Bruno Ceschel is founder of SPBH, one of the most active contemporary platform about emerging artists and photobooks. He recently did "SPBH: a DIY Photobook manual and manifesto" on Aperture, a kind of best of his wonderful blog and in the same time a manifesto about Selfpublishing.
He is in the same time author, publisher, critic, and why not theorician if we reffers to the DIY manifesto. He represents, in a way, the fact that at the digital age, all the classic attributions of roles, in term of work, have been broken and redistributed.
As I explained to you , preparing this conversation I am working on a PhD about digital influences on photobooks. My main argument is that a new history of photobooks is emerging for 15 years, due to an explosion of publishing practices directly connected to development and accesibility of digital technologies.
When and how did you start interesting yourself to photobooks?
BC
Accidentally.. Because I studied Sociology and I was gonna do a master in politics and media and then I did an internship for Colors magazine. It was when Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin took call from Oliviero Toscani (founder of the magazine with Tibor Kalman). And I interned first there as an editor, and I just found myself working with a lot of photographers : Pieter Hugo, Adam and Oliver, James Mollison, Stephan Ruiz, all this kind of people.. So I got interrested in photography by osmose, just because I was there
OC
You are not photographer?
BC
I have never owned a camera. I was interested just because I thought photography was a kind of powerful medium.
Specifically in Photobook, my introduction was accidental, because I was looking for a job when I move back to London, where I studied.. and I couldn’t find anything. Then somebody from magnum said « Hey there is this small publisher called Chris Boot, who is looking for a project manager ». Chris (He is now the director of Aperture) but at that time had a small imprint, who was doing Photobooks. So I hadn’t anything to do in Photobooks before that. I come from magazines.
OC
That’s logic if we have a look on the kind of self published Photobooks you promotes through SPBH blog, it seems open in the same time to magazines, fanzines And artist books. The first impression could be stunning when you discover the blog for the first time but it appears logic when we are aware of your background.
BC
I was always interested by independent magazines; When I was a kid I was buying a lot of magazines. I was waiting for imported copies of The Face magazine coming in Italy. Then I was involved to local papers at University. You are right in a way to say that what all publishing offers a kind of bridge between Zine culture, magazine culture to the kind of fine-art book and anything in between.
OC
Is there specially a book, an edited piece which impressed you at the beggining
BC
I was really Obsessed at the beginning by Wolfgang Tillmans early Taschen Publications. And I loved them because first of all there are a lot of issues a kind of queer mess, a lot of things I was interested in. Also I was interested by a kind of form that was quite fluid, it was unlike any kind of Photobooks I have seen before, that kind of coffee table one - it kind of used the langage; I mean in a way that Wolfgang also comes from magazine world. I am talking about the early books he did with Taschen, there was a kind of work full of a book and also he did kind of mirror with some of the lay-out and the idea, the kind of magazine from the nineties - (if i think about I-D magazine). It was a langage I was familiar but in an expanded - This is when I was at Colors, before I started working for a publisher.
I was thinking also to Nan Goldin ‘Devil’s playground’ published in 2003 by Phaidon. And I think I was driven by one type of photography, the diary, the kind of darkness.
At that time, I stupidly did not buy it but I really liked the first book that Ryan McGinley ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (2000), which was a selfpublished book. I actually did never seen this selfpublished book which was done digitally in a hundred copies - but they reprinted it and I remember have seen it, it’s a kind of mixed liking Or related to the content, and finding in the book form a kind of expanded field - Because of course the magazine is always quite bity - you just get a taste of it.
Of course a book really cannot dwell into a specifical content If I think about both the Nan Goldin and the Wolfgang Tillmans. They took about hundreds pictures - You know they really kind of - you have the time to go into that, more than a couple of pictures in a gallery or in a magazine, where they are usually saw.
OC
What about the explosion of self published Photobooks from the last 10 or 15 years?
BC
I got interested because in a way I was coming from a more traditional mainstream publisher. Even more it was kind of small independent, still obeying to the traditional rules, distributed in a specific places and shops, go to the Frankfurt book fair, etc. Small publishers couldn’t exist for decades. And the suddenly, through Printed matter mostly, because I was in New-York at that time. All these people doing all these stuff I was much more interested in. You know ‘content wise’, ‘form wise’, everything was like : « Oh my god there is something else than the traditional books I found in the bookshops ». You know the like what we made (10:05) in Colors, I have sort of got excited both about people and the books. it’s not about the books themselves, it’s also about the community of people there was into that.
