Why a book?

Why a book? Why pages? Why paper?

A plea for publishing as artistic practice

In most cases, using the medium photography to tell a story means producing several pictures on a topic and then putting them in relation to each other. In order to communicate this story to an audience the artist can use a large variety of vehicles. Today the way we consume images is obviously dominated by online media. It’s fast, efficient but very fleeting.

There are, however, better ways to frame the contact from artist to audience. One important medium I have been using the recent 10 years to communicate my work is the photobook. Basically, the photobook offers a rather straight grid to tell a story - starting with a first page and ending with a last page. This quite technical mechanics of the bookblock - making the reader flip through it page by page - is a perfect substrate to transport the dramatic composition of a narration. Of course this sequence of pictures and pages can also be broken up, if it is useful for the story: special kinds of binding or a combination of different qualities and sizes of paper can provide a disruption of the straight rhythm.

Apart from its role as a container for pictures, a book also is an object by itself, and so it layers several levels of reality and fiction: the single picture - as a visual excerpt of a potentially bended reality -, the story line as an element by itself and finally the bookblock as a concrete object in the reader’s hands. This layering of different shades of reality can be seen for example on the cover of my publication „Cornucopia“ with its embossed wood-structure: When holding the book in their hands the readers are sensing wood, holding paper and seeing a picture of polystyrene. This combination of haptic and visual sensations is something that makes the book a unique medium. Another advantage of publishing as artistic practice is that the book is a multiple, it can be used to communicate your content to a bigger audience, it can travel the world easily at low cost and hence can provide wider visibility for your work and broaden the dialogue.

The photobook is also a perfect platform for building new visual vocabulary and sharing it with your audience - developing a visual literacy, something quite important for our future media interaction. The book can operate as a small independent visuals-laboratory, which is at the same time a self-contained object and yet open to communicate with the audience.

In recent years a strong photobook scene has developed, with a vivid and friendly exchange at eye level and a growing number of events to celebrate the book. This flourishing is great to see! Let’s keep the photobook an open stage for all kinds of expression and a medium to communicate with a wide interested audience!

Jens Masmann is part of »Guest Room: Michael Famighetti«.

Check out his Artist Feature Ping Pong.