Everyone has been blowing this question up lately thanks to the people over at livebooks a week or so ago and I figured its time for me to weigh in on this whole thing. Everyone seems to have split the option into two ideas; physical or digital. I think this is both too narrow minded and general to think about the way photo books will be seen. Honestly, I semi-agree with Soth’s ideas here, though I also believe he is thinking too specifically. Everyone is looking for an answer, and the truth is, not much is going to change in the way of the photo book in the next ten years. Maybe more people will be making them with things like blurb and mypublisher, but I personally would rather push for the handmade rather than the big published. Show someone a book that you have made on blurb and they think it is cool. Show someone the same book hand bound and printed and they are blown away. No one puts time and effort into craft anymore and it is becoming a problem.

A while back a remember reading a conscientious blog post about things he would like to see more of. I believe one of those things was people self-publishing more without the use of sites like blurb, and I agree with him but only to a certain extent. Hand making books is a long arduous process that usually (if you know what you are doing) yields wonderful results, but I think a lot of people have taken this idea and gone the wrong way. I purchased a book from a photographer for 25 bucks and what I got in the mail a stapled together 15 pages of xerox pages that was a “photo book”. I think that is where I draw the limit on “photo bookness”. Mr. Soth sold a newspaper (The Last Days of W) a while back that I also thought was not too great that I also paid 25 dollars for and was upset by. I do not think not using self publishing companies means make crap for a dollar and try to pass it as art. I think, personally, that handmade is the future. We are having a revival of alternative process, why not handmade books?

Lastly, I do not think the question is physical or digital. Sure books will become more available on the internet, that is inevitable. The question is not iphone or blurb, but rather blurb, handmade, or crappy xerox copies. With things being so easily reproducible and cheap, it is only a matter of time before photo books come like blu ray movies; with a disk, download, and physical copy. Though the idea of web art books is extremely intriguing to me, and that is the one place where I think things can and hopefully will become more interesting in the future if anyone tries. But then again, I think web art is really the only place that anything “New” can happen anymore.

If you have any of your own ideas, Flakphoto started a hashtag of #flakphoto to make it easier for us to organize everyone’s thoughts!