To coincide with the development process, I asked Alex Beldea to review my dummy book thus far. As a small booklet to showcase my practice from the year, I felt there were significant changes that I could make to this, therefore a professional and academic opinion was the best way for me to get feedback and constructive criticism on any changes, or successful aspects of this progressive, final piece.
There were few questions I wanted to ask Alex about the work I have chosen to produce:
In terms of imagery, do you think it would be useful to add an image of myself?
Do you think the sequencing of my book works, and shows what I am investigating with my photographs?
Are there any changes you would make, that would give the book a more professional feel?
The book does not need a picture of yourself, to show the experience and relationship you have grown with these individuals, there is evidence in the imagery themselves. Even though, I have previously seen older images you have taken, so see the growth in the imagery, I think that the confidence between subject and photographer is clear. It could although, be interesting to see a personal experience you have had to go with the text on the back of your book, or even the interviews you have had. If you want to add more personal aspects to coincide with your added text, you could possibly write your artist statement or title to the book yourself and add this in. It would make an interesting conversation with any readers outside of this project, to get an understanding of the personal aspects.
I think the sequencing does work well, however in a way to break the book up slightly you could add text to the middle pages instead of having an image in the centre. This is only a suggestion, it’s whatever you feel works best. I would suggest moving some of the images across slightly, or enlarging certain photographs, as although you lose some faces in the bind of your book, you can definitely prevent this from happening.
In terms of the cover, I think you need something you attract the audience, rather than it just being blank, because it gives no indication of what your book is. There are a few things you could do in this case, 1. you could print of the card you have chosen to use for the cover, however this may sit flat on the paper type. 2. you could stick the image on the front just pasting it separate to the indesign folder and glueing it on top. 3. you could also make small slits in the cover of your card, and slot the image in side of this. It would be quite easy to do this. Perhaps use Cyrus as your main image as an invitation to your book, but crop it down to a 1:1 ratio, as this is your stronger image.
I feel some of the images looks a little bit darker, so to prevent this from coming out in your final book, try putting all your imagery on to one InDesign file and print this out. It will show the colours correctly and you will be able to notify any changes you could make.
I think it is interesting to see the interaction that the individuals have had with your project, especially ones that have started writing sentences and chosen not to say what they initially wanted, just by crossing it out. You scanning this in makes it very interesting.
Tyler Bishop-Harris 