I just laid out the last three images of my first book YAKUZA next to the first three images of my second book MONO NO AWARE...
Completely different project, timeframe, approach, thinking, mindset, everything.... yet...
food for thought I guess...
a
I just laid out the last three images of my first book YAKUZA next to the first three images of my second book MONO NO AWARE...
Completely different project, timeframe, approach, thinking, mindset, everything.... yet...
food for thought I guess...
a
In celebration of the publication of the first issue of Leica M Magazine, there is a group exhibit of work by Alex Webb, Bruce Gilden, Trent Parke, Jan Grarup, Ciril Jazbec, and yours truly with YAKUZA. Come and visit, and buy an issue of the magazine! See the issue online here.
Very proud to be published in the first issue of Leica M Magazine... and in extremely good company too... grab a copy online here.
Exhibit of the Yakuza project in Cultural Centre "DeWerf" in Aalst, Belgium. This is one of the largest and most elaborate YAKUZA exhibition to date, with 24ft rice papers and 64 of 66 images on display in this stunning location. I'll also be giving lectures on 13, 14, and 15 October.
Also, as a premiere, there is a preview of select images from Mono No Aware, my new project, to be seen.
More info here: www.ccdewerf.be
Dates: September 27 - December 15, 2014
CC DeWerf, Molenstraat 51, Aalst, Belgium (+32.53.723811)
Here we go... the book is here! Fresh from Italy at the presses of Grafiche Antiga... how exciting...
I present to you Mono No Aware in full... enjoy :)
(to order, or for more info, just go to http://antonkusters.com/blog/mono-no-aware-buy)
hugs, a
Beautiful layout of a selection of images from my latest book "Mono No Aware"
Finally it's here. I'm proud to present to you a new book: Mono No Aware.
Here's the introduction text:
Once in a while, my body decides my mind needs to take a moment to stare into the distance – preferably through a window.
When I go out the door, I feel more at ease carrying in my pockets a tiny wooden airplane, a coin, a ••••• •• ••••••, and a cherry pip.
Whenever I feel that tiny sadness for the beauty of things passing, I try to make images.
Somehow, it feels like a profoundly important thing to do.
As if I want to keep those moments; in a way give them more time than they had,
until I’m ready to let go.
The title is a Japanese term used to describe an awareness of passing moments of life (read more about that here).
The book itself is completely assembled by hand: when you open the hardcover, you'll see inside there's no traditional binding at all, but rather 4 LP record style sleeves stitched together, each with a 2.5 meter (8 feet) long "harmonica" folded chapter of the book inside. And then there's a page that folds around all this, keeping everything in place, at the same time providing context.
So there you go. A little piece of what's inside my mind. I hope you like it.
... and then there's also the limited edition version.
The first 50 copies are signed and numbered, with an extra, fifth LP sleeve, with three unique prints inside. These prints will not be part of the regular book... only for the first 50 copies.
If you'd like to buy this special edition, you can do that here:
Here are some concept sketches I made of the new Mono No Aware book. Trying to give the story a fitting book form was quite challenging. I wanted to be able to look at more than one page at the same time, even looking at a whole chapter in one go. I wanted not to be limited by the backwards-or-forwards flow of a bound book.
When I showed my concept to the printer, he said it was quite doable and added (of course) that he'd love to make this book. And based on his experience, he also offered me many great suggestions to make it even better... little genius things that I would've never even considered. So, as we speak, he's making a physical dummy using the actual paper and cover cardboard we're going to be printing on.
Holding a physical dummy feels like the best way to judge if a book will "work" as an object: to see it before you, feel it, pick it up, open it, leaf through it... in a way, you immediately feel if everything fits. I always end up making last minute changes when I have a model in my hands, and they've always been for the better.... I've learned never to rely solely on a sketch or a digital design. I've done it for YAKUZA, and now again for Mono No Aware.
But right now I only have these sketches. So I'm still a liiiiiittle tiny bit nervous until the dummy actually arrives and I can hold it :)
As you can see in the pictures, the inside of the book will consist of four chapters, each printed on a single long sheet of paper and folded like a harmonica. Each folded chapter will then be put inside its own "sleeve", not unlike an old LP record (remember those?). Around all that will be a folding page with the introduction text, keeping the book all together so the chapters can't fall out. In theory, it all sounds peachy pie, doesn't it?
Fingers crossed.