OC
When I discovered the New-York Art Book fair, I could imagine the big energy of the beginnings. There is a common point with events in France like Offprint and Cosmos. For the first Cosmos in 2009, books were nearly a pretext for people to meeting and enjoying the moment. As an artist, make a new book is nearly a motivation to come back.
BC
Sometimes I can feel that the book themselves are less important than the community. On the same side, you will probably think about some of the magazines, the zine culture. We often don’t remember specifically one issue of one zine. You can remember the community around that. It doesn’t mean that we did the community, and then people did exceptional books; it’s a kind of obvious that the lot of people doing stuff, some of them do excel and other will not.
OC
Does the question of the quantity is something you give attention?
BC
I don’t care about. It’s the same thing with music. You can have a laptop, is that bad for music?
The other problem is that people are not prepared to pay for content. but there are nothing to do with the lot of people producing content … or maybe does. There is coming an interesting question. Why? Is that because you can make it by yourself that you feel you shouldn’t pay for it? I am not quite sure. One to think the contrary, because I know the effort I need to make something I should value the other doing the same.
OC
When you started SPBH, did you think this phenomena could become something so important now?
BC
I didn’t really know.
The first shock I had was the amount of people who went to the first SPH event at the Photographer’s Gallery in 2010. Then the other shock was the intense start of the blog, made basically just to record all the material that we got in. We tought that nearly 10.000 people gone on the blog daily and I was thinking : Who are these people? Literally, I didn’t know. It’s still exciting the amount of people that got excited about the idea.
OC
How the book, this millenary object, could be compatible with this energy brought by digital technology?
BC
I feel that it is complementary to it. I think the book offer something that the digital doesn’t, and vice versa. People, both artists and consumers, exist and consume images online, whatever form it is. They still find pleasure sometimes in the same images, in a kind of paper support; Because you want to have the pleasure of owning the object. As a consumer, you like the idea of (14:30) relating to it in a completely different environment that are not digital one. And for not, especialy photographers to have control of the medium, the way that people relate to the images in term of sequences, sizes, etc.
And also to have an object that was existing for a long time. It’s not as familiar of us. We don’t have any mean to preserve the digital, as yet..
No institution now have to do that. We don’t know exactly how and what? what’s the meaningful? etc. etc.
Even if you think about how institutions be collecting photographs, at one point they were asking for files just, but now they are asking for files and the print because they don’t know exactly which one; Also if you have a file they don’t know how it should be printed, etc.
OC
Some institutions are collecting my work and they never ask officially for the files.. But they give pretext to need the files for they archives and ask anyway for the HD file.
BC
It’s not my field, but are they reprinted? I am thinking about all the material that people create for Instagram or other platform, like Tumblr .. Tumblr is owned by Yahoo now .. OK the website is gone now also
But who is going to preserve this content ? Nobody. We don’t even know if it will exist in a couple of years.
If there is no institution that has the mandate to preserve, companies themselves not gonna care. Some kind of Hedge found from China or by Yahoo; Why would they be interested in preserving the content? I don’t see why they would.
So then going back, the physicality of the object is really quite the key. We now have been to the form of the book and to the print to really kind of preserving that kind of memory of photographs, so images.
OC
To which level do you locate the bigger influence of digital on photobooks?
BC
I do think that there are a lot of interesting artists that I have been rethinking about their practice online, taking some content that was existing online and translating it in other forms … no just in term of collecting images.
Even in the SPBH book for Aperture, there are a lot of examples about what I guess is more than taking digital images and put it in the book form. I think about Thomas Mailaender using found archive, the practice of Joachim Schmid, and even this book titled ‘Thai Politics’ (2011) by Miti Ruangkritya, this Thai photographer who took these images that were posted online and were censured.
In a way, they are in the business of preserving stuff that is very ephemeral online and making it into a book. I think that is one of the trends. Of course they recontextualize, this is not just printing the archive. You know the kind of Erik Kessels type where it is sort of objective but really isn’t.
OC
We can think about the book design, it is so easy to make a grid and create a regular graphic design.
Also some artistic practice are also directly connected to visual aesthetic that couldn’t exist out of the screen field. I think spontaneously about bad retouching aesthetic of Lukas Blalock’s.
BC
I was thinking more esta kind of digital aesthetic, had a bearing on the printed page. I don’t know if that is true actually.
