DESIGN YOUR OWN PHOTO-BOOK Workshop with ELIZABETH AVEDON begins Feb 2024

“Circle: Self-Portraits, 1998 - 2001” © JUNG S KIM

Circle II #17 © Jung S Kim

A girl who was murdered by her stepmother, 2011

Jung S Kim (b.1969 South Korea) is best known for her self-portrait series ‘Circle’, comprising five sub-series: Circle Untitled, Circle 1998, Circle I, Circle II, Circle III. Kim began photographing herself during her undergraduate years at Chung-Ang University, Korea, Korea while studying under renowned photographers and educators Jung Sik Han and Bohnchang Koo. I've been a big fan of Kim’s work over the year’s and thrilled when she took my NORD Photography Book Design Workshop in 2022.

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My in-depth workshop spans over 9 months and is divided into 3 separate levels. "Designing a great photo-book takes time, and this class is structured to give you the time to develop your taste, skill-set, and design choices, so the end result is a thoroughly crafted book that highlights your work in the best way possible.” My next online NORD Photography 'Photo-Book’ Design Workshop begins Feb 21, 2024.  

 

Registration: nordphotography.com/photobookavedon2024 

 

Testimonials

"This workshop is so great. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I am so amazed by what I accomplished with Elizabeth (Avedon) and Elisabeth’s (Nordeng Aanes) feedback. Elizabeth Avedon is absolutely the best at book design and she imparts so much information. I also forged some great friendships with students in the group. It’s the best course I’ve taken on creating photo books...Even if you decide to go with a publisher, as I ended up doing for the distribution, you will have so much more control and input since the PDF you create in her class will be a fantastic start with so many of your own ideas. Though the art director and I at Daylight changed a few things, much of what I had submitted remained. I really felt like a true co-collaborator and am thrilled with the final PDF, which we just finished. Sign up! You won’t be disappointed.” – Lynne Buchanan

"I’m so grateful to Elizabeth Avedon for her expert guidance with the editing and sequencing of my book, BOSQUE. The workshop not only helped me to learn and appreciate the art of sequencing images, but also helped me understand all of the fine details specific to book design. I highly recommend this class and continue to meet with and deepen friendships with fellow students. In other words, it opened my eyes and deepened my path as an artist-something I will always be so thankful for." – Susan J. Preston

For anyone who has felt daunted by the myriad of necessary decisions in order to publish a book of photography, this class will help you immensely, and will set you well on your way to emerging with a professional piece that could be on par by any fine art book - Michael Schenker, Off The Beaten Path

My next online NORD Photography 'Photo-Book’ Design Workshop begins Feb 21, 2024. Registration: nordphotography.com/photobookavedon2024

LUMP SUM LOTTERY : Bonnie Briant

 Lump Sum Lottery 

Published by Damiani, 2021
Text by Sylvia Plachy

Annalisa and Pietro, Santa Marinella, Italy 2019

Photograph © Bonnie Briant

When you win the lottery you have two options, you can get all the money right away, but because of taxes you get less than if you’re willing to parse it out over time. Taking all the money right away but actually taking less is called taking the lump sum. The title is a comment on my constant, “I’ll have everything now, even though I know I should wait.”– Bonnie Briant 

 

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Bonnie Briant’s personal collection of images in her first monograph, Lump Sum Lottery, transport us through the select world she inhabits outside the usual path of our ordinary lives.

 

She recently spoke to my SVA students advising they "look at the photographs of Sylvia Plachy, the photographer who wrote the short text for my book. She is the one who taught me so much about taking pictures; not needing rules and to just feel what you feel when you take a picture. Most of my pictures are blurry and handheld and low light; it’s about the space in-between moments, versus being very formal about it." 

 

She went on to describe to them how she arrived at the brilliant cover image, Light through the door, Pattaya, Thailand. "One of my good friends is half Thai and his brother was getting married in Thailand, so I traveled over for the wedding. We had gone to their uncles house, and woke up in the middle of the night, it was 5am, so I guess early in the morning. I was a total mess because of the time change. So I just laid there staring at the ceiling and someone turned on the light in the hall."

 

I'm a big fan of this work . . .

Lump Sum Lottery

Photographs by Bonnie Briant I Text by Sylvia Plachy
Published by Damiani, 2021

PHOTOS DAY OR NIGHT: THE ARCHIVE OF HUGH MANGUM: By Sarah Stacke

The grid of nine photos on one glass plate negative and the sequence shows the actual order Hugh Mangum’s clients entered his studio on a particular day. Images courtesy of Sarah Stacke and Hugh Mangum Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University

 "This has long been one of my favorite Hugh Mangum portraits."– Sarah Stacke

Images courtesy of Sarah Stacke and Hugh Mangum Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Images courtesy of Sarah Stacke and Hugh Mangum Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Image courtesy of Sarah Stacke and Hugh Mangum Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Image courtesy of Sarah Stacke and Hugh Mangum Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

Images courtesy of Sarah Stacke and Hugh Mangum Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

 Photos Day or Night: The Archive of Hugh Mangum
by Sarah Stacke, with texts by Maurice Wallace and Martha Sumler

Red Hook Editions, 2018 / Book Design: Bonnie Briant

 

I was recently introduced to Sarah Stacke's extraordinary book, "Photos Day or Night: The Archive of Hugh Mangum," brilliantly designed by Bonnie Briant. The book is a close-up look at the life and work of early 20th century Southern American photographer Hugh Mangum. Photo archive curator Stacke collaborated with Mangum’s granddaughter, Martha Sumler, and the result is a stunning look at never-before-seen photographs and ephemera from their family archive. This is now one of my favorite photography books!