And now it just dawned on me: if everything goes well, we'll be at the presses in as little as two weeks. On my birthday, no less...
I guess I should start promoting the book soon :)
In the meantime, have a great weekend,
a
Mono no aware is the title of my upcoming book.
It's a Japanese term that could be translated as an awareness of the transience of things.
Like when you're driving home and the sun sets over the vast fields around you and the music's just right and the warm wind in your hair and your friends next to you and conversations go quiet and the long winding road ahead and your mind goes blank and you find yourself staring into the distance and then you snap out of it, everyone knowing you've all had, but can't keep, that moment that just passed.
I'm sure there are many more examples of these kind of moments... We all know them. We're all moved by them. They all stop time for us for just a second... and then we must move on.
Here's the introductory text:
So there you have it. Mono no aware. A new book.
---
As you've read in the previous post, the road to this book hasn't exactly been easy. But now we're in that home stretch, and it feels right. Good people and friends helping. Hopefully we'll be at the press soon. And as always I'll be talking about every step of the way.... my fears and anxieties, thought processes, decisions, mistakes, and hopefully a tiny sprinkle of genius in there somewhere.
One thing for sure: I feel I need to make this book, tell this story, because, in a way I can't really explain, I believe it's important we keep our little moments just a little longer.
Try to stop time. Just sometimes. Just a little bit.
I work for months at a time on the images of a story. Mono no aware started out with roughly 30,000 images and will eventually be 32 images for the book. (next time I'll talk in detail about the story, promise!)
Just thirty-two images.
Even by my standards – YAKUZA had 89 images I think – that's quite condensed to say the least. This means I must be absolutely sure about every single image in the book. Just one or two mistakes would be devastating. There's no margin for error this time... But somehow, it feels right to do it this way.
I work in Adobe Lightroom to ingest, tag, organise and make initial edits. I use RPP for my actual raw conversions. I use Photoshop to make fine adjustments, sharpen, and prepare for the different media to be printed on. Illustrator for concepts and mockups. InDesign to lay out everything and prep for press. The list goes on and on... there's no denying the absolute joy of using good software.
But at a given point, after months of looking at screens, I feel the need to work with actual printed images: so I make a bundle of mini images to carry around in my pocket (if you really want to know: I print the A, B, and C edit, which is usually about 200 images). I carry those around with me and make edits all over the place, every time taking a picture of the edit I make, just in case, to remember an accidental genius moment.
I repeat this process for weeks: in different places, with different moods, at different times, alone or in the company of others. On tables, floors, chairs, against walls... whatever is available. In a way, I force myself to make the same edit over and over again from memory, to see if it will stand. To see how it changes. And of course to allow it to change. Trusted friends or strangers join in and their opinions and gut reactions help shape the story too, in ways I can never predict or imagine.
Example of an early YAKUZA edit back in 2011 on a friend's table
This process is not only good for strengthening and finalizing my edit, but – kind of unrelated and related at the same time – it's also decision time for me in a broader sense: it's the moment that I decide to do the book or not.
Because by now I know the story should be ok: the biggest hurdle has been taken after all. But there are many more factors to publishing a next book: is the timing right? Can I afford it financially? Is it a good career move? Is the project really really ready to go? Is it a book I'd want to own myself? Will my mom approve? Will I be able to follow up? What about the press, the professionals, fellow photographers? And finally: what does my gut tell me?
So during these weeks of repeatedly laying out the little ones, there's quite a lot more going on in my mind behind the scenes... And I know I need be ruthless here. No compassion. Be ready to kill my darling. Even if, like this time, it took me over a year of blood, sweat and tears to finally get to this point... the sheer amount of work I put in, cannot be relevant anymore now.
That's why I get nervous carrying around the little ones... not because of the possibility of the edit changing, but because this is the moment where months of work will get a final green light or not... and this green light has totally nothing to do with the amount of effort I've put in there up till now... and that kind of scares me.
It's like I'm switching between my photographer self and my ruthless publisher alter ego that will only accept the best.
Dachau is widely regarded as the first concentration camp established by the Nazis. Opened on 22 March 1933, a mere 51 days after Hitler took power (and more than six years before the second World War even started). At first, this camp was used to suppress all (potential) political opposition and to "concentrate" political opponents into one prison so as "not to burden the regular prisons". Gradually Dachau (and other concentration camps) was to be used for anyone who would be called "enemy of the state". Even though conditions and forced labor were inhumane, Dachau was a concentration camp, not an extermination camp like Auschwitz.
