything without the limitations of ego. I'm not ready to give up my byline though and it might be partly because of ego but I think that I need the sense of accountability that claiming authorship gives me.

Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon - Nuclear Waste

The Deutsche Borse Photography prize shortlisted artists are being exhibited at The Photographers Gallery in London until April 12th. I went to see it yesterday in-between picking up a repaired Mac and browsing cameras I can't afford. For me the most engaging work was "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar" by Taryn Simon. Her images are beautifully conceived, individually and as a set, and beautifully realised. It's a work with a clear, but not simplistic or one-dimensional vision, it tells us stuff but it has ambiguities to illuminate rather than to obscure. I hope it wins (even though I was born the same year as Taryn and usually that prevents me from enjoying another photographers success).

Landforms

Dominick Tyler - Clitter/Clatter

I'm suddenly working on a lot of ideas that are basically landscape projects. I didn't plan it that way so I suppose it's serendipity or perhaps an indication of where my heart is pulling these days. Moving out of London to a rural idyll doesn't seem like it'll happen soon so the next best thing is to escape for work. With a bit of luck I can fill my lungs with good, fresh air and walk some hills, maybe even sleep out under the stars and all that with the added bonus of producing work. As well as the benefits of getting out into nature I think that there's value in shooting projects that redress an imbalance towards the urban in documentary photography and photojournalism. Landscape photography, at least rural landscape photography seems to be outmoded: associated with the postcard, calendar and biscuit tin; whereas urban photography, including urban and suburban landscape work is the sharp edge.

There are exceptions: Simon Norfolk's work on the hidden military significance of the Hebridean landscape (The Hebrides: A slight disturbance of the sea) combines picturesque imagery with hard fact  to great effect, and leafing through a copy of Fay Godwin's book "Landmarks" reminded me of the political content of her work, much of which is pure landscape. So, it's not impossible to produce work outside the city and suburbs that still has significance, is it?

Changes

Photojournalism.co.uk used to be an online portfolio for three photographers: Abbie Trayler-Smith, Dominick Tyler and Christophe Tweedie. Over the years we've used it less and less, moving to our own individual sites or other group sites so we thought it woud be a good idea to make a change.

We plan to start blogging at this site in the near future and we will be inviting a few other people involved in the photography industry to join us. Hopefully www.photojournalism.co.uk will become a place for photographers, picture editors and curators to share news, ideas and images.

You can find work by Abbie Trayler-Smith here
And work by Dominick Tyler here
Christophe Tweedie is currently working on film projects in Latvia.

Many thanks,
Dominick Tyler