In the kind of design way, there was a point in magazine that responded immediately, they sort a kind of try to imitate to the web, that kind of hyperlink and all other kind of stuff. I mean all of seemed stupid, in fact they went back to the kind of more tradition of the magazine.
Going back to distribution definitively, most people now trust to go on the website over a total stranger and pay by credit card, and maybe Paypal or whatever, expecting the product to be delivered.
How on earth, even 5 years ago could you really sell a book? A bookshop would not take them, fairs didn’t really exist.
OC
What represent the work of distribution for a structure like SPBH?
Do you sell more books on your website or in fairs?
BC
On the website, we are just selling our own books, when you click on an other book we present, you go directly to the website of the publisher.
And I would think most of books are sold through distribution. But I was quite surprise by the SPBH book published by Aperture; People could buy it to Aperture, to a bookshop, or they could buy it at Amazon, discounted, or directly to us, not discounted, plus delivery, so much more expensive. And we still sold around 400 copies.
Some of the people who bought it, made the decision, which is not strategic economically, to buy the book more expensive to us. Because of course sometimes I get an e-mail where people says « You can’t discount your book and delivery is 5 pound ». And I am like « Yes but we can’t. » We are no like an Amazon operation selling thousand of books. We are sort of artisan corporation. And I think if my cost is more, there is a reason for it, and you make a kind of more political choice in the way that you push a staff.
OC
There are many exemples of economical failure on tries to develop what is commonly called « digital books ». I think about what Mackbooks did around this, i recently discussed with a guy working on it at the Centre Pompidou.
the conclusion is often the same : people are no ready to pay for this kind of digital stuff.
In your opinion, does theses digitalized books (In the sense of dematerialized) will find a way in the future?
BC
I think that when the borders was offered, it was basically a kind of glorify of the PDF, there’s sort of gonna make sense for material like for exemple vintage stuff. You can’t buy it because that’s too expensive and you want to have a documentation of it.
How big is that market for this kind of books? Michael mack did some interesting things ...
OC
I think also it was interesting … but he stopped.
BC
He stopped because people didn’t buy them.
The first time we had in know the augmented reality book project by Lucas Blalock ‘Making memeries’, I could only do it because it was becoming a project for Tate Modern and there was a budget.
Putting together an app is really expensive : You have to have a certain kind of skills which the normal people don’t have, and you also have to the system to be upload on the applestore. Do you see what I mean? It’s not a DIY topic. People do talk now about off the shelf template software that you can use to make apps. And in that case, it gonna maybe be possible than you will have artists starting to play around with it. until we have access to it, there is not real development, and even if the langage start to be tested and extended by artist like people.
I do want to know how public will respond to it. Because if you look for an exemple in one point to magazine having a kind of app version, a downloable version for the ipad. And that stopped as well, because actually people prefers to go on the website. I do as well, I mean I subscribe to the New-York Times and I read my news on my phone now. Why would I want to spent time downloading whole content in an ipad? It seems now ridiculous. Especially because the newspaper format itself has become old. You expect news to be updated all the time, it’s not like time based.
I think if somebody is gonna succeed (28:20) something completely new, maybe.
OC
I believe in Augmented reality. For me that could become a useful answer to the question of hybridity between digital and analog publications, not in itself or as a gadget. But because we could connect material from different medias to what you find on the book and moreover this content can be updated.
I experimented the Augmented reality process in 2014 with my book Duck, A theory of evolution. The app allowed the reader to access to 3D content from 2D pictures printed on the book; The experimentation received a good success but it was so complicated to organise it before. I had to involved publishers (RVB books and Vevey Images), the architect who made the 3Ds (Antoine Mialon), the programmer of the app (Illegal Factory) and I had to create a partnership with a magazine (The Eyes) which was already working on augmented reality. The issue was mainly to ensure a sustainability to the 3D data.
BC
Technology is changing all the time, this Lukas Blalock’s book we have just made, I don’t know how long is gonna last.
OC
For me the key is that the book exists without adding Data, that there is still a mean to collect
If I think about the technology that now is much familiar, the augmented reality one. If you start having for exemple the possibility of using 3D content, sound, moving images, I think about the possibility we can use for educational books; I don’t think only about artist books, but also mainstream one’s. It could really be something who had something to the experience.
