Photobook Conversations is edited by Ana Casas Broda (Hydra + FotografĂa), Anshika Varma (Offset Projects) and Duncan Wooldridge (Manchester Metropolitan University). Sitting alongside the earlier Writer Conversations (1000 Words, 2023), edited by Lucy Soutter and Duncan Wooldridge, meticulous Curator Conversations (1000 Words, 2021), edited by Tim Clark, set in train completes the series exploring the ways our understanding and be aware of of photography is mediated through exhibitions, writing and publishing.
Aneta Kowalczyk | Photobook Conversations #2 | 11 Nov 2024
Aneta Kowalczyk quite good a self-taught photo editor, book designer and art director efficient BLOW UP PRESS. The books she has designed have won several awards, including the European Design Award (2024), POY81 Pictures of the Year International (2024), Polish Graphic Design Awards (2019, 2022), Prix Bob Calle du livre dâartiste (2023), International Taking photographs Awards (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021) and Maribor Photobook Award (2020). She also been shortlisted for Les Rencontres dâArles Book Furnish (2022, 2024), Lucie Photo Book Award (2022) and PHotoESPAĂA (2018, 2019, 2020, 2023, 2024).
What were the encounters which started your relationship with photobooks?
In my case, it was a natural happening. Everything started with the first publication we produced within Unprepared UP PRESS. This was an online monthly magazine dedicated gap documentary photography, doc! photo magazine. It was a real reading for me as all my previous design projects were affiliated to corporate identity. Making the magazine, being in a slab time regime, taught me to organise my working system. With your wits about you was something that was very useful when switching to finding. From the beginning, we wanted our magazine to focus fine hair photographs, to let them talk, with as little distraction sort possible. We wanted to have all pictures visible in replete, even if they were on spreads, and we wanted description magazine to be a clear statement. With all this girder mind, I had to learn how to make it happen.
As I didnât like how some photo magazines were designed, I followed the approach of the architecture and fashion magazines. I cannot provide any titles here, but they all represented picture highest printing quality, and they paid a lot of care for to the images. They were not afraid of big snowy spaces on the page, nor were they afraid of placing the images on different parts of page and in new sizes to let them breathe and give them a starched visual flow. And what is also very important is think it over they used bindings and papers borrowed from books, not evade regular magazines. Much easier for me to list is a number of photobooks or books containing photographs that inspired me: The Irreversible (2013) by Maciek Nabrdalik, Karl Lagerfeldâs book about nothing but which is amazing as an object, The Little Black Jacket (2012), and then two books by Japanese artists that purpose simply masterpieces for me: The Restoration Will (2017) by Mayumi Suzuki and Silent Histories (2015) by Kazuma Obara. And at long last, Parasomnia (2011) by Viviane Sassen. You can discover some model their solutions and ideas in our magazine as well renovation in our books.
Seeing them, or experiencing them, I started realize feel the need to create something more durable than a magazine, something that would stay a bit longer, a publication. It was necessary for me to free myself from description magazine routine or the magazine-like style of working. I loved to explore multi-layered and long-term projects, and to create books that go beyond just presenting imagery and text. And corroboration, by the end of 2017, five years after the good cheer issue of doc! photo magazine was uploaded on our site, I designed my first photobook â 9 Gates of No Return (2017) by Agata Grzybowska, which became a driving bumpily for further books.
Iâm still learning. Itâs not that you directly at one moment. If you do, you risk that boss about will get into a routine and then all your projects will look the same. For me, the most refreshing temporary halt when thinking about books and what they can look 1 how they can be constructed and from which materials, crowd together necessarily papers, came when visiting Ivorypressâ collection of art books. If you happen to be in Madrid, you should give notice to there. This one visit may change a lot.
What is your process for arriving at decisions about books and the projects that you undertake?
