Desert Island Photo Books - 8

I really should have learned the lesson by now, to never make predictions for what I'm going to do. This 'should' be my post about the books which didn't quite make it to my imaginary desert island, but it's not. That post may well have disappeared into the black hole of my 'plans that won't get fulfilled'!

 The English by Ian Berry.

 

This is number eight, and the one book I would save from the waves if my sandy library was threatened. It's top of my heap whichever way I pile my photobooks for a number of reasons. Not least being that it was the first photobook I bought, back in 1978 when it was published. I guess I found out about it through one of the magazines I used to buy at the time - the weekly Amateur Photographer and  monthly Practical Photography. It was an eye-opener.

Here were photographs which weren't all about technique which is how those in the mags' features came across accompanied by the details of shutter speed, f-stop and filter. While there is a little info on the cameras, lenses and films used that's as far as it goes for technical information. What mattered was the pictures, and they really made an impact on me.

 

That was down to a combination of composition and subject matter, decisive moments and framing. Here was a book of pictures which happened to be photographs. Pictures which showed me there could be more to photographs than the 'camera club' fare I'd been exposed to through the populist photography media of the day.

Even back then I was drawn to pictures of life in Britain, in England in this case. That's something which has stuck with me ever since. I have photobooks by photographers about other parts of the world but the ones I look at most frequently are those about the island I live on.

Somewhere along the line my original copy of The English went missing. When I rekindled my interest in photography in 2010 I dug out all my photobooks and catalogues but no matter where I searched The English was not to be found. Eventually I gave in and found a copy on-line for £35 which felt a bit steep considering the condition it's in. Checking prices recently it's starting to look like a bargain!

Aside from the wonderful pictures what I like about this book is that it is a paperback (a hardback was produced but I guess I couldn't afford it back then any more than I could justify its used price today) published by a mainstream publishing house, Penguin. That meant that it was widely available for a reasonable price - £12. This, to me, suggests that it's target audience was not photographers but the general public.

If the current surge in popularity for photobooks is to be believed, and there does seem to be plenty of them appearing these days, it is mostly taking place within a limited photocentric audience. Look at the short print runs of many titles and it makes it plain enough that these books are not aimed at the person in the street.

A run of 500, while common for contemporary photobooks, is, frankly, pathetic. My pike rig book sold three times that back in the 1990s, and the pike fishing book market is pretty niche. Maybe they aim is a collectors' market. And given the high price of some publications that could be the case but it doesn't apply across the board. It's far more like vanity publishing in a lot of cases rather than a financial venture. Sure it's great to get work 'out there' but to 500 people?

The same applies to the photography zine world where print runs can be even more limited. One or two hundred being pretty standard. There's lots of material being produced, but it's being seen by other people producing zines. While I'm a fan of making zines as a way to preserve (hopefully) work I am beginning to question this making zines and photographs to be seen only by other zine making photographers. It's all a bit incestuous.

Zines are cheap, that's the point of them, get them to a wider audience. Even if that means giving them away! Of course here we run into the hurdle of subject matter. Your average non-photographer isn't likely to be interested in a zine full of empty urban scenes no mater how well composed they are. If that's your kind of subject matter than get creative with your distribution. Hide copies on the shelves of public libraries, leave them on train seats, get them out in the wider world any way you can!

Better still make photographs people relate to and give zines of them to the people in the photos, be that local communities or subculture groups. And by subculture I don't mean it as in motorbike gangs or fasionistas I mean it as in flower arrangers and yarn bombers! Or in my case poultry fanciers and sheep breeders.

The best photobooks to my mind are affordable, accessible and widely available. The English was just that.

---