REPORT: “Whatever is to become of books?” at London Design Festival 2011. Ebook generates 15% of the revenues for some publishers, with the romance genre having a huge slice in the market share, says Angus Phillips, Director, Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University.
Although digitality has turned the publishing world upside down, Phillips stressed that it is “an exciting time for everyone” as the ebook offer so many opportunities in terms of innovations. The talk, delivered at the London Design Festival event, “Whatever is to become of books?”, at University College London on 17 September 2011, also introduced us to the new classifications in books: ebook, pbook, vanilla book, mook, byook and so on.
In this video, Phillips presented the byook – a format of ebook which is deployed on the smartphone – to the audience.
The event was supported by UCL Anthropology and co-organised by MSc Digital Anthropology students of UCL.
To find out more about the event and to get involved with the 2012 book project by Sojournposse Purpose, visit the Story of Books, the official website, at www.storyofbooks.com.
We could barely keep up with the meteoric rise of Luca Sage. Last year alone he won the KL Photo Awards 2011, LPA Portraiture Awards 2011 and ‘Best in Show’ at Foto8 Summershow 2011. The multiple award-winning photographer shares his thoughts on what makes a great visual storyteller. He said: “Never stop trying different ways of seeing, but above all try to slow down.”
Q. You have steadily won a few leading photography awards recently, especially on your portraiture work. How do you describe your style and influences?
In some ways I think my work is quite clinical with its composition, I seem to have a dislike for disorder. Conversely, my locations are anything but clinical, I tend towards cultures and countries that are relatively less homogenised by global culture.
Regarding influences, I find it hard to pin it down to one or two photographers or mediums, I think I’ve been influenced by everything I’ve ever seen and done, not just the photographers I have studied. A thread running through my work my response to the negativity that mass media and press has on people’s belief of other cultures.
Mass Media has a very powerful and lasting affect on people’s opinions of what is going on in the world. If viewers only ever see footage of starving African children or wild elephants then it stamps a cultural view in their subconscious.
Hopefully my portraits give a different view to one the mass media portrays. My portraits are positive portrayals engaging with the sitter as an individual but at the same time I now realise it is as much about them as it is about me. I’m in control of what and who I portrait, just like the Media are in control of what footage they want us to see.
Q. How does a photographer achieve consistency in style? How do you balance between commercial demand and retaining your unique photography signature? I think you have successfully arrived at this point.
It is not a simple matter but I think my eye is now trained to see in a certain way. In a sense, it is like peeling back the layers until I get to see what I want. I de-clutter the immediate World around me, trying to express the essence of what I feel. I can’t say it is the essence of what the sitter feels, as I can never truly know that.
With my personal work it is easier because I have more control over when and where I shoot, I don’t see that as work at all. With commercial demands, I adapt my work into the brief, it hopefully ends up as being something to be appreciated by more than just other photographers, which is probably a good thing.
Q. You have been working in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. I like the fact that many of your images of these countries are positive and expose the beautiful side. Do you think there are too many heavy depictions of Africa and the third world in photography?
Yes, I certainly do. I can instantly call to mind a plethora of images that have become the norm for representing ‘Africa’. It is an impossible task first of all because Africa is many different countries, religions, people and societies.
Secondly, our view of Africa in the West is filtered through two broad avenues, one being the ‘Africa needs our help’ view and the other being the ‘Sunset Savannah Safari’ landscapes. Contemporary photography is now contributing to a change in this narrow view and it is not a moment to soon in my opinion.
Q. Sojournposse uses digital anthropology observation to inform our multimedia storytelling. You are also a social anthropologist. How does that discipline inform your storytelling?
“Anthropology holds fascination for many people, with good reason: its subject matter is no less than the entire range of human experience.” – Harris.
One of the first times I showed my book to a picture editor, I said that I had previously studied Social Anthropology but didn’t want to become one after I’d graduated. He laughed and replied: “But I can see it through all of your work, it is all still there”. It is embedded in my thought process so much that I don’t even notice it so much.
I think the biggest lesson it has taught me is respect. Respect for the differences we have but highlighting we are all the same, we are all human, we all have feelings and emotions.
Q. Any advice on how to be good at portraiture, or photography in general?
That’s a good question. You never stop learning, which is why photography has such a hold on photographers. We certainly aren’t in it for the money.
Never stop trying different ways of seeing, but above all try to slow down. If you are driving a car and want to concentrate on the view outside you have to stop, step out of the car and really look. Nobody ever sees something fully at 70mph.
