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What do you think photobooks will look like in 10 years? Will they be digital or physical? Open-source or proprietary? Will they be read on a Kindle or an iPhone? And what aesthetic innovations will have transformed them?

Picture 1I know I’m not alone in pondering these questions. Joerg Colberg echoed these thoughts just last week in a post on Conscientious. Then I talked to Andy Adams at Flak Photo about his weekly features highlighting the winners of Blurb‘s 2009 Photography.Book.Now contest (left), and something clicked.

For a while now, it’s been our goal (at RESOLVE and liveBooks) to find and share new business models that will move photography and the creative industries forward in a positive way. But we’re also eager to conduct our own experiments. And what better place to start than the incredibly flexible blogging format?

Andy and I initially wondered how we could use our blogs in a new way to further illuminate the question, “What will photobooks be like in the year 2019?” We’re not psychic, but we do have a lot of faith in collective intelligence. And with all the talk these days about “crowd-sourcing,” we thought, why can’t we crowd-source a blog post?

Discussions in the blogosphere generally lead readers along trajectories of information, but all those useful ideas rarely get tied back up into a single useful post. We plan to centralize the discussion around this specific topic — photobooks — so that anyone searching for related posts can find them easily and understand the context around them.

So how does this Future of Photobooks thing work? Andy and I have contacted fellow bloggers and asked them to post about the most prescient innovations they’ve seen in the photobook and publishing industries. We’ll add links to those blogs within this post as they go live, so over the next few days you’ll be able to see the “research” for our final post developing in real time.

COLLABORATING BLOGS
Adam Westbrook: The future of the Photobook?
Keep Your Shutters Open (Rachel M. Wolfe): Foto Future
eyecurious (Marc Feustel): Some more fuel on the photo book fire
The PhotoBook (Doug Stockdale): Future of Photobooks?
Quintessence (Ellen Rennard): Photo Books in Ten Years?
We Can Shoot Too (J. Wesley Brown): The Photo Book
Ed Kashi Weblog (Paul O’Sullivan): The Future of Photobooks
The PhotoOracle (Tomas Ovalle): Photobooks: Evolution or Revolution?
sevensevennine.com (Nick Turpin): The Future of Photobooks?
TechTock Blog (Jack Howard): Thoughts on the Future of Photo Books (And books in general)
Elysium (Colleen Mullins): Dummy
LOZ (Laurence Vecten): I heart photo books
Green Tea Gallery Magazine (Francesco Gallarotti): The Future of Photobooks
Craig Ferguson Images: For the Love of (Photo)Books
Brereton Blog (Mark Brereton): Photo Books Photo Books
Heather Morton Art Buyer Blog: An Invitation to Participate in a Discussion about the Future of Photobooks
La Pura Vida (Bryan Formhals): The Netflix of Photobooks
Elizabeth Avedon: The Future of Photobooks: Past, Present, and Future
Thought Factory (Gary Sauer-Thompson): Photobooks: Possibilities + Future
Link-Log: The Future of Photography Books?
Darius Himes: The Premise: A Crowd Sourced Blog about Photography Books Publishing
Street Level Japan (Dan Abbe): The Photobooks I Bought This Year
Amy Stein: The Future of Photobooks
New Photographics (Jonathan Worth): ‘The Future of Photo-books’ A response.
Larissa Leclair: Joining the conversation about photobooks
Ben Huff . words & photographs: A few thoughts on books
Little Brown Mushroom (Alec Soth): The Future of Photobooks
Fraction. The blog for the magazine (David Bram): The Future of Photography Books
Food For Your Eyes (Nathalie Belayche): Future of photography books: food for thought
Ocular Octopus (Todd Walker): The Photobook Circa 2019
Luceo Images Blog (David Walter Banks): Resolve Blog: Future of Photobooks
The Space In Between (Stacy Oborn): What May Come: On the Future of Photobooks
altfotonet (Gary Sauer-Thompson): A conversation about the future of photobooks
Shooting Wide Open (Jin Zhu): Photobooks, periodicals, and boxes
Hamburger Eyes (Ray Potes): The Future of Photobooks
Shane Godfrey: What Will Photo Books Look Like in 10 Years?
Sadkids (Geoffrey Ellis): The Future of Photobooks
Daylight Magazine (Michael Itkoff & Taj Forer): Future of the Photo Book
Blurberati Blog: The Future of Photo Books
Jerry Avenaim Photography Blog: The Future of Photography Books?
Harlan Erskine Photography/Blog: Thinking about the future of the Photobook
The Online Photographer (Mike Johnston): The Future of the Photo Book
Critical Terrain (Alan Rapp): Inversely Proportional: thoughts on the future of the photobook
Lens Culture (Jim Casper): The Future of Magazines and Photobooks?
Exposures Blog (Lesley Martin): The Future of the Photobook
Emily Goligoski: The Future of Photobooks (& Media Monetization?)
Image Your Emotions (Jean-Baptiste Blanc): Future of photobooks
Lens Culture (Jim Casper): Simon Roberts Video Excerpt: The beauty of photobooks
DLK Collection: A Contrarian View: A Collector’s Thoughts on Photobooks
Larissa Leclair: Interview: Elizabeth Flemming
Lulu Blog (Tim Wright): The Future of Photobooks
Rolando Gomez: The Future of Photography Books — Free Books!
Metro Nature (Christina Seely): The future of photobooks
Contact Photography Blog (Emily Graham): On the Photobook

