Pictures lead the narrative

Mary Macpherson considers the special contemporary place of the photobook, as Wellington prepares to host a festival celebrating the genre.

The word ‘‘photobook’’ tends to bounce around the worlds of art and books looking for a home. Is it a book with lots of photographs illustrating the text, a handsome art catalogue or something else?

Yet say ‘‘photobook’’ to a photographer and their eyes will light up. For them it means a book where the photographer has initiated a long-form project to explore a theme or a concept in depth, document a piece of the world, or perhaps create a polemical work. It’s the photographer’s equivalent of writing a novel or making a film. Indeed, the late Robert Frank, a renowned US photographer and book-maker, described photobooks as paper movies.

A photobook may contain text, but frequently has few or no words – the pictures lead the narrative. As with films, the editing and sequencing of the images is vital in creating meaning for the viewer. The book-making itself is also critical, with design, paper stock, cover and binding all contributing to the unity of the work. Book designers are often a photographer’s important ally in bringing the work to life.

Wellington has a vibrant photobook-making culture that’s having national and international impact. On the individual level there are people like David Cook. His exhibition, Jellicoe & Bledisloe, about his former Hamilton East neighbourhood, was shown at the NZ Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata earlier this year, but the enduring form of the work is his book published by the small Auckland press Rim Books.

Self-publishing is a positive in the photobook world, leading to innovative artists’ books that wouldn’t be viable with a trade press. They’re often printed in sought-after limited editions, a practice made possible by digital printing, and found on social media rather than in bookstores.

Award-winning Wellington examples this year include Jane Wilcox’s Between Dog and Wolf, where photographs of trees and vegetation were taken near her Wellington home at the liminal time of twilight.

The first edition of Peter Black’s Motel Life, a lyrical road trip of motel interiors and exteriors throughout the country, was snapped up in a week through social media.

Ann Shelton’s 2021 book, mother lode, looks at alternative means of agricultural production through an investigation of a Wairarapa eco farm, while Sage Rossie’s Mooning the Sun was shot in an Aro Valley flat and is an intimate expression of queer experience that celebrates the lives of a chosen family of young artists.

The biggest contribution Wellington makes to the photobook world, though, is the Photobook/NZ Festival which is in its fourth iteration on Saturday, at Te Papa.

The work of a group of independent Wellington photographers, with the aid of partners, the Saturday morning fair brings together photobooks by independent photographers, indie presses such as Wellington’s Bad News Books, galleries and also trade publishers such as Massey University and Te Papa.

There are exhibitions of award-winning photobooks from Australia, Hong Kong and Aotearoa, while Te Papa is showing work from its photobook collection.

For me, it’s an exceptional opportunity to hold and examine photobooks in their book form instead of flicking through digital book teases on overseas or Aotearoa websites while I try to figure out whether I’m interested enough to buy.

The Ockham Book Awards may have the Illustrated NonFiction Award for books, where visual content illustrates a writer’s text, but these photobooks are conceived and made by visual artists and distributed through alternative networks. Internationally, photography and photobook fairs are major events – think Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Singapore and Amsterdam. We are fortunate to have Aotearoa’s equivalent in our capital.

Mary Macpherson is a Wellington photographer, photobook publisher and member of the Photobook/NZ Festival team. For more festival information go to www. photobooknz.com