Of course this is easier if you are shooting personal work than if you are on assignment and have only 5 minutes to nail the shot. But even then it is better to have 5 great shots than 50 average shots. Above all, follow your heart. It really is how you produce your best shots.
Less is more, and KL International Photo Awards (KLPA) 2012 demands just that for the competition’s entries: less digital manipulation and more photography.
The competition will focus on “Pure Photography”, with the emphasis on “outstanding photographs that have minimal digital manipulation – rewarding content, composition and framing techniques”. “Today, we are constantly being flooded with imagery, which are easily and increasingly manipulated by digital filters and apps. Excessive digital manipulation has become the norm,” according to the organisers, Explorenation.net and KL Photoawards (Malaysia).
The event, in its fourth year, has added two Open categories to the original Portrait Category, which defined its inception in 2009. These are the Photo-Essay Category, which will accept entries in the form of multimedia submissions such as slideshows of up to three minutes long, and hosted on a public website such as YouTube and Vimeo; and the Open Category, which places no restrictions on theme, genre or subject matter. This is a completely open category, allowing individual stand-alone images from one to eight entries.
The KLPA 2012 is a entry-fee based photography competition open to all levels of photographers from around the world, where all entrants have the opportunity to compete on a level playing field, and judged by experienced professionals in related industries within photography, gallery, media and the arts.
Annually, since 2010, KLPA received over 1,000 entries from over 35 nations, from professionals, amateurs as well as newcomers to photography.
KLPA12 also encourages ‘back to basics’ photo-essays in documentary storytelling, where strong editing, relevant titling, narrative and an impactful story will be rewarded.
KLPA12 will be partnered by Pacsafe as product prize sponsor. Pacsafe is the premium global brand of leading travel luggage and gear featuring patented anti-theft technology.
SWXX, a hyperlocal visual blog on Fulham and its surrounding SW districts, is a personal project of our Creative Director, Zarina Holmes. She asked me what ethnography is and how it that could be done with photographs. I said if it’s ethnography, it’s documentary, and it’s not necessarily portraiture. Was she thinking of portraiture, or was she thinking of documenting?
In that aspect, Bob Gumpert is a good lead to follow. He did a good job with his series of prison photographs and audio recordings, “Take a picture, tell a story”, but he told us frankly that it was not ethnography. It was certainly not anthropology. He was simply appalled by the condition in the prison and felt compelled to do something about it with his photography.
After seeing several photographs that Holmes did on the butchers and the pie makers in Fulham, I suggested that she provides visibility to the labour workforce in the area using her photographs, with the blog SWXX to mediate these images, and by proxy, their social presence.
It is generally assumed that Fulham is an upper middle-class area sandwiched between Chelsea and Putney full of bankers, lawyers and Sloans. It is also generally assumed that everyone living here is rich. Not quite. Londoners have a habit of construing the ‘provincial’ and the ‘conservative’ as ‘posh’. Leave London, go to Yr Wyddgrug, for example, and observe the way the village folks live, eat, play golf, rugby and cricket over the weekend, row boats, work on allotments, ride horses and wear that maroon wooly jumper, and you will realise that the habitus Londoners identify as ‘posh’ is actually simply ‘country’ or just a typical British way of living to many people outside London. The aggregate (1) of ‘country’ and ‘folksy’ change to ‘posh’ only in London where overpaid and overworked professionals aspire for a quiet life away from the city madness, and use lavish countryside escapades such as skiiing, horse-riding, rowing (2) and golfing as a status symbol.
There is a sizeable working- and middle-class people in Fulham, and definitely a significant number of traders. Historically, Sands End and South Fulham were the area where the Arts and Crafts movement thrived: De Morgan Road, where we used to live, close to the Thames, was named after the potter and tile designer whoused to work for William Morris two centuries ago. Morris, who lived up the road in Hammersmith, had some of his tiles made from the clay off the Sands End riverside bank. There are still furniture and interior design shops lining the streets of Fulham and Chelsea, close to Wandsworth Bridge.
The nature of anthropology that I do is of the culture of concealment. Often, due to lack of representation in the media, mainstream or otherwise, we inadvertently ‘mute’ a segment of society (Ardener, 1975). Chomsky raved about the muting of the ‘working class’ by the US mainstream media. I think the tradesmen of Fulham somehow got muted, too, not by some kind Othering (Heryanto & Mandal, 2005) built to create a favourable description of the dominant ‘Self’ – the Self implied here being the dominant class or ethnic group – but simply because we assume this area is purely residential and upper middle-class. In assuming that, we overlook the labourers.
