Making a Blurb Book for the Exhibition

Instead of the more common archival box portfolio to display along with my exhibition, I have decided to create a large 30x30cm hardback book to accompany my installation piece. As the instillation is only negative projections, a sense of the photographic print will be somewhat lost. With a book I feel the project can be more creatively spaced out as well as a book being a more welcoming object to inspect.

To me an archival box full of clinically clean prints is less enticing to pick up and flick through. Being a fan of photo books I simply cannot pass the opportunity to display my photography in this way. A book is not something people crowd over, you have an individual experience with a book, and that notion of a viewing experience is what I am very keen on exploring with this project.

As I have found from the past Blurb books are very costly, especially when you want premium paper and a hardback cover. For 50 pages the book will cost £50.95 without taxes or shipping, which is very expensive when considering most photo books at a 30x30cm size are priced at roughly £30. Looking at other alternatives such as Apple Books shows that this £50 price point is the standard price across other platforms. As I have previously purchased books from Blurb and am pleased with the quality I can make a safe assumption that I cannot be disappointed with the books I will purchase.

I wanted a very minimalist approach for the book cover, drawing inspiration from The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Although this was the book cover that featured in the 2012 film. The cover itself has this sky blue colour with a simplistic bird illustration which is a symbol for peace. This creates a certain aura that reflects the environment of the film, which is set in a very sunny Jackson Mississippi. The blue imitating the sky gives off an aura of clarity and idealised land. This idea of idealised land fits very well with my project The Impossibility of Staring Blankly, so I chose to adopt a similar design.