But please don’t wait for us to contact you to start contributing. If you have something you want to say about photobooks, write a post on your own blog, linking to this post, by Sunday, Dec. 13 (we’ve had so much great interest, we’ll continue to accept posts on an ongoing basis). Then ping Andy or I with the link on Facebook or Twitter, and we’ll add you into the list. (Andy: FB & Twitter. Miki: FB & Twitter.) Don’t have a blog or don’t have time to post? Simply leave your thoughts in the comments. If you want to be notified when other people share their great ideas, be sure to use the “subscribe” drop-down to received email updates.

And this is just the beginning. At the end of this week, Andy and I will choose the standout ideas and highlight them (with links to whoever suggested them) in another post. That post will be all about real-time discussion. We’ll organize the big ideas — it will be up to you to tell us what you think about them. Delve into the details, throw out some pros and cons, tell us we’re off base if you must. We’re just excited to host a healthy discussion.

Finally we’ll sift through all the great ideas and heated debate and pull it together in one final post, which we hope will live a long online life as a resource for anyone trying to understand where the photobook industry is headed. And your name, links, and/or blog will be an indispensable part of it. You’re helping us explain where photobook publishing is headed, and we’re helping people find you and your brilliant ideas. Everyone wins. Just the way we like it :)

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Considering that today is World AIDS Day, this seemed like the perfect time to highlight a new book from photographer Karen Ande, Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa. Although hardly the first person to document this topic, Karen’s emphasis on telling positive stories is unusual. And her technique presents a hard — but important — question for documentary photographers: Do too many images of suffering make people feel helpless to improve things?
©Karen Ande

These three women are members of a granny support group that meets weekly to discuss issues and solve problems related to caring for their many young charges. ©Karen Ande

Miki Johnson: Tell me about the book you just released with Ruthann Richter, Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa. What was the impetus of this project and what were you hoping to achieve with it?

Karen Ande: This book represents the culmination of seven years of work. The project began in 2002 when I was traveling in Kenya with my husband and friends. Our tour guide asked me if I’d like to visit an orphanage she had opened in the town of Naivasha and photograph the children, whose parents had died of AIDS.

I agreed to do it, thinking it would be a one-time visit that might result in a few shots she could use for fundraising. I did not realize that the children would charm me and that their survival hung in such a delicate balance. The orphanage ran out of rice the day I was there.

We left them with some money for food and I eventually went home and began to print the photographs. When I saw the images emerge in the developing tray I realized that I had an opportunity and a decision to make. I could choose to become involved in this issue or not. I chose to get involved, to reach out to nonprofits who were already supporting projects, to make multiple trips to document this issue. It has taken an enormous amount of time and personal finances, but I have never looked back.

