I have a feeling I’m going to write myself into a corner here.
Wouldn’t be the first time and won’t be the last. . . .

I’ve been teaching at SPAO, one-on-one with second year
students, portfolio development. I’m learning a lot while,
on the other hand, also entrenching myself more. Such is
the life of a Gemini.

OF or ABOUT

One of the things I’ve been talking about to the students,
and thinking about, too, is the difference between fotos
that are of something and fotos that are about something.

Now, because we’re talking (or is that: thinking) about
fotos here there will be a lot of gray area because, after
all, these things exist on not just one continuum but many.
(A continuum of continuums?)

For instance, say I look at a boring (to me) foto of a leaf
trapped in ice. (I won’t attach any samples here, you can
already picture it in your head.) It could be said that that
image is about the march of time, about Nature’s uncaring
power and so on.

But for me, it will always and only be a foto of a leaf trapped
in ice. That’s because it’s too cliché, too stupid to be considered
anything but. It’s really just about the surface, and that’s because
its creator (the fotografer) is shallow and/or lazy and/or afraid
when it comes to their fotografy. (There, I said it.)

On the other hand you have an image like this:

© Timothy Archibald. From: ECHOLILIA/Sometimes I wonder

And I pick this picture not because I know Tim, not because
I know the back-story to this image. I pick it because it was
shot close to home (a location we all have access to) and
because it seems to me that this image is undeniably about
something.

What it’s about I won’t go into here because, in a weird way,
that’s not germane to what I’m talking about and, anyway,
I’m sure you are already filling in the blanks just by looking
at it.

And that might be the difference.

While fotos of something typically describe a surface and
leave it at that, images about stuff add a layer of flavor
(or is that: depth) to those surfaces. They don’t answer
questions, they ask them.

And by the way, if you haven’t seen ECHOLILIA you should.
It’s here.

ADVENTURES IN PUBLISHING

Okay, I’m looking for a publisher for both USER and LIVE
THROUGH THIS.

How do you go about that? Who knows?

If you do know I’d surely appreciate it if you dropped me
a line with some hints or the booklet of instructions or
something, anything.

In the meantime I’m plugging away, trying to figure it out
on my own.

I spent the last week whipping both USER and LTT into
shape to get a few BLURB books of them printed. Not to
sell but to send to the lucky publishing houses that make
my list. (I’m looking for lists of potentially interested pub-
lishers, so if you have one of those send it to me, will ya!!!!)

All 148 pages of LIVE THROUGH THIS

All 64 pages of USER

Now, it’s true that the first publisher I showed the portfolios to
was quite interested in LTT. And thank you very much for your
interest. But I really want to turn over as many stones as I can
on this to see what kind of bugs crawl out.

Thus. . . .the BLURB versions, which are really just the dummies
of the books.

I figure I could direct any potentially interested publishers
to some web version for a look-see. But we’re talking books
here, to have and to hold. The old-fashioned guy in me tells
me that sending hard copies is where it’s at.

After all, the whole process of taking fotos and showing
them, it would seem, is not limited to just taking them.

The back-end. . . .post production, printing, hyping is
all part and parcel of the commitment and as I continue
my adventures in publishing I will keep you posted here
on drool.