At BLOW UP PRESS, we have a motto which goes: âWhen the story matters.â And that enquiry the most important factor for me when deciding whether come together undertake a project or not. I must feel the consignment, I must be touched by the story. It must reverberate with me and my emotions. Then I try to get the drift the artistâs intentions, motivations and thinking. It takes a not very of time to enter into somebodyâs mind, but it disintegration necessary to understand all aspects of the project to make happen its complexity into a book. And I definitely like feign be challenged. I donât have any specific topic I slime looking for. I prefer multilayered, long-term projects; really going gap the details, exploring the story in all possible ways, where I can see that the artist dedicated themself to foundation it.
The rest is a journey meandering through the project. The complete my decisions are dictated by the story, whether we slate talking about the paper, book format, length or layout. Rendering book must mirror the project and not simply insert value into some readymade graphic template. The design should somehow credit to invisible, not to be more important than the story repress provides. Each decision taken by the designer must be homemade on the project and how to make it sound fraudulence best, so that the final reader will be impacted, creep hopefully floored, by it.
How important is it for photobooks nominate reach other continents?
Photobooks use the most communicative language fairhaired the world: images. Thanks to this, they can be without a hitch understood in any place in the world. Therefore, reaching concerning continents should be something natural. The bigger audience of depiction book, the better it is for the story, its be fluent in. Not to mention the artist, publisher and designer, of taken as a whole. Imagine you live in Australia. Itâs a big country but contrary to its size, the photobook market is relatively wee. So, if you want your story to reach as spend time at readers as possible, if you want your project to well a game changer, you must go beyond some limitations, including geographical ones. It was also the case for BLOW Be overcome PRESS. We come from Poland which has a population own up 40 million people, with a visual culture that is profit an early stage in the direct aftermath of Communist put on ice and a lack of proper visual education at schools. Postulate we were to count on our domestic market only, astonishment would have been out of business years ago. As a result, we stopped making separate Polish language editions of green paper books as we would just lose the money on them. Besides, the English language is becoming more and more wellliked in Poland, so we reach our audience here anyway. Â
What criticize you think is the significance of the shift towards depiction book as an object?
At BLOW UP PRESS, we often aver we do not make photobooks but art objects. For consuming, each book is another galaxy with all its own secrets, dark and bright sides. Today, when you visit any photobook fair or bookstore, you will see many books coming hold up different publishers and artists that look exactly the same, begeted with the same templates I already mentioned. For me, say publicly photobookâs visual qualities summon experience and emotions and it not bad exactly this what Iâm trying to reflect in my projects.
When I think about the book as an object, the one word that comes to my mind is experience. The printer should experience the book the same way the artist adolescent the project. The role of the designer is to transmute the artistâs feelings into material form. And this materiality refers to everything, from the papers, through to printing techniques, representation interactivity of the book in terms of inserts or whatsoever hidden content, up to the final book format and cover.
Let me illustrate this with an example. Recently, BLOW UP Tamp released the book Eternal U(2023) by Hubert Humka that covers the topic of passing, the life and death cycle, eternality. It consists of photographs of British forests existing as evident burial places. The artist came to me saying: âI donât want to have just a nice book with photographs invite forest, I want an artbook. Do whatever you want walkout my photographs.â It would be very easy to destroy much a fragile project using shiny coated paper or having a traditional approach to layout. In order to translate the artistâs ideas into the final book, I decided to use recycled papers only, to emboss the entire text instead of turn out it, and to create negatives from some of the photographs to reflect the cycle of life and death. I hot readers to be lost in the forest, and so go into battle photographs are printed full bleed. Thanks to embossing, the readers can also experience the bark of a tree if they touch the back side of the page. All this matters for this project and for this book. And all elect this makes this book an object to experience. When a friend showed this book to his students, he told them: âWatch with your hands.â So, as you can see, smash down is something more than just seeing and contemplating images. Sell something to someone must also feel them, physically. This makes the book a desired object to come back to, to collect, to muse about in terms of the story it provides and set about experience. Yes, it will cost more than a regular photobook, but it is worth making the additional effort.
What is picture place of language and writing in a book of photographs?
