spring2009-1

 

I don’t get it. At all. To the point of feeling thick about it. I mean, last week-end, I spent 8 hours outside, with the single purpose of photographing. Light was fine, sky interesting, Spring at its best. I took 4 pictures, of which one would maybe qualify. I did not see anything else that I would feel really good about photographing. I could have taken way more, of course, but in my opinion at the cost of purpose. To me, a photo book’s main idea is to present the best we can do. Either as a given period ‘best of’ or our best shot at a given subject.

But SoFoBoMo is none of that. Indeed, on the project’s home page, it is explicitly written that photos don’t have to be good to qualify. The goal, and the only goal, is to produce a book in a month. Fill it with what you can produce in whatever little time you have in a month. Provided you complete the book in a month, it is a success.

That runs counter to everything I believe I take photographs for.

Consider this paragraph, taken from sofobomo.org:

"There’s no requirement that the photos be good. (but we suspect you’ll be surprised by how good yours are if you participate). There’s no requirement to have any text at all. And there is no requirement on quality of layout. There’s just three constraints: all the work must be done in one 31 day stretch that falls completely inside the two month window, the book must contain at least 35 photos, and you have to generate a PDF of the book. That’s it."

Can you believe this? They literally state they want to produce paper for the only sake of producing paper. Well, a PDF, which at least limits the waste.

And what completely baffles me is seeing photographers of whom I deeply admire the work doing that thing to the letter. They indeed produce a book in a month, but from what I have seen, a good part of the pictures in the book are below their usual excellent standard. In my opinion anyway.

:: May.11.2009 :: Artists, Photography, Pictures, Random Thoughts :: 6 Comments »