Gursky

Gursky December 2005 | Filed under Photos, Still Life | Comments (2)

Perhaps my favourite present this Christmas was from Sophie, who gave me a wonderful book of Andreas Gursky photographs. I'm a massive fan of Gurksy's work - the infinite depth-of-field, and the wonderful patterns he sees or creates - and the book (whose cover is abominably reproduced on Amazon) is simply wonderful. I could lose myself in it for hours.

Underneath the Gursky book you can see the other book Sophie gave me, Bill Henson's Mnemosyne, which on any other Christmas day would have been top of the pile - Henson was the first photographer whose work really spoke to me, and this huge, heavy hardback is a definitive retrospective.

Views from the Floor

Khoi Vinh says:

I have the hardbound catalog from Gursky’s MoMA show several years ago. It’s gorgeous, and I’m a fan of his work, but nothing quite matches the experience of physically standing in front of one of his gargantuan photographic prints. I’m waiting for them to produce a book that’s, say, 1.5 meters tall by 2 meters wide to really do justice to the man’s work. Don’t think it’ll never happen; they can do anything with computers nowadays.

Virginia says:

Almost the highlight of my trip to New York in '04 was an exhibition of Gurky's stuff in Chelsea. I think there were nine or ten works, and I could've stay in front of each one for an hour.

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3 February 2009
Filed under Books, Text

I’ve just paid for and downloaded a PDF book by Mark Boulton called Five Simple Steps: Designing for the Web. It’s a really nicely-designed publication, and although I’ve only glanced through it so far, it seems to be chock-full of great advice and examples. I’m also really impressed the way Mark’s gone about promoting it via his networks over the last six months or so.

The only sticking point for me is the application of a software-license-style fee structure: 12 pounds1 for ‘one user’, 25 pounds for five, and 50 pounds for a ten-user license. I haven’t really got that much to say about this, other than that books are surely meant to be shared, and in their sharing gain all kinds of attributes not as easily quantifiable as cash – influence over a broader audience, for example.

Compare Mark’s payment structure with that of Massimo Vignelli, who recently released a book-length PDF of his musings free of charge - I’m not for one second suggesting that Mark shouldn’t profit from his book, but rather that it may be interesting to try to gauge the comparative merits of reach and profit, to determine whether over time, reach leads to greater influence, and therefore – presumably – more demand for your services, and thus more money). Of course, Vignelli’s got both reach and (one assumes) cash in bucketloads, so perhaps he’s not the best example.

1No, I can’t be bothered finding the pound sign

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