At the opening of the Abstraction x 5 exhibition, which includes abstractions by Graeme Hastwell, Beverley Southcott, Stuart Murdoch, Adam Dutkiewicz and myself, we launched the Abstract Photography book. The exhibition and launch was yesterday at the Light Gallery in Adelaide to a full house.
The book was written by Dutkiewicz and myself, and it recovers the lost modernist abstractions made in the 1960s by Adelaide photographers, has a couple of essays by Adam and myself and a number of abstract photographic images by Adam and myself.
We plan to have different price levels reflecting different print quality for the various market segments.This requires Adam and myself to check out different printers, locally and overseas, to see what they have to offer. It's really a question of balancing the quality and the cost.
Balancing because I am not sure the digital printing quality is there to produce good quality for around $40-$50 a book. At the moment good quality means $80-$90 a book, which is far too expensive. Only a few people will pay that price.
The book printing is largely a work in progress for Adam and myself. We are trying to find a way of printing the books that we are happy with. In launching the book we become part of the contemporary shift away from the print or exhibition towards the book as the central medium for photography.
There is a notable expansion in the activities of self-publication and the use of small independent press by photographers and artists who use the photograph in contemporary art photography. The reason for this shift has primarily to do with keeping control of your creative vision and being able to operate outside the often prohibitively costly mainstream publishing houses.