Ron Jude's Best Books 2008

If you read this blog, you might know that am a big fan of Ron Jude. He takes great photos and is a very nice guy. He also has pretty darn good taste in photobooks. I asked Ron to share his best books for 2008. Here is what he had to say:

I’m a big fan of photo books. In fact, I typically prefer them to exhibitions. However, as is the case with so many things in my life, I’m not very organized about how I go about collecting books. I’m not a big reader of blogs, and I don’t keep a list of things I need to get as soon as they’re released. I order books online occasionally, but I usually prefer to hold a book in my hands and get to know it in a tactile sense before I lay down $50 or $60 dollars for it. This means that by the time I end up buying a book, it’s usually already been around for a few months, sometimes a few years. This delayed and haphazard strategy means that I’ll inevitably miss out on a few things—like Paul Graham’s A Shimmer of Possibility, since there was a feeding frenzy when it was released. (I guess I’ll get the $65 SteidlMack version.) I’m usually drawn to buying books with lower profiles anyway, so I’m okay with missing out on a few blockbusters. Books that are over $80 or $90 when they’re brand new and still in print I usually won’t buy out of principal. I know high-quality photo books are expensive to produce, but the book format for me is principally about allowing a broad audience access to the work, not just the same people who are probably also buying editioned prints from the photographer’s gallery. (I have a few books in my collection for which I broke this rule, like John Gossage’s brilliant Hey Fuck Face, but not many.) So, with this disclaimer in mind, I’ve compiled my list of the “top-nine photo books of 2008”. Only five of which were actually published in 2008—three were put out in 2007, and one in 2006, but I got them in 2008. (Dumb, I know.) All but two of these books are photo books that crossover into the realm of “artist’s books,” which is the kind of book I have a particular fetish for. I think the biggest challenge in book publishing, especially with so many “indie” presses out there these days, is making quality books that rely on good simple designs and strong, yet understated concepts, without huge budgets.





1. As Far As I Could Get by John Divola. Published by Farewell Books, Gothenberg, 2007. This, to me, is damn near a perfect book. (And it cost $10!)

2. Empty Frames by John Clayman. Published by MOT International, London, 2006. Right up my alley: utterly esoteric and mind-numbingly obtuse. What a great book! This one made me giddy when I first picked it up at Printed Matter in New York, and like any truly good book, I keep going back to it and it continues to engage me.

3. Dirt Land by Peter Sutherland. Published by Gallery White Room, Tokyo, 2007. The prolific Peter Sutherland has renewed my faith in photography. Awesome book.




4. Streets and Trails by Bernhard Fuchs. Published by Hassla Books, New York, 2008. A quiet, beautiful book that completely refreshes the Düsseldorf aesthetic. (Bernhard tells me that Walther König is going to publish another book of this work in the spring. Get this understated version while they’re still in print!)

5. Nina Pohl by Nina Pohl. Published by Snoeck, Köln, 2007. A high-end monograph (exhibition catalog, actually), with an artist’s book sensibility. Fantastic design, beautiful reproductions, and very smart photography. (Thanks to Tricia Gabriel for putting me on to this one.)

6. The Marine Layer by Peter Holzhauer. Self-published, 2008. Peter Holzhauer is a fantastic photographer from L.A. who seamlessly blends traditional, large-format aesthetics with complex conceptual strategies. Really smart work, and a successfully nuanced sequence for the book version of this project.

7. Heart Shaped Hole by Charlotte Dumas, Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam, 2008. Charlotte Dumas has a deceptively simple program that builds on itself very effectively with each subsequent read. I recommend buying all of her publications and sitting with them for a while. Really beautiful, simply designed books, masquerading as catalogs. (The reproductions are outrageously good, too.)



8. The Chance is Higher by Ari Marcopoulos. Published by Dashwood Books, New York, 2008. I know, I know, another book by Ari Marcopoulos… This is one instance when I’m a sucker for fancy design. This is a solidly conceived of book by David Strettell at Dashwood, and designed by Gavillet & Rust in Geneva. A really beautiful object that is carefully balanced with Marcopoulos’ tough, Xerox-copied, photographs. A great book. (Coming in right at my cut-off price of $85.)

9. Photographs by Jason Polan and Michael Worful. Self-published, New York, 2008. An un-ironic blend of earnest sentiment and transcendent humor. A really fantastic, staple-bound book of 18 photographs.

New Fraction Magazine Launched

© Adrienne Salinger

©Suzanne Revy

This month's Fraction Magazine features images by Richard Renaldi, Adrienne Salinger, Suzanne Revy, David Eisenlord, Norman Mauskopf, and the Typologies Group show; an interview with Renaldi by Jörg Colburg of Conscientious; and two books reviews--Visions of Paradise by Joshua Spees and Ron Jude's Other Nature by Melanie McWhorter (of this blog).

