buffet: Kalle Sanner

Monday, December 21, 2009

Blackbook Publications - Kalle Sanner and Simon Berg

Blackbook Publications is new to me. They sent me their first 2 publications and a link to their site which claims that they will try to run the "business" as democratic as possible:

Blackbook Publication grows by voting. This means that if you want to become a part of our distribution network with your planed publication, it will be reviewed by the number of Artists so far published at Blackbook. This is how we secure our artistic vision and quality.

I will stop by occasionally to see how things move along. Both of the titles I received are very different from each other, which makes sense as the premise is to bring artist-book makers together on a distribution platform. They seem to be trying to bridge the gap between self-publishing and mass distribution, which might be an interesting stance to take in the ongoing discussion which Andy Adams and Flak Photo have started with Resolve, a platform where the future of the photo books is being contemplated by many folks.

Kalle Sanner

Sprinten - Limited Edition booklet

Simon Berg

Apan Är Rädd - Limited Edition booklet

Kalle Sanner

Simon Berg

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Farewell Books - Reminding me to "keep it simple, Andrew"

I've been in over my head lately with things "non-photo" and the results can be seen (or not seen) here on this blog. I think a problem is that I tend to wait until I feel I have some serious weighty comments to give before posting but a friend told me the other day that the Buffet shouldn't loose its "archive" character, which was its initial design, just because I can't find time to fill 20 inches of screen.

This coincided with 2 little events:

A small package from FAREWELL books the other day, and the same above mentioned friend laughing when he saw my "reproduction stand" in the studio. The stand consists of a 2.00$ ebay Metz Flash hooked up to a 5.00$ slave, everything balanced on the top of a watercolor painting by the austrian artist Wilhelm Scherubel. Willy's watercolor paintings are "made" by rolling his wet paintings outside into sub-zero temperatures and letting nature take its course; what we see in the paper are frozen ice-chrystals. These remind me of the wedding of chance and science which is pivotal in photography. Frozen water; simple.

detail of W. Scherubel's frozen painting.

So, I will allow myself to "keep it simple" now and then in order to keep the archive growing, not that my lack of reflection should make the books I find for the Buffet any less important for me.

I've said several times that Farewell is one of my favorite independent publishers and I have heard that several of their titles which are very hard to find are now available in Australia. If you want to track down copies of Machina and Woodland maybe try contacting Farewell for the info. There is rumor of a new shop specializing in limited edition books.

But for now, here are the 2 newest titles. Both simple and beautiful. Both limited to 500 copies.