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"Inside his photo studio, Hugh Mangum created an atmosphere–respectful and often playful–in which hundreds of men, women, and children felt comfortable being whoever they wished in that moment of photographic description. As a result, Mangum's images of early twentieth-century Southern society show personalities as immediate as if they were taken yesterday. . ." – Sarah Stacke

"Born in 1877, the year the Civil War’s Reconstruction period ended, Mangum died in 1922, only three years after the First World War and two years after women gained the right to vote. During his lifetime the final battles of the Indian Wars were waged and the first law limiting the number of immigrants allowed in the U.S. was passed. The personalities in Mangum’s images collectively, and often majestically, symbolize the triumphs and struggles of this pivotal era. An itinerant photographer primarily working in his home state of North Carolina and the Virginias, Mangum cultivated clientele from across racial and economic divides. Though the American South of his era was marked by disenfranchisement, segregation, and inequality, Mangum portrayed all his sitters with candor and heart. Above all, he showed them as individuals. A century after their making, Mangum’s photographs allow us a penetrating gaze into faces of the past, and in a larger sense, they offer an unusually insightful glimpse of the South at the turn of the twentieth century. His “portraiture hints at a counter-history…few white Southerners besides Mangum dared to reflect,” writes Prof. Maurice Wallace of the University of Virginia, in the book.
 

Notably, the camera Mangum used was designed to create multiple and distinct exposures on a single glass plate negative. The sequence of the images on a single negative represents the order Mangum’s diverse clientele rotated through the studio, thus representing a day’s work for  this gregarious photographer.
 

In the years Stacke has spent with the Mangum Collection––imagining the distinct personalities and lives, their relationships to each other and to Mangum––the collection has evolved to represent a family album to her. Not only as its own entity, unfurled by the welcoming and harmonious spirit of Hugh Mangum, but also in the way she’s formed relationships with the images and individuals in them." 

– Red Hook Editions

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Sarah Stacke is a photographer, photo archive curator and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. In 2012 she received a master’s degree from Duke University tailored to analyze photographic representations of African and African-American communities. For her capstone project Sarah extensively researched Hugh Mangum’s archive and curated the first-ever solo exhibition of his work, which was shown at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) in 2012. Shortly thereafter she wrote pieces for The New York Times and Aperture about Mangum and curated a major installation of his work at the Asheville Art Museum. Sarah has been an instructor at CDS since 2013 and is an adjunct professor at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and the International Center of Photography, where she teaches a course about the role archives play in society.

In her photography work, Sarah looks at daily life in communities whose geographic borders were formed during periods of colonization. Often spending time with a community over the course of months or years, she looks at the intersection of culture and memory and questions how land, and the loss of it, shapes identities. Select clients include National Geographic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, BuzzFeed and Photo District News.

Sarah Stacke

@sarah_stacke

Red Hook Editions

@redhookeditions

VALERIO SPADA: Gomorrah Girl, The Interview

"Gomorrah Girl" © 2014 Valerio Spada

"Gomorrah Girl" © 2014 Valerio Spada

"Gomorrah Girl" © 2014 Valerio Spada

Valerio Spada Talks To Elizabeth Avedon: Gomorrah Girl

In Gomorrah Girl, Valerio Spada tells the story of the murder of Annalisa Durante, a young woman caught in the crossfire of a Mafia shootout, and the problems of growing up in a crime-ridden area. Bound together through an innovative, book-within-a-book design, are Spada’s photographs documenting adolescence in the land of Camorrah (the name for the Mafia in Naples) and pages detail the police investigation. Twin Palms Publishers will release a new edition this Fall.

Excerpts from my

Interview with Valerio Spada

on L'Oeil de la Photography

Elizabeth Avedon: How did you conceive Gomorrah Girl?

Valerio Spada: I had not thought of it as a book. After several years of shooting in Naples and after some fights and threats in the streets that were by far too dangerous for any meaning when you compare the value of your life to a picture, I decided it was time to stop and think about giving a shape to what I was documenting and the book form was there to save me. The book wasn’t ready, but I’d started to be more aware of what I was missing and taking the pictures needed to complete the book became easier.

EA: How did you arrive at such decisions to make this book?

