CRASH, BANG, WALLOP, WHAT A PICTURE.

After spending a day printing some lovely images from the archive I managed to get the prints safely home through yesterdays storm and into the confines of my kitchen/ retouching area. An hour later after what can only be described as a Crash, Bang, Wallop incident the prints were on the floor, each one buckled and bent like a broken tent. I did not cry, nor did I shout, but instead got to work steaming the prints and flattening them out with the help of a kettle, a length of string and some Bulldog Clips, a technique I learnt back in the day when printers were many and an Ink Jet was something you flew in. After blow drying the prints in the Kitchen/ Salon I placed the injured prints under a piece of smooth card. As I no longer had my 1/2 Ton printing press I had to make do with books. I could of gone with the Night Vision copies I had just paid oodles in shipping for, but decided to go with every other Coffee Table style book I had in my collection. And so I got busy placing piles of beautiful books on top of the crippled prints occasionally dusting one off and flipping through the contents; Richard Misrach, Joel Sternfeld, Meyerowitz, Burtynsky, Gursky, and a tattered copy of Susan Sontag on Photography, they were all in there.
This whole incident had got me thinking about the future of books, but it was not a romantic vision of laying around on leather sofas in an attic room drinking espresso's and flicking through a twenty year old copy of By Coastal. It was more a vision of a white sterile room with an i Pad type device drinking Grass Juice and wearing some silvery track suit.
In a virtual photographic world I fear the future of the paper book will in time become obsolete. Books are already becoming collectors items and many are jumping on that band wagon snapping up signed first editions and putting then somewhere safe.
Books are expensive, they are made from trees, the inks are toxic, but no one cares about that because they are also beautiful objects and the ultimate goal for most photographers like me.

So in this every decreasing digital world full of pixels and paperless technology the only time you will open a book is when the power runs out and you light a candle and reach for that dusty first edition. Unless that is, you have sold it....

In case you were wondering, My prints are now flat..