The annual Texas Book Festival was last weekend, October 27 and 28, a big affair that closed off four blocks of Congress Avenue and filled it with tents for books, authors, and publishers. It had authors speaking in the capitol and buildings nearby like the Contemporary Museum. Photo books and their photographers were represented, but not prominently. I spent a day looking for them.
There was one photographer who was easy to find because he was the biggest draw of the entire festival, Pete Souza, President Obama’s chief photographer. His audience was bigger than a tent or even the capitol’s house chamber, and had to be held in the Long Center. He was talking about his new photo book Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents, but since I had heard him just a couple of months ago discussing his last book, also at the Long Center, I didn’t go. Tickets were $39 and up. I found it ironic that Sousa and his book were more popular than writers and conventional books of text. Souza is an excellent photographer, but politics might have had something to do with his rock-star popularity.
Photographer Felicia Graham, center in hat, discusses her book “Rollergirls: The Story of Flat Track Derby” at the Texas Book Festival, October 2018, Austin.
I did hear photographer Felicia Graham talk about the book she photographed and wrote, Rollergirls: The Story of Flat Track Derby. Her talk was free. Graham has a masters in photojournalism from the University of Texas at Austin and has been photographing roller derby for more than 10 years, accompanying teams on road trips to Tucson, London, and elsewhere. She said she shot in black and white because she didn’t want to deal with the vagaries of the white balance in different venues. Questions from the 20 people in the audience were interesting. One woman asked why they called themselves girls when women was the more acceptable term. One of the skaters on the podium with Graham replied that the sport was all about being in-your-face, and by being physical and aggressive the athletes took pride in turning the diminutive term on its head. Graham said that she chose about 700 pictures, paid a design company to edit the best ones into a book, and paid for the printing of 500 copies. She sold them all, mostly out of her trunk at rollergirl matches. That got the attention of Trinity University Press which contacted her and published it again with 3,000 copies. Graham had a book signing after her talk.
Book publishing in Texas is dominated by university presses, and they were all ensconced side-by-side in a tent to the side of the capitol. The largest space was taken by Texas A&M University Press which had a table for book signings and a singing guitarist. Trinity and Texas Tech were represented with small tables of their wares, and Texas Tech had a glass box with a snake promoting a book on snakes. The big enchilada of Texas publishing, The University of Texas Press, had a sales area consisting of several tables, but no signings or promotion, which was unfortunate since their photo books are numerous, well designed, and by prominent Texas and national photographers.
The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in San Marcos south of Austin house a major collection of Southwestern and Mexican photography, and also publish photo books on the same subjects in conjunction with the University of Texas Press. Or at least they used to. The Wittliff Collections had a small table just inside the tent adjacent to the university presses, and a representative said their contract with the University of Texas Press was for one more book, which would be a Keith Carter 50-year retrospective based on the excellent and comprehensive exhibition of Carter’s that is currently on view at the Wittliff. Two facts I found interesting are that the Wittliff only works to publish books that have photographs represented in their collection, and that after Carter’s book they are moving their publishing deal to Texas A&M Press.
Tents for authors and publishers fill Congress Avenue in front of the capitol for the 2018 Texas Book Fair in Austin.
The publishing of books of photographs is in a golden age, and Texas publishing houses are part of what makes it possible (as is self publishing). The Aperture Foundation in New York publishes a newspaper twice a year about the latest photo books, and holds a competition for best photo book. There are other photo book competitions. My advice to photographers wanting to get their book published is to go to the Texas Book Festival to hear and talk to photographers and publishers, all nicely gathered in one place.