The idea of an African space program may sound funny to some, but not to Cristina de Middel. Through a mix of fact and fiction, de Middel forces viewers to reinterpret a 1960s space program in Zambia in her photobook, The Afronauts.
Video interview with photographer Cristina de Middel. Contains Afronauts spoilers!
Self Publish Be Happy Book Club III by Cristina de Middel
This the second book by Cristina de Middel after the acclaimed The Afronauts, a playful book she made about the forgotten Zambian space program. This is a great publication. It is beautifully made, playful and with great pictures. A love story about New York, street photography and Maria and Tony of course.
The cover of the copy I received from SPBH is a bit boring compared to the ones I saw here and there on the internet, but that can be easily fixed as Amsterdam is home to a thriving community of graffiti artists.
You are probably already familiar with the classic Secret Book Compartment project. On Instructables alone, you can find over 20 different varia…
Until I saw this DIY video I was wondering what to do with all these Little Brown Mushroom ‘golden books’ I keep buying. Don’t take me wrong, they are great books, but once the twentieth copy arrives in the mail, I think I will make a secret storage compartment out of them.
Little Brown Mushroom ‘Golden Books’
I will put it next to my copy of Broken Manual. No one will know of course, because that book was issued with its own secret book compartment.
Broken Manual by Alec Soth & Lester B. Morrison
In an attempt to balance copyright restrictions and ever-present camera phones, some museums are loosening their ‘no photography’ policies
On Facebook photographer Harry Watts announced that he is having a sale on his three self-published books. His book Studio is one of my favorites. This picture is taken from the Studio series by Harry Watts.
GREAT NEWS! I am have a sale on my three self-published books. STUDIO is only £5 (+P&P) http://tinyurl.com/d6nge8f and FINDS 1 http://tinyurl.com/ce24p8u & 2 http://tinyurl.com/cl5ewcv are just £1 (+P&P)
In this post the critic Jörg M Colberg asks “whether re-issues or second editions should be changed/modified or not”. He does not have an answer, but I think it is also not a question.
Revised editions are as old as the history of the printed book. It is up to the creator how he or she wants to express the ideas and he or she can take advantage of every opportunity to alter the expression and the manifestation of a work like for example the revisions made in the second and third editions of Redheaded Peckerwood.
The audience has to live with this, but it might help them to focus a bit more on the intellectual content rather than the physical object.
Last week I paid a visit to &Foam and there I bought a copy of Car Crash Studies by the Danish photographer Nicolai Howalt.
Interesting enough a couple of years ago Swiss photographer Raffael Waldner published a similar book wih the same title Car Crash Studies: 2001-2010. Howalt made his series in 2009.
Where Howalt focuses on details like scratched paintwork, blown airbags and interiors, Waldner provides a more exhausting documentation of crashed cars. He also included shots of frontal and rear impacts and engines. Most of his subjects are fast and expensive cars from brands like Ferrari, Aston Martin, Porsche Lamborghini and Maserati. In Switzerland these kind of cars are not uncommon.
The pictures of car interiors in Howalts’ book are truly haunting and clearly show what impact a car crash can have.
Both books are highly recommended. The Howalt book will be a bit more difficult to get as it is limited to 300 copies, but there are still copies available here and there. And if you dive into the subject do not forget to take it to a different level with Crash by J.G. Ballard or the adaptation of the novel by David Cronenberg.
The number of digital photo books is increasing. Photographer Geert van Kesteren published his accalimed book about the Gulf War as a digital photo book for iPad and iPhone. The app contains over 400 photo’s, in detail reports in English and Arabic, live news feeds and photo-zooms. The app is developed in collaboration with Antenna-Men.
This blog contains posts about several topics that have my interest including art, photobooks, photography, content management (mainly Alfresco), open source software and open standards, music and food.
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