©Karen Ande

Vannah is only 15 years old but is caring for five younger brothers and sisters after their parent's death from AIDS. ©Karen Ande

I am driven by this issue — 12 million children have been orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. There is little infrastructure to care for the children, but many local people whom I have met through NGO’s have creative viable projects that make a difference in these children’s lives. I hope this book will convince people to take a close look at the children I’ve met and begin to care enough to try to help them.

MJ: You’ve said that when you started photographing it was important to you to focus on the positive, things are getting better and people who are making a difference. Why was this so important to you?

KA: People do not hang around to be depressed. The media overexposes us to images of suffering I think, consistently giving us two messages: 1) there is really nothing one person can do to affect these overwhelming problems, and 2) money donated to Africa will be diverted by corrupt governments and aid agencies and never get to the people who need it.

In fact there is a great deal one person can do if they know how. If you donate to organizations working with in-country activists who know and understand their communities’ needs, the money is not wasted. In fact it is often the best way to help, as these projects are generally successful and sustainable. We list many NGO’s in our book that support these types of projects. More »

Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb are both photographers. They also happen to be married to one another. Alex, a member of Magnum Photos, is known for his lyrical street photography, collected in books including Istanbul, Crossings, and Amazon. Rebecca published her first photography book, The Glass Between Us: Reflections of Urban Creatures, in 2006 to wide acclaim. Just this month they released their first photo book together, Violet Isle, which explores Cuba through both their cameras, seen more clearly, in a way, from two different angles. (Not surprisingly, their joint blog is called “Two Looks.”)

Rebecca Norris Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2007.

Rebecca Norris Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2007

Alex Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2001.

Alex Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2001

MIKI JOHNSON: What initially drew you both to Cuba? It has been photographed so much already…did you try to approach it in a new way that you hadn’t seen before?

ALEX WEBB: Like many projects, this one began somewhat serendipitously. We certainly did not plan it. I first went in to Cuba 1993 for Life magazine, and Rebecca traveled there around the same time separately. We were both intrigued by the island, but somehow didn’t manage to return until 2000, when we visited together to teach a workshop.

Returning to the country inspired both of us, and we embarked on two separate projects: my exploration of the streets of Cuba and Rebecca’s discovery of unique and sometimes mysterious collections of animals there –– from tiny zoos and pigeon societies to hand-painted natural history displays and quirky personal menageries. It was only eight years later, in 2008, that we hit upon the notion of putting our two very distinct bodies of work together to create a multi-layered portrait of Cuba.

Rebecca Norris Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2008.

Alex Webb, Cienfuegos, Cuba, 2007

Rebecca Norris Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2008.

Rebecca Norris Webb, Havana, Cuba, 2008

MJ: How many trips to Cuba did you take while making photos for this book, and what places and parts of the culture were you specifically trying to capture?

AW: We made 11 trips to Cuba. Besides our first trips that we took separately, we made six trips together from 2000 to 2005 and then four long trips in 2007 and 2008, when I was fortunate enough to have a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue photographing the island. I initially called my project Esperando because in Spanish the term means both “waiting” and “hoping,” a title that starts to get at my impression of the streets of Cuba.

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB: I originally called my project Three Rooms after the following quote by a Habanero whom I met, a gentle and soft-spoken man who raises cockatiels, love birds, and parakeets: I have three rooms in my house –– two are for my birds, and one is for my wife and me.”

For the past decade, I’ve been exploring the complicated relationship between people and the natural world. In the 25 cities I visited for my first book The Glass Between Us, I never witnessed anything quite like what I’ve seen on “the violet isle,” a little known nickname for Cuba inspired by the rich color of its soil. Nearly 700 miles across, Cuba is easily the largest island in the Caribbean and has its own endemic species, including the world’s smallest bat and the world’s smallest bird. Alex and I traveled nearly the entire length of the island in pursuit of our separate obsessions.

MJ: Why did it appeal to you to combine your two bodies of work into one book about Cuba? How are the images grouped in the book? More »

Robert Glenn Ketchum is a legendary figure in the conservation photography community — largely because of his revolutionary publishing model, which ensures that his photo books have a tangible impact. He shared his ideas and advice for photographers interested in doing the same on RESOLVE. (Clicking on the image below will take you to his first post — be sure to check out numbers 2 and 3 also.)

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