These three, cute little books came from a Kickstarter the folks at Hoxton ran a couple of months ago. The goal of the project is to support the
hundreds of projects by great photographers that don’t make it into book form because the subject is not considered serious enough, or the photographer doesn’t have the funds, or heaven forbid, the work is not considered arty enough.
We want to change that.
I’m down to change that too, in whatever way I, as a collector (I guess) of photobooks can, so I jumped in and received 3 Collector’s Editions a couple of weeks ago…
The video is a bit blown… new lens. Sorry about that!
The three books are all fairly small (5.5 x 7 inches), in brightly colored covers (pink, yellow, green) with hand-tipped photographs and embossed lettering. Inside is a short synopsis of the photo project by some third party, a brief bio of the photographer, and a short statement about Hoxton Mini Press. The Collectors Editions came with a signed & numbered 5×7″ print in a little sleeve on the back.
Bubblegum, by Emily Stein
For Bubblegum, Ms. Stein traveled to beaches, talked to some parents, gave kids some bubblegum (apparently Hubba Bubba, probably Strawberry), followed the kids around for a bit as they chewed, and snapped some pretty nice pictures of them masticating, blowing bubbles, and playing around. Every now and then, a colorful bunch of flowers or shells or a seascape punctuate the portraits.
As a group, they work well together, and the project really came together, especially with the inclusion of a pack of Hubba Bubba.
Badly Repaired Cars, by Ronnie Compana
Badly Repaired Cars, as the title intimates, contains a bunch of color pictures of temporary fixes to wing mirrors, rust spots, cracks, fallen-off bumper covers, and other minor auto body issues that someone MacGuyvered together something to make it road-worthy. Many of these are beautiful geometric abstractions, really, and somewhat more than closeup pictures of duct tape and bondo.
The only way this one could be more fully realized as a photobook would be if it came packaged with a bit of bailing wire, some duct tape, and maybe a plastic grocery sack or two…
Hand Jobs: Life as a Hand Model, by Oli Kellet & Alex Holder
This is the best of the group, imo… It’s a collection of portraits, each with a single quote, a head and shoulders or full torso portrait of a person, often making some sort of goofy face, and then a hand holding, peeling, displaying, or modeling a banana. One in particular made me laugh out loud. Really silly, fun stuff.
You can’t send a banana from England in a small envelope and expect it to arrive in any sort of reasonable shape…
If you like little quirky photobooks, Hoxton is a good choice, I think. They have a set of books about Hoxton (East London), plus these three and one on East London Food. They also do prints. So go and check them out.
Re. Hand photo – my late grandmother ASTERIA was a model for the shoe industry in NORTHAMPTON in the 1920’s & had (then) a so called ideal size four foot. She travelled to London often to be photographed & later in the 50’s she took me around the west end & said, “look up, look up at all the great buildings” which later on, I never stopped looking up wherever I went.