There was an interesting interview on this podcast about economic in the U.S. (I can’t remember the name). The episode was about college books in the U.S. : A new college book costs about 400 pounds, and they explained why it became so expensive. Apart from that, which can be interesting but no relevant, they talked to the biggest publishers in the U.S. of University text books and they didn’t want to talk about the price of the physical books, but they only talked about the investment they had on the digital books, because the system is corrupt. We need to focus on something that really is the future which are the digital book. There are kind of forces that are really thinking about content. I don’t know if that really gonna be translated into art books; You know everything about art in general they cannot represent high speed painting, it is kind of anachronistic, I think translate or so, in the format books. I don’t know if it will be affected
OC
Do you have a wish or idea on the future of the Photobook?
BC
I actually do think that art per se is in a way conservative. they are kind of element of it but project themselves into the future and experiment themselves into the future but the core of it , if you go walk to Paris Photo, it’s all about something that happened something that could be there a hundred years ago : handprinted photographs under glass and other things. That is the core of it, it’s a kind of need of having this artefact. In a way if you think about it translated in books, that’s the same.
OC
I just remember one video in all Paris Photo, and video is not really an avant-garde medium
BC
I know but they are not sellable. is there a market for it?
OC
For me yes. And this one was on sale.
BC
I mean there is not a big market for it.
If I sell a hat, I try to put the hat some people want and if there’s kind a crazy one, I might sell one… If you are an average collector, you have like 30.000 or 10.000 dollars to buy stuff. But what do you fucking wanna do with a video?
The same thing is with digital art..
OC
I had the problem with a digital installation about pyramid. I couldn’t sell it, it’s stay difficult to sell a CD, even to institutions
BC
There was a really good show at the Whitechappel gallery, electronic superhighway. The was a kind of tracing line back between Internet and Art, going to a couple of computers linked to each others. The problem is that when you went back in time,
to the origins of it, there is no documentation, there is nothing ! They had like five or six computers; One of the question was when Lucas and I started thinking about the stuff thinking about when we are planning this thing . What is the piece?
OC
I agree that this is difficult to identify it relatively to the traditional market, but we have to admit new criteria of thinking for this kind of pieces.
BC
I know, the conversation are within the frame work that is the gallery frame work. Which we we should . Is the piece the images that we have, is the piece the kind of app? the two things together? And this is for the market. Then intellectually : Is the piece the interaction of the audience? is it the derviative from it, the kind of pictures they can take of the interaction. So it’s a sort of kind of open field
OC
It is necessary to rethink also the definition of what is art, what is the piece. gallery and institutions are definitively not in phase with the contemporary. That the same in many situations, fact are running and evolving really fastly in this post-digital timae and institutions are conservative by definitions
BC
If you look at the trends within the market, we have painting first (everybody want a painting) and now people want ceramics. Who the fuck would have thought that ceramics will become a trendy thing.
If you look at photography, the photography beurs is a kind of darkroom process photography, which is basically all about the artefact. So the market goes opposite direction to where actually some artists are thinking about, which is going into a kind of ephemeral.
So I have some friends who are kind of very successful video experimental filmakers. They can’t live, they literally can’t live, because who the fuck is gonna pay for that ? The galleries are not interested about work. England has infrastructure for video work but America doesn’t.
I think we have to think about that, it’s not just like afterfact. that’s the foundation of how things can develop.
One can have wonderful ideas but if we can’t make it into practice, that’s just a wonderful idea.
If institutions would for exemple start seriously think about how to collect digital, and I am sure some do…
OC
They can, technically they can. I have a friend who sold a CD with a screen capture to a French Contemporary public found.
BC
Yes, I might bought Emoticones a couple of weeks ago.
But collecting for institutions is not only supporting the artists, it’s also to preserve to posterity. If basically in hundreds years on, somebody get back and interact with this material. I think there are interesting question about where this is going. You can only of course be pushed by artists, but also you need to be embraced by institutions, collectors.
I don’t know how it doesn’t quite work … it’s a kind of system that can’t really work by itself.
I feel quite concerned because I have a similar problem with SPBH : People seems like to make books but not to buy books. And that is gonna break the system. The students whose I learn to make books, I ask them « What was the last book you bought? And if you can’t remember, I think it’s better that maybe ou reconsider about. »
If you are not prepared to pay for content, you can’t expect people to buy your own content. It jus doesn’t work
OC
OK
Coming back slowly to Printed material, are you agree if I affirmate that the digital influenced the creation of a new contemporary history of Photobooks, fanzines and photography?
BC
Sure. I think it’s definitively true ..
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