Of Dachau's 206,206 prisoners from every possible demographic that were suspected to oppose the Nazi regime, 31,951 are believed to have died in the main camp and surrounding sub camps, most due to inhumane treatment, illness, disease and hardship. You can read more here.
By comparison, Auschwitz, much larger than Dachau, was one of 6 extermination camps, specifically designed to kill as many people as efficiently as possible. In Auschwitz II alone, more than 1,400,000 people were killed.
Nevertheless, for the Nazis, Dachau with its 124 sub camps became the organisational model for all concentration camps that were to follow.
---
One of the things that still strikes me about the Holocaust, is that I now realise that there were not just 23 (large) concentration camps (as I always thought there were), but that almost all of those main camps had a network of smaller camps around them (with from several thousand to sometimes less than a dozen prisoners).
---
Dachau is the second of a series of road trips that I'm undertaking to photograph the blue sky precisely above the location of every single one of the 1,075 concentration camps that have ever existed, as part of an installation/photography project called The Blue Skies Project.
As I was editing images for a new book (yay!) over the last few months, I noticed a problem – rather a big one – with the images and the story: they just did not match. The story of dislocate, which had been in my head all these years, was in trouble. I guess when you're working on a story for that long, it either has to be very big or extremely ingenious. It was neither.
---
I really do believe in the premise of dislocate: looking for your home, for where you belong, both literally and metaphysically. But when I started putting together the edit I had, the images just didn't match up to it. Damn, and I really thought I had it... but it just wasn't there. And worse: nobody else saw it either.
I figured I'd fallen into that old trap: I'd been trying too hard to attach the story to my images. Whatever I did, it felt forced. The images themselves were fine, mind you... but the connection to the story was weak at best.
I knew there was no turning back. The images I had made were simply about something else... and ever so frustratingly, about something that I couldn't see at that point. I felt I had lost.
I thought back about Oaxaca, Mexico, and that tiny set of images titled "I was a Dog" (I've shown them here before). They were the starting point of dislocate, literally the opening chapter of the book. Now, looking at all the new images, I felt that the old Mexico images were better at showing exactly what dislocate was all about. Heck, even the title was better. I designed a potential book cover just to prove my point:
So there I was: dislocate had to be put on hold, no other way. The real, different, story behind the new images had to be sought.
I looked and looked. I Went through countless edits and book concepts and designs, knowing full well that none of these could ever work if I wouldn't find the story first. I felt something was keeping the images together, but what? There wasn't a concrete subject (like Yakuza), there was just... a mood, a context of sorts.
My friends pointed out the same thing to me. They would say "hey, there is this particular mood in there, but what is it all about?". Jan, a great friend and super talented artist suggested that a connecting mood is all you need, and for the first time, I felt I was on to something.
This was it. The images were all about me trying to catch up with the world moving too fast around me. These images are me, reflecting on life and its fleeting moments that I try to hold on to; so that I have time to understand them better; so that I can eventually let go.
Hmm. It sounds a bit strange reading that line. I hope it'll make more sense very soon :)
The title of the book, mono no aware (a Japanese saying), came quickly after:
So there you have it... lots of turmoil inside my head the past twelve months... as a result dislocate is on hold for now... and I was a Dog will always remain its first chapter. I hope to eventually be able to fill in the other chapters.
And the images that I thought were part of dislocate, turned out to be something different entirely. A very pleasant surprise: yet another story.
Ain't life like a box of chocolates.
Talk soon...
a
Exhibit of the Yakuza project in TAGOMAGO Gallery in Barcelona, Spain and proud to be part of the DOCfield14 festival. 39 images on display in this beautiful location.
More info here: www.docfieldbarcelona.org
Dates: June 17 - July 25, 2014
TAGOMAGO Gallery, Santa Teresa 6, 08012 Barcelona (+34 932 922 422)
Exhibit of the Yakuza project as a part of the Boutographies photo festival in Montpellier, France... and proud to be part of it of course. 36 images on display in the "Pavillon Populaire".
More info here: www.boutographies.com
Dates: May 16 - June 1, 2014
Pavillon Populaire, Rue Charles Amans, 34000 Montpellier, France
Detail of the "Auschwitz III" polaroid
This is how the numbers are embossed into the polaroids – using an old mechanical Olympia SM2 typewriter.
I like how my images look in black&white...