Paris Photo, the annual gathering in the French capital of international photography galleries, is more than framed photos on walls, as described in my previous blog. It is a multi-ring circus of all things photographic, with the exception of hardware and software. After the sale of photographic prints, it is the sale of photography books that dominates the commerce of art photography, and photo books had a large presence at Paris Photo. I was there this year on November 8, and this is what I saw.
Thirty-one publishers had booths showing their books in print, often with their editors present. A couple of the publishing big boys, Taschen and Steidl, were there, but most were smaller companies, like Dewi Lewis, Hatje Cantz, and Kehrer, and they had the really interesting stuff. If you want to see some cool examples of what a photography book can be, check out British photographer Dougie Wallace’s website www.dougiewallace.com and note the four books he has published with Dewi Lewis, such as Road Wallah. They are excellent.
Joel Meyerowitz signing his book Cape Light at Paris Photo.
In conjunction with both publishers and galleries there were over 250 book signings, and it seemed like every photographer still alive was there signing books. I found it difficult to keep track of time while looking at the galleries, and then I had to sprint to a signing at the other end of the hall. Still, on the Thursday I went I got to see Joel Meyerowitz signing Cape Light, and the aging William Klein sign William+Klein, although because of Klein’s rock-star status I couldn’t get through the mob of photo groupies to see much. I also saw Harry Gruyaert signing small 6” x 6” prints at the Magnum gallery. On the days I did not attend, here is a who’s who of the photographers signing: Frank Horvat, Susan Meiselas, John Gossage, Antoine d’Agata, Chris Killip, Daido Moriyama (him again), Todd Hido, Ralph Gibson, Sophie Calle, Richard Kalvar, Michael Kenna, and Sarah Moon. There were also a couple hundred others I had never heard of.
William Klein, the white-haired man at center left, signs his book William+Klein at Paris Photo amidst a crush of fans.
Ever since the invention of photography, the goal has been to show photographic images on hardcopy materials, usually paper, that could be handled, examined closely, and sold, thus financing a photographer’s work. For the last 100 years people viewed photos via mass reproduction in publications. In the middle of the last century newspapers and the great picture magazines like Life and Paris Match brought images to people, and there were a limited number of bound photo books. Now, with the exception of National Geographic, some special editions of Time, and the glossy fashion magazines, the periodical world is diminishing, and it is the popular photo book that is ascendent in disseminating serious photography. With the advent of inexpensive digital printing by companies like Blurb there is a profusion of photographers printing their own books (although few can mass market them), and we are in a golden age of photo books. Yeah, yeah, I hear you: what about digital collections of photographs replacing bound books made of dead trees? Answer: We ain’t there yet Dorothy. It can happen, but first someone must figure a way to make money from digital books; there must be some easy way to find the really good digital collections in the ocean of images on the Internet, possibly via subscription services or contests; paper-based books must become too expensive; and we must become so acceptive of seeing digital images that we don’t miss the tactile, sensual, appreciation of the printed page. About the last point, remember that in Star Trek, set a couple hundred years in the future, all official Star Fleet written communication is electronic, yet when Captain Picard reads for pleasure, he goes to his library of paper-based books: the point being that even in the future the printed image can be expected to provide a superior experience to the digital image.
Harry Gruyaert signs small 6”x 6” prints of his photos at the Magnum Booth during Paris Photo.
So, in this golden age of photo book profusion and confusion, contests are one way to identify the good stuff. Photography book awards have been given out over the last 18 years by at least a dozen organizations, but the big kahuna is the one given by the Aperture Foundation in conjunction with Paris Photo which has been going on since 2012. This year 983 books were entered in that competition, the largest number, 273, coming from the United States. The shortlisted candidates were on display at Paris Photo in three categories: First PhotoBook, Photography Catalogue, and PhotoBook of the Year, most of them chained to a counter where you could look through them. The problem was that everyone wanted to look at them, and the crush was great, but I got some impressions. Most of the books in the First PhotoBook group were personal narratives illustrated by photos, with the emphasis on telling the story and not on classically composed decisive moments. For example, Chinese photographer Pixy Liao’s book Experimental Relationship, Vol. 1 viewed her relationship with her boyfriend with staged color photographs where she always has the dominant position. The catalog category had more conventional books, which might be expected of catalogs of exhibitions by known photographers like Sally Mann and Susan Meiselas. The PhotoBook of the Year category fell between the other two in terms of experimentation, ranging from the more classically edited Seeing Deeply a retrospective of Dawoud Bey’s photography, and Look It’s Getting Sunny Outside!!! by Sohrab Hura chronicling the last days of the photographer’s mother and her relationship with her dog. Bey’s book is finely bound on good paper, while Hura’s is printed on coarse paper with handwritten text and simple binding. The text in almost all the shortlisted books was in English.
Another part of Paris Photo had talks by photographers, but unfortunately none of the ones I wanted to hear were on the day I was there, such as the conversation between Simon Baker of the European Museum of Photography and Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama (him again). I would really, really like to have heard Joel Meyerowitz and Tod Papageorge speaking, presumably about their time shooting on New York’s streets with Garry Winogrand in the 60s where they would bump into Lee Friedlander and Robert Frank. Oh, the stories they could tell.
That was just one action-packed day at Paris Photo. It was exhilarating. It was exhausting. It was Paris. When my wife and I walked outside at 8:00 pm, the cold was bracing. We walked across the Seine to a cafe near Les Invalides, and over glasses of wine talked about all we had seen. Then we walked the short distance to our 9:00 dinner reservation at La Fontaine de Mars, ordered oeufs mayonnaise, cassoulet, fromage, and a bottle of Crozes-Hermitage, talked some more, and caught the #96-bus back to our hotel in the Marais, passing the Sorbonne, Notre Dame Cathedral, and getting occasional views of the Eiffel Tower. The photo part of Paris Photo was grand, but so was the Paris part.
In my next blog I will tell about photography shows by JR, Willy Ronis, Martine Franck, Daido Moriyama (him again) and Dorothea Lange taking place in Paris at the same time as Paris Photo.