VS: The Procura della Repubblica (higher grade than police in Italy) denied me permission to shoot the evidence of Annalisa’s murder; they told me I could take pictures of their pictures if I wanted. They offered me their original notebook with forensic pictures in it and gave me, as a gift, some 4x6” prints, which I’ve found amazing. It was 2010 and the day was depressing, since I wanted to photograph the original evidence from the murder. I was obsessed by Annalisa’s delicate beauty and the bullet that killed her. It was a contrast too strong to handle, but I decided to get to the heart of it. After several months I went back to the photos in the notebook, and began to picture them each as a page and thought, this will be a book within a book. It was like rewriting that history today with girls that are, to my eyes, like Annalisa, never forgetting the background of where they lived their lives. 

Read the entire  

Interview with Valerio Spada

on L'Oeil de la Photography

Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada
Unique hand assembled book with fold-out hard cover case
Twin Palms Publishers, Fall 2014

Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada
Twin Palms Publishers, Fall 2014

Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada
Twin Palms Publishers: Fall, 2014
9 x 13", casebound. 54-color plates, 78 pages
First Edition, $85
ISBN 978-1-936611-07-2

Gomorrah Girl: More Here

GOMORRAH GIRL: Twin Palms Edition

Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada

Twin Palms Publishers, Fall 2014

Gomorrah Girl, by Valerio Spada, tells two stories in one: the problems of growing up in a crime-ridden area and the murder of Annalisa Durante, a young woman caught in the crossfire of a Mafia shootout. The stories are brought together through innovative, book-within-a-book design. 

Bound together are Spada’s photographs documenting adolescence in the land of Camorrah (the name for the Mafia in Naples) and pages detailing the police investigation. Twin Palms Publishers will release a new edition early this Fall. Very cool.

Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada

Unique hand assembled book with fold-out hard cover case

“In this book there are portraits of girls whose destinies can still change if not the destiny of the area in which they are growing up. Annalisa was one of them. She kept a diary, in which she wrote that Naples was becoming too dangerous to live in and how she was dreaming to escape.” - Valerio Spada

Gomorrah Girl was first released as a self-published edition, with a limited print run and garnered considerable attention. It was selected as the Grand Prize winner for Photography Book Now, 2011. Valerio Spada went on to receive a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Creative Arts, Photography in 2013.

Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada
Twin Palms Publishers: Fall, 2014
9 x 13", casebound. 54-color plates, 78 pages
First Edition, $85
ISBN 978-1-936611-07-2

 

SVA MPS DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY: Book+Branding Class of 2014. Part III

 MARK ROUSSEL  Finding and Losing My Father

Photograph (c) 2014 Marc Roussel

 EVELINA REINHART  The Joy of Eating

Photograph (c) 2014 Evelina Reinhart

HENNY GYLFA  Park Hill Boxing Club

Photograph (c) 2014 Henny Gylfa

JAMIE SHIELDS Less Is More

Photograph (c) 2014 Jaime Shields

SHARRON DIEDRICHS Burden of Existence

 Photograph (c) 2014 Sharron Diedrichs

 WON KIM Stereotypes

Photograph (c) 2014 Won Kim

ERIKA VELASQUEZ  Below The Surface

Photograph (c) 2014 Erika Velasquez

ZILAN FAN Between Dream and Reality

Photograph (c) 2014 Zilan Fan

 TAYLOR MICKLE  Futurama

Photograph (c) 2014 Taylor Mickle

SVA Masters in Digital Photography 2014 Grads - Part III

Leading-edge Masters Degree program in Digital Photography at the School of Visual Arts, Chaired by "Photoshop Diva" Katrin Eismann (check out her Books on Amazon!), with Associate Chair and "Color Guru" Tom P. Ashe, (check out his Color Management book); and with an unbelievable faculty of photography professionals I'd list but do not want to leave anyone out! Congrats to all my students on their final Branding, Book and Portfolio Designs!

Book+Branding Part I

 Book+Branding Part II

*all names are Website links

SVA MPS DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY: Book+Branding Class of 2014. Part II

 JAIME CODY  Recollection

VICTORIA HARDINA  Together

Photograph (c) 2014 Victoria Hardina
 

CLAREESE HILL  My Black Face

Photograph (c) 2014 Clareese Hill

AILIN BLASCO  Ourea

Photograph (c) 2014 Ailin Blasco

KEVIN WO  Announce

Photographs (c) 2014 Kevin Wo

 CHUCK ALMAREZ  A Time Gone By
Photograph (c) 2014 Chuck Almarez

 LACY KIERNAN  URBAN LANDSCAPES
Photograph (c) 2014 Lacy Kiernan

ANDRE AVANESSIAN  phobophobialand

  ADRIANO HULTMAN  Things We Can See 

Photograph (c) 2014 Adriano Hultman

SVA Masters in Digital Photography 2014 Grads - Part II

Leading-edge Masters Degree program in Digital Photography at the School of Visual Arts, Chaired by "Photoshop Diva" Katrin Eismann (check out her Books on Amazon!), with Associate Chair and "Color Guru" Tom P. Ashe, (check out his Color Management book); and with an unbelievable faculty of photography professionals I'd list but do not want to leave anyone out! Congrats to all my students on their final Branding, Book and Portfolio Designs!

Book+Branding Part I

 Book+Branding Part III

*all names are Website links