Process

What to say, who to say it to, and how to ask for help Dear friends, We are back to the book-making process! If you’re new here, and for anyone who wants to catch up, here are the previous steps: Step 1 - The Hardest Part of Making a Book (Read: Process 248) Step 2 - Leaving Out the Good Ones (Read: Process 251) Step 2.5 - The Fear of Getting It Wrong (Read: Process 252) Step 3 - I Took the Book on Vacation (Read: Process 253) Steps 4, 5 & 6 - You Have to Hold It Before You (Read: Process...

Hi friends, I got back to Amsterdam from our Ukraine trip late last night, after a two night stay in beautiful Budapest to catch our breath a bit and have some time off. There is so much to talk about after I process it all a bit more (no pun intended). For this week, I will just share a few more pictures from the past few days, and next week Process goes back to its regular programming, continuing to share the last steps of the book-making process for NOTICE Journal, Volume Two, and more.

I am writing you from Ukraine right now. I’ve been here for a bit, and life has been interesting, and beautiful, and amazing, and weird, and…well you can imagine. I was able to bring the first copy of NOTICE Journal, Volume Two, and show it to the people who are in the book. The rest of the copies got bound in the mean time and are waiting for me in Amsterdam for when I return. I will write much more about this trip then too. For now, let me show you some of the things I’ve seen so far here.

For the past few years, I’ve been photographing 52 Amsterdam creatives for a project called Creatives In/AMS, together with writer Josephine Jongbloed. Every week we publish a new chapter on CreativesIn.co and @creativesin_. Last night we celebrated that work at Vrij Paleis, a legendary artist space in Amsterdam, as part of the Amsterdam Museum’s new annual event Creative Grounds.

Dear friends, This week I want to pay homage to legendary photographer Jay Maisel. He passed away last month at the age of 95. I visited him in 2018 and left very inspired after a lovely morning. Even if his name doesn’t ring a bell for you, you have almost certainly seen his work. He shot the cover of Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, the most famous jazz record of all time, and many other famous photographs over the course of many decades.

Dear friends, This issue of Process is about steps 8 and 9 of making a book: the design choices and the cover. This past Monday, the pages of NOTICE Journal Volume Two came off the press at robstolk here in Amsterdam. I have an unbound copy on my desk as I write this. It gets bound next week, but even in this raw state I am thrilled with how it’s come out. I also left robstolk with a few of the big uncut sheets, which several pages sit side by side before they get folded and cut.

Dear friends, In January I saw the movie Hamnet, and the next night I saw Joep Vermolen’s one-man show So This Was Nice at Mezrab. On both nights, I was so caught up in the inspiring experience of watching that I forgot to take a single photo. As some of you know, I keep a daily photo diary. All the pictures in this issue are from this diary. One picture a day, every day, since the first of January 2023.

Hi friends, First, thank you. The response to the preorder has been lovely and I do not take it lightly. The Special Edition nearly sold out in the first few days. Only three copies are left. If you want that print, I would not wait, because at this rate they will be gone soon. You can grab one here. Here is one of my favorite spreads from the book: A two-page spread from NOTICE Journal Vol 2 There are still plenty of Standard copies, but if you have been meaning to order, this is the week.

Dear friends, Last summer I spent two weeks in Ukraine with my partner’s extended family. I sat at kitchen tables, helped out in the yard, and walked dusty roads in tiny villages and busy streets in Kyiv and other cities. I brought my camera, with no plans to take pictures of the war. War photography is extremely important and I have deep respect for the brave people who do it, but that wasn’t why I was in Ukraine. I was there to support and meet family.

Dear friends, This week, we go over steps 4, 5 and 6 of the book making process, including my favorite: making a photo book dummy! It’s when we move from laying test print out on a table, to turning prints into a book-like object so we can feel how things work truly work together (or not!). Also in this issue: the COVER REVEAL of Volume Two, and very special news about next Sunday.