Ripping off the idea behind Desert Island Discs I've picked eight photobooks to keep me company on a desert island. As per the radio programme I'll be picking one to save if a wave crashes into my island and washes the small library away- which I'll save for last
It proved quite easy to pick the first seven books. hat, however, left me trying to decide which one of the dozens still on my shelves to put in the final spot. It wasn't easy as I hadn't included some of my favourite photographers in the seven. That was fine because this is a selection of books, not photographers. Nor had I included any 'classic' or 'seminal' books. The temptation of an exercise like this is to select what you think are the best eight photobooks of all time. That wasn't my aim and I deliberately left out the usual suspects.
What I was after were the eight books I find myself returning to time and again. Even so that final spot was proving difficult to fill. So I cheated!
It's a moot point whether retrospective collections of photographs in book form count as photobooks. They're more like catalogues in a way. If that hadn't been the case then I'm a Real Photographer would certainly have gone to my desert island.
Keith Arnatt's pictures are so varied in style and approach that there is always something new to find in them. They are serial works too, which is something that interests me. I also like how gentle humour and conceptual art mingle in many of the series. That aspect of making serious work which can be discussed 'intellectually' but not being po faced about it is refreshing.But it's not a photobook in the strict sense. Then again some of my other choices probably wouldn't meet the rigid definition in today's world as they contain text which is as much a part of the book as the pictures, in a way which the text in 'real' photobooks isn't. Today a photobook seems to have to have an essay by some academic wither about the subject of the photographs or the photographer. And the pictures mustn't have explanatory captions. Oh, no. That will never do in a 'real' photobook. More on this in later posts.
So I needed to find a proper photobook. I had been tempted to put Martin Parr's The Last Resort on the list, but much as I like it it was too obvious a pick. In any case, it's not the book of his I look at most often. In the end I went for Black Country Stories.
Apart from having more pictures to look at than the earlier book it's more varied in subject matter than The Last Resort and less acerbic than a lot of the work Parr is noted for. Not that I dislike that work, far from it, but there's something openly celebratory about the pictures in this book which appeals to me. There are also quite a few portraits and group portraits included, which is something I think Parr does well - in his own way!
That's my first choice. I might post my second one tomorrow. Or I might not!
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