Watching

Flipping through magazines at the Watching opening

We had a little art shindig today. To be more precise, we exhibited our photographs in the Mudd Gallery. We spent much of the afternoon framing and hanging and adjusting lighting so that our awkward little gallery would be perfect for our opening. Lots of people came and looked at our photos on the wall and our magazines. It was interesting to look at my photos on a wall, as opposed to on the computer or in a magazine. They're larger and clearer, but it's also way more obvious if there are flaws. And exhibiting only two photos on the wall really changes the viewer's perceptions of the work. My book of 32 images creates one feeling, and the photos on the wall create another. I found when choosing which photos to frame, that different photos provided different amounts of humor or sincerity or creepiness.

Our exhibition sparked an interesting discussion about our magazines. It was proposed that we keep gloves available for people to look at our magazines, to prevent fingerprints and smudges. This was an interesting idea to me, because I think one of the great things about the book format is that it encourages, even requires, viewer interaction. We frame photos behind plexiglass, and put them on the wall. That is a clear "don't touch" statement, but the book is out in the open on a pedestal. It's meant to be flipped through, to be touched, and to ask the viewer to wear gloves takes away from that in my mind. Then they can only see the glossy pages, but can't feel them.

Speaking of the physical exhibition of our digital work, Mary Ann Doane has some serious opinions about digital media. I have no idea what her opinions are, but she has them. I found her piece "Indexicality and the Concept of Medium Specificity" to be pretty convoluted. I understood a few of her references to Walter Benjamin, because like any good art student I'm relatively familiar with him, but I really concluded that she was either writing for a different audience, or assuming no one would read her article (probably the former, she's kind of famous). I went ahead and looked her up, and found that she's a specialist in media (shocker!), film theory, and semiotics. It made a lot of sense to me that she is knowledgeable about semiotics, because she wrote about indices over and over, and I learned a bit about semiotics and indices during my brief encounter with linguistics, a close relative of semiotics. It'd probably be fair to say that if I were well read then I might have gotten something else out of her writing. Maybe once I finish reading the dictionary I'll go back to her.

So Books Aren't Dying?

I'm a little surprised, given my normal trepidation for all things modern and technological, but I'm sort of interested in this whole book thing. Lately I've been making tons of handmade paper and I've learned to bind my own books, so I'm a bit intrigued by this commercially printed book that I've made on the internet through MagCloud. The idea that I can take some photos, put them on Flickr, and have a book in a few weeks (or sooner if I'm willing to pay for shipping) is the complete opposite of slowly grinding fibers to make pulp, pulling sheets of paper, and sewing them into a hand-crafted, somewhat fragile, unique book.

Previewing a book in MagCloud

I'm also a very tactile person, so I'm definitely excited to feel the stiffness of the pages and the gloss of the paper, and to get to touch the photos. Staring at a computer screen just doesn't allow for that physical connection with an item. But the book form really does encourage the involvement of the viewer. Whether they're commercially printed or handmade, books can be picked up, turned over, and flipped through.

Speaking of involvement, I certainly hope that my book holds the viewer's attention. In reading some of Sarah Greenough's writing on Robert Frank's The Americans, I really noticed that he gave such thought and consideration to engaging his viewers and to giving purpose to the organization of his photographs. The book is split into sections by American flags, and each section contains both people looking and the subjects they were looking at. I tried to organize my book in a way that seemed visually appealing, but to be honest I really don't know if there's a better way. I reorganized it several times, in search of the perfect layout, but eventually concluded that what I think is best or logical may not make any sense to anyone else. But it's my book. So, for the time being at least, I get to be right.