Second Year Book Review

Second Year Book Review

The main book that I am going to review is (Man)nequin by Samantha Jones. I am choosing to review this book because I completely fell in love with it after seeing only a few of the photos and I really liked the physical aspects of the book.

The book is medium sized, hardback and almost square, it is pure white with black writing on the front with a matt feel but it slightly shiny which I really like. The typewriter style of font has a slight clinical feel which suits the style of book and goes well with the white background.

The first page when opening the book is this....

I like that there was a simple sentence when you first open the book to kind of prepare you and already give you an idea of what the book is going to be about so rather than looking at the photos and trying to see what they are about you are given a direct insight into what the photographer wants to portray. Also, I prefer this to having to read an essay in the beginning to some photographers books. After reading this sentence I felt that I would really like the photos mainly because I know that I project feelings of intimacy and loneliness onto things like teddy's and other objects. I felt like I was going to relate to the photographs in the book.

The photos were of a girl having what appear to be a close relationship with a mannequin which could represent the desire for a partner hence the bracketing of MAN in the word MANNEQUIN. There were quite a few photos, but not too many, I think a good amount, there was on photo to each double page, the photo was on the right page which I liked because I felt it was more comfortable to see a photo on the right hand page, I'm not really sure why but I felt it was more comfortable. The paper inside the book was a shiny paper which made the photos stand out and look really good and went along with the clinical feel of the front cover but I just didn't like the feel of it.

The content of the book and the feel of the photos has this almost psychological element to it. The white background and typewriter style font makes me feel as if it were an asylum doctors report or perhaps a psychiatrist report writing about the psychological factors and meaning to the attachment to inanimate object. Personally I really love that theme and assume it is intentional.

Although this was the first book I picked up, even after looking at others I felt this was definitely my favourite and I knew this would be the one I would review, I still made sure to think about the other books in a critical way, next year I will be making my own and I want it to be perfect and exactly how I want it so when  looking through and holding the books I thought about what I would want my work to look like in one so I wrote mini reviews on the aspects of the photos rather than the images....

What is Local is Often General- Daniel Babor
A fabric hard cover, I really like the feel, it looks good and very different, brilliant for grabbing attention and making you want to pick it up instead of other books. An opening paragraph and writing with each image which gives insight into the book as a whole and individual images  with the image on the right and the writing on the left. The matte paper feels really nice but I am unsure about how it looks, I don't know if I like it.

Tedu- Laura Corrys Thomas
A small square hardback book with a shiny but kind of matt front cover. I didn't like the page colour, having soft looking images against such a strong black background kinda of ruined the photos for me and made the pages seem to almost drown the photos. I think it would of been better if the images were on a paler colour, maybe not pure white but maybe a magnolia colour or something. But when I brought up this point, others thought it made the photos stand out more and it did look good, so I guess it depends on your preference, but personally I would not do this for my own book.

Salem- Alisha Williams
A smooth matt front cover that is hardback, inside were matt pages which I think for the style of photos was a good match, the images did not all sit in the same place on each page, they were in different places with different size photos, it worked for some images but not for others, maybe if the photos had borders around them? I think this was just a aspect of the book being made but the pages were quite tight together and I found it difficult to open the pages fully while trying to be careful with it.

Red Umbrella- Gloria Sandbrooke John
The main thing that I took from this book was the text about the book being at the end. I remember looking through and not really being a fan of the work but then when I got to the end and read the text, I wanted to go back and look over again with the information I just had. I think this is a good technique in getting the viewer to not just glance through your work because they don't really 'get it' but to look back through because when they come to the end they are given some insight and want to understand the photos.

Between the Lines- Rose Priest
I thought the quotation at the beginning of the book was good but over all there were way too many images that looked to alike and it was juts a bit boring and repetitive. As a book to sit down and look at I don't think it is that good, but the point of the book seemed to be to show repetition and that is what the book is so in the sense of the book being part of the work and the point of the work I think it works well.

Dreaming- Robert Paul Jones
A very large book but that suited the images well, if it had been a smaller scale I don't think it would have done the photos justice. The main thing that I really liked were the time and date stamps in each corner of the page. I felt that regardless of how distance you were form the imagery you could somehow relate by thinking what you were doing at this time and date and then think 'oh, well this I what the artist was doing' and it in a strange way makes you feel a bit more connected to the work, I'm not really sure why.


After looking so carefully and reviewing these books it has given me a great idea of the things that I will really need to think of when doing my own book  the font, font sizes, the feel of the book, size of the book, colour of the book and inside pages, the sizing of the images and so on.

One thing that I kept doing when looking through the book is imagining what my work would look like in a book, the main project that jumped to mind was my Foundation Diploma work The Darkness of Fairy Tales, because of how bold some of the photos were....

...This is the photo that I mainly had in mind when thinking of a booked version of my work, in this case I think having it on shiny paper would be much better than matt, I think matt paper for this photo would drain way the light and reflection in the apple and dull down the image. 

Of course when it comes to doing my actual book I will think more about the different aspects to suit the photos then.