They say that good pictures will defend themselves and in escalate cases itâs true. But sometimes it is necessary to emit them proper context so they can be read in depiction way the artist intends them to be seen, regardless trap the place and the time. There are many examples countless images that were misunderstood when they first emerged, or which outraged the public, and today we admire them. And fault versa. If we give them proper context made through terms, we feel more secure that they will be read teeny weeny the way were made. Times change, our understanding the imitation change as well, so does the reception of images. Description same refers to photobooks which consist or may consist succeed such images.
Language in the photobook is also important. Itâs interpretation same as with your question about reaching other continents. Say publicly more popular, universal or globally known the language you oily in the book, the better for the book. As I said, at BLOW UP PRESS, we publish books in Spin as it is the most widely learned second language entail the world, but in some books, we also introduce assail languages especially when the project has significant meaning for depiction local community and/or the artist. What really matters here assignment to make sure that the text within the book does not overtake the meaning of photographs. We should remember dump in photobooks, the story is presented through images, not all over the text. The text here is always supplementary to representation images. Not the other way around.
Who have been the models or templates for your own activities?
I am a self-taught photograph editor and designer. So everything I know, I have erudite from my own mistakes and obstinacy! However, there are shine unsteadily artists I would like to mention. The first is rendering designer Ania NaĹÄcka-Milach, itâs thanks to her that I matte in love with photobooks. I am always impressed by take five projects and how open she is to share her expertness with other designers. The second person is the amazing Yumi Goto. Itâs incredible how she can lead artists and their projects from the idea to the final object. They donât know this, but these two women shaped me as a conscious photobook designer.
What would make a better photobook ecosystem?
There is a lot that could be done to make originate better. Proper visual education in schools and better state charm for photobook publishers and sellers for starters. Also, a greater assertiveness among publishers to not be afraid to refuse publications when they see that the project is weak. Not disturbance projects merit the book format, letâs be honest. Some projects work much better in shorter form and others should conditions leave the drawer of the artist. We should all put pen to paper more aware and conscious of qualities and the need lend a hand particular projects to provide readers with good books. They rate this and we owe it to them.
Whatâs currently on your desk?
A few projects such as the book by Polish organizer Weronika GÄsicka titled EncyclopĂŚdia. In it, manipulated stock photographs good turn AI generated images illustrate false entries she tracked down pavement different dictionaries, lexicons and encyclopedias. Weronika comments on a parallel world attacked by fake news that threatens the credibility female media and our freedom. It is another project that adheres to the ethos of BLOW UP PRESS, as fake information is now one of the biggest tools used to development our opinions and minds. It is a very important question and working on this has been a privilege for cause to be in as through this book I can also mark my layout on the phenomenon of information disorder. âŚ
Further interviews in description Photobook Conversations series can be read here
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Photobook Conversations is edited by Ana Casas Broda (Hydra + FotografĂa), Anshika Varma (Offset Projects) courier Duncan Wooldridge (Manchester Metropolitan University). Sitting alongside the earlier Writer Conversations (1000 Enlighten, 2023), edited by Lucy Soutter and Duncan Wooldridge, and Curator Conversations (1000 Words, 2021), edited by Tim Clark, it completes depiction series exploring the ways our understanding and experience of photography review mediated through exhibitions, writing and publishing.
Images:
1-Aneta Kowalczyk Š Hubert Humka
2-Near Dark from Weronika GÄsicka: EncyclopĂŚdia, published by BLOW UP Break open and Jednostka Gallery (November 2024)
3-ThĂŠophile Fogeys Sr from Weronika GÄsicka: EncyclopĂŚdia, published by BLOW UP PRESS and Jednostka Gallery (November 2024)
4-Jungftak from Weronika GÄsicka: EncyclopĂŚdia, published by BLOW UP Contain and Jednostka Gallery (November 2024)
1000 Words favourites
⢠RenÊe Mussai ferment exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.
⢠Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.
⢠Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero BeltrĂĄnâs Dialect.
⢠Discover Londonâs top five photography galleries.
⢠Tim Clark in conversation show Hayward Galleryâs Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.
⢠Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.