Well done to Holmes for striving to make the SW tradesmen visible. Editors, if you want to scout for a hyperlocal visual journalist who gets what community reporting is, look no further than Ms Holmes. I am glad a sliver of insight gained from Digital Anthropology helps to contribute towards the development of this project.
1. Pauline Garvey spoke at a recent Material, Visual and Digital Culture seminar on “Democratic Design and the Ikea Flatpack” (21 November 2011) on how the aggregate of Ikea furniture as everyday, homogenising artefacts accessible by Swedish consumers become a status symbol of modernity when they’re shipped to places like the United Kingdom.
2. Coming from a country surrounded by water, I can assure you water transports and the associated sports are not necessarily considered ‘preppy’ or upper class. I don’t get what the deal is with class and rowing, other than it’s so expensive in London that only the bankers can afford to do it.
Manuel Castells spoke before a full house at the London School of Economic (LSE)’s Sheikh Zayed Lecture Theatre yesterday to tell us that protests, politics and even romantic correspondence can’t do without the internet nowadays. While he did, I deployed our mobile newsroom with nothing more than wifi, open source apps and mobile devices. Methodology: whatever won’t kill the battery.
I am not going to argue with an eminent sociologist, especially if he is the fifth most-cited social science scholar, according to Wikipedia. But after listening to Castells’s talk, “Social movement in the age of the internet” at the LSE last night, I really wonder if I could have a relationship that is totally off the internet. Away from Facebook, Twitter and all. Now that would be a challenge I shall rise up to.
His talk also gave Sojournposse the opportunity to play around with Qik, Audioboo and the various mobile devices and open source software applications that we deployed on our iPhone, iPad and Mac laptop, just to see if the mobile newsroom concept that we have been harping on for ages work.
The photo, rather grainy, was snapped from a distance using an iPhone4 – no guys, not the kind of work I’d submit to a photo competition (yes, we have participated in quite a few), but the point is, we used a phone, not a camera, and I edited it using GIMP, not Fireworks. I have to say no photo editing software can beat Fireworks in terms of web optimisation of photos. But yup, I have purged the new Mac off the usual Macromedia and Windows applications.
Doing the do with Audioboo
Since Qik would definitely kill off the iPhone battery, we opted for Audioboo instead. I have the old version of iPad and wasn’t sure if it could record sound very well. It could. It’s not BBC Radio 4, anyway, and the intention is to apply the digital anthropology principle of ‘bricolage’. So we rode on the LSE wifi, and away we went with the broadcast. Have a listen to the clips, each lasting four minutes.
The embed worked fine, but as usual, you have to change the dimensions a bit with basic coding. Nothing spectacular. After four months of academic writing, it felt great to code again. The mobile newsroom is good to go.
★ Innovative Interactivity(II):"One of top 70 multimedia company websites to peruse for inspiration/internships/jobsin 2010"
★ Nissan Design Europe: "Sojournposse outlook on society and life is inspiring and energizing with that je-ne-sais-quoi multi-cultural angle that makes it unique. Nissan is proud of having hosted them as part of their East Meets West event." East Meets West event at London Design Festival 2009.
★ Samsung Galaxy: "Maverick". Aesthetics as A Means to Heal event at London Design Festival 2010.
★ Digital Anthropology, UCL: "Today's event was something to be super happy with — a great combination of speakers, nice use of the space, professionally choreographed, and just generally a lot of genuinely interesting topics being discussed." Whatever Is to Become of Book event at London Design Festival 2011.
★ The British Library: "Great seminar on eBooks organised by@sojournposseF8 : I look forward to attending next year's event! #StoryofBooks"
★ Digital anthropologist, UCL: "Fantastic to witness Sojournposse team at work whipping this up from nothing." Whatever Is to Become of Book event at London Design Festival 2011.
★ Not On The Wires:"Inspiration"
★ NUJ Journalist Magazine:"Smaller collective more agile than mainstream company"
★ BBC World Service: "I saw your Uzbek photos and felt very nostalgic. It is great how you spoke about things as they are."
★ Digital anthropologist, UCL: "I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your workshop yesterday, it was definitely one of the best I've attended." Whatever Is to Become of Book event at London Design Festival 2011.
★ Deshan Tennekoon, photographer: "Its rapid ascent from the hip underground to the hip overground scares the hell out of me."