Ron Jude Exhibition with Humble Arts Foundation

If you have been following my blog, you may know that I have done two features with photographer Ron Jude--one about his publishing imprint A-Jump Books and an on-press story about his book titled Other Nature soon to be release with publisher The Ice Plant. Ron just emailed me the link to an exhibition with Humble Arts Foundation of this work titled Alpine Star. The site also has a conversation with Ron about the project if you want to learn even more.

Ron Jude on press with The Ice Plant in Korea

Ron Jude discusses going on press for his new book Other Nature to be released by The Ice Plant in Fall 2008.

I began working on the basic concept of Other Nature several years ago, and since then the idea for this book has gone through numerous revisions. Only a few of the original photographs made the cut for the final sequence. Tricia Gabriel and Mike Slack from The Ice Plant in Los Angeles agreed to publish the book in late 2007, and they set a target release date of October 2008. We came up with a final image selection and sequence in L.A. in early 2008. The various design elements of the book were being worked on through mid-June or so. As we were shooting design ideas back and forth, drum-scans and light jet prints were being made of my negatives. The light jet prints were sent to Samhwa Printers in Seoul, Korea at the end of June. This was the start of what’s known as the “pre-press” process.

During the month of July, Samhwa scanned the prints, and placed their image files into the finalized InDesign document that Mike and Tricia uploaded to them around the time I sent them the prints. Samhwa then generated "wet proofs" of the book layout and reproductions. During the proofing process you check for any basic layout errors or typos (we found a couple), and you also make color corrections to each individual image. I was sent one set of proofs (I live in Ithaca, NY), and the staff at The Ice Plant got another set. After we independently checked for errors and color corrections, we had a lengthy conference call, during which we compared notes and agreed on what needed to be communicated to Samhwa for the next round of proofs. This information was then given to Jacques Marlow, who typically handles all coordination and communication between The Ice Plant and the printer.

About a week before we were scheduled to go to Korea for the press check, we each received a second set of proofs. Things looked vastly better than they did on the first-round, but there were still a good number of images that needed further corrections. This time we waited until we got to Seoul to tell them what sort of fine-tuning needed to be done. We were hosted by Samhwa Printing for a little over a week in August. This allowed us to check and approve every step of the process. The following photographs represent the basic steps involved in the printing of my new book Other Nature, which will be released by The Ice Plant (and distributed by D.A.P.) in October.


1. Samhwa has a vast printing facility with several floors of presses and binding machines. This is the Heidelberg 4-color (+ varnish) offset press that we used to print Other Nature. Once the proofs are deemed “ready-to-print,” plates are made and the printing process begins.



2. The press operator’s station, where minute adjustments can be made to the color and registration.


3. From left to right: Tricia Gabriel, me, Irving Seong, Samhwa’s liaison to The Ice Plant, and the press operator. We’re looking at a sheet of reproductions under a 5000K lamp, and discussing possible corrections.



4. Comparing the sheets coming off the press with the original prints.




5. The press operator making adjustments to each image.



6. Once a sheet of images looks good, and you’re satisfied that no further corrections need to be made, you sign off on the sheet by putting your initials on it. At that point, the press operator prints the entire run for that sheet. It can be a terrifying commitment, worse than marriage or bungee jumping.



7. Mike Slack checking a few details with Irving before the sheets are stacked onto a palette.



8. A palette of page sheets, ready to be cut, folded, and bound.



9. The cover images are printed on paper with an adhesive backing. They will eventually be laminated and trimmed, and then adhered by hand onto an embossed area of the cover.



10. Cloth is wrapped and glued onto book-board for the cover. These are the elements that will be foil-stamped on the spine, blind-stamped on the back-cover, and stamped with an area large enough on the front to accommodate the cover image.



11. The spine and back-cover stamping plates.



12. This is the foil-stamping machine. It’s a hot-press stamping machine that simultaneously embosses and adheres colored foil to the cover and spine.



13. A proof of the blind-stamped area on the back-cover of Other Nature.



14. The saddle-stitching machine that cuts and sews the book pages together.



15. The final step of the process: the cover is adhered to the sewn book pages.





Going on press for the printing of photography books is essential. As anybody who has done it will tell you, it can be a nerve-wracking experience, but it’s something you have to do if you have any hope of your reproductions resembling your source photographs. I’ve done it a few times, both with my own books and with a couple of books by other artists, and, although I now have a pretty clear sense of how the process works and how to effectively communicate nuanced corrections, I still find it stressful. I’m used to working very slowly on my printing. When you’re printing a book, however, you have to make quick decisions, and be able to translate your corrections from RGB to CMYK. Also, once you commit to a sheet of pages being printed, there’s no going back. That said, it’s also an immensely satisfying experience to realize a book in its final form after months (sometimes years) of planning. It’s also a way to exercise some control